Chapter 4
Bianca demanded we speak privately.
I refused.
Rosalie stayed.
My guards stayed.
Livia stayed away.
That part was not negotiable.
“You’re humiliating me,” Bianca said.
I looked at the hair still lying on the floor.
“Good.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I apologized.”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I heard enough.”
She stepped closer.
“You think your daughter is innocent because she cries.”
I stared.
“She is three.”
“She knows exactly how to get your attention.”
I almost laughed.
“She’s supposed to have my attention.”
“That is the problem.”
There.
Clean.
Undeniable.
Bianca continued.
“She interrupts dinners. She climbs into your lap. She calls you when we’re alone.”
I listened.
Every accusation described normal childhood.
Nothing more.
“You hate that she needs me.”
“I hate that you let need control you.”
I went still.
She saw weakness where I saw fatherhood.
Maybe I should have understood that months earlier.
Bianca looked toward Sofia’s photograph in my hand.
“She does this because you allow it.”
“What?”
“Uses her mother.”
My voice dropped.
“Careful.”
“She knows if she mentions Sofia, you give her anything.”
My jaw tightened.
“You are talking about a toddler.”
“And toddlers learn.”
There it was again.
An adult assigning adult manipulation to a child because it made cruelty easier to justify.
I leaned closer.
“She did learn something.”
Bianca stared.
“She learned you punish her when she reminds me of Sofia.”
Silence.
Her face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
I had found the nerve.
“Did you cut her hair because Sofia used to wear hers like that?”
Bianca’s eyes flickered.
Rosalie gasped softly.
I understood.
Livia’s hair had grown long enough that from behind, sometimes she looked like her mother.
I had noticed.
Apparently Bianca had too.
May you like
The clippers were not about the veil.
She wanted resemblance removed.
