Chapter 9 We're Done

Bianca looked up from the bottom of the stairs, all wide eyes. "Did I do what?"

"My doll." Elena came down two steps. "It's in pieces on my floor."

"Oh. That." Bianca put a hand on her chest. "That was an accident. The guys were hanging the new curtains in your room, and I went up to check on them, and I must have bumped it. I feel terrible." She tipped her head. "I was trying to do something nice, actually. I picked out a color I thought you'd like."

Elena came the rest of the way down, took Bianca by the arm, and pulled her up the stairs.

"Hey! Let go of me!"

Elena didn't let go. She walked Bianca into the bedroom and let go of her arm so hard that Bianca stumbled.

"My doll was on the dresser." Elena pointed. "The curtains are over there, across the room. How do you hang curtains and knock something off a dresser ten feet away?"

"I told you, I don't know, I bumped..."

"And the dome." Elena pointed at the bed. The glass dome sat there in the middle of the comforter, without a mark on it. "It's sitting on my bed. Not a scratch. Somebody lifted it off first."

Bianca's eyes flicked to the dome and back.

"It was an accident," she said again.

"You did it on purpose."

For a few seconds, Bianca didn't say anything.

Then she laughed.

"Fine," she said. "Yes. I did it on purpose. So what? What are you going to do about it?"

Elena stared at her.

"Julian told me about your mother, you know." Bianca's voice was light, almost friendly. "Daddy brings home a girlfriend, Mommy gets sick and dies. He told me the whole sad story." She smiled. "Your mother didn't have what it takes, did she? Watched another woman walk in and take her husband, and all she could do was die about it. You're just like her. So go ahead. Sit there and watch Julian come back to me."

The slap cracked through the room.

Elena had hit her with everything she had. Bianca's head snapped to the side. She stood there with one hand on her cheek, her mouth open, too stunned to speak.

Feet pounded up the stairs.

"What's going on? What was that?"

Julian stopped in the doorway.

He saw Bianca first. Her hand on her face. The red mark spreading under her fingers. The tears that came into her eyes the moment she saw him.

He turned on Elena. "What did you do?"

Bianca's whole face changed. The smile from ten seconds ago was gone. Her chin trembled.

"I broke her doll," she whispered. "By accident. I was only trying to help with the curtains, and I told her I was sorry, Julian, I told her, and she wouldn't even listen. She just hit me."

Julian stepped in front of Bianca.

"It's just a doll," he said to Elena. "So it broke. I'll buy you another one. You hit someone over that? Apologize to her. Right now."

Elena looked at him.

Just a doll.

He knew what that doll was. He'd held her on the nights she woke up crying for her mother. He'd bought the dome himself.

And he still stood in front of Bianca. He still believed her.

"Get out," Elena said quietly. "Both of you."

Bianca pressed closer to Julian's back. "She acts so sweet in front of you," she said, her voice shaking. "You have no idea what she's like when you're not around. If she doesn't want me here, I'll go. I'll go back to Paris tonight. I'll never come back. I don't want to come between you two."

Julian's face went dark.

"Apologize to Bianca," he said. "Or this isn't over."

"Your mistress insults my mother," Elena said, "and you want me to apologize to her?"

"Mistress?" Julian's voice went up. "What mistress? Do you hear yourself? There's nothing going on between me and Bianca. Nothing. You just can't stand her, so you go after her, and now you're making things up to smear us both."

"Elena, please don't misunderstand." Bianca stepped out from behind him and reached for Elena's arm, her eyes full of tears. "Julian and I are just friends, I swear, we're..."

Elena pulled her arm back.

It wasn't a push. It wasn't anything.

Bianca went down anyway. She dropped sideways to the floor and put her right hand flat on the broken porcelain.

She screamed.

Blood ran between her fingers and onto the floor. Julian was on his knees beside her in a second.

"Bianca. Bianca, let me see."

"It hurts." She was sobbing against his chest. "Julian, it hurts so much."

He picked her up in his arms. On his way past Elena, he stopped. It was the coldest look he'd ever given her.

"You're unbelievable," he said. "Look at you. Nothing about you says Don's wife. You know what? We're done."

Elena didn't blink. "Fine."

Julian froze in the doorway.

He'd said it because he was angry. He hadn't meant it. And she'd just agreed. No tears, no arguing, no begging.

Something was wrong with her. Something had been wrong all week.

Bianca whimpered against his shoulder. Blood was dripping onto his shirt.

He gave Elena one long look. Then he carried Bianca down the stairs and out to the car.

The front door shut.

The delivery vans pulled out of the driveway. The house went quiet.

Elena walked back to the dresser and knelt on the floor.

She reached for the pieces. Her hand was shaking so badly that she had to stop and hold her wrist with her other hand.

Then she started to cry.

The tears fell onto the porcelain. She didn't wipe them away.

The real reason she'd left New York wasn't the arranged marriage. It was her father. He'd brought Carla home while her mother was still alive, still sick in the bedroom down the hall. Her mother died that same year.

When her father told her, at 25, that she'd be marrying into the Valenti family, all Elena could hear was a man who wanted his first wife's daughter out of the house so his second family could have it. So she'd packed two suitcases and gone.

The doll had gone with her everywhere. Her mother had held it in her hands. Her mother had picked the blue for the dress. Elena talked to it sometimes, on the bad nights, when nobody was around to hear.

Julian used to tease her about it. "You love that thing more than you love me." Then he'd bought it a glass dome, because she'd been afraid it would get knocked over.

She'd thought that even when this ended, she'd keep a few good things from the last three years. A few nights. A few jokes. That dome.

Tonight he'd taken those too.

She sat on the floor until it got dark. Then she found a shoebox, lined it with a hand towel, and picked up every piece she could find, down to the smallest chip. She put the gold star in last.

At six the next morning, she carried her last two suitcases and the shoebox down the stairs and out to a cab. Martha wasn't up yet.

At seven, she scrubbed in.

Ray Alvarez's bypass took five hours. When she came out, his wife was waiting in the hall with both hands pressed to her mouth.

"He's fine," Elena told her. "He did great. You can see him in an hour."

Mrs. Alvarez hugged her and wouldn't let go.

At four, Elena walked out through the main doors of Biscayne Memorial for the last time.

Three black SUVs were lined up at the curb.

Men in dark suits stood beside them, earpieces in, jackets cut loose enough to hide what they carried. People coming out of the hospital took one look and walked a wide circle around them.

A gray-haired man in a charcoal suit stepped forward.

"Ms. Rossi," he said. "Sal Ferrante. Don Valenti sent me."

Two of the men took her suitcases. Nobody touched the shoebox. She held it in her lap the whole way to the airfield.

The jet was waiting at Opa-locka with the stairs down.

She was on the tarmac when her phone buzzed.

Julian.

He'd sent three photos. Bianca in a hospital bed. Bianca's right hand, wrapped in gauze from the knuckles to the wrist. A close-up of the bandage, with a little blood showing through.

Under them, a message.

"Elena, you went way too far this time. Until you come to the hospital and apologize to her, I'm not forgiving you. Be a good girl and say you're sorry, and you can keep living at the house."

Elena read it twice.

Then she slid the pin from her earring into the side of her phone, popped out the SIM card, and dropped it into the trash can by the hangar door.

Three years went in with it.

She walked up the stairs to the jet and didn't look back.

This time, she was never coming back.