Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 10

The room Carmela wanted cleared out was the first-floor nursery suite.The staff had just started moving Lia's sterilizer when I blocked the doorway."Put it back."Dante came down the stairs and told everyone to stop at once."This is Bianca and Lia's room. Nobody touches it."For a moment, the tightness in my chest eased a little.But Carmela slapped the room key down on the table."Upstairs is too far from the exits. This is the only room where the guards can cover both the garage and the door. Do you want the Valenti heir to die on our doorstep?"Victoria stayed silent, leaning against the wall as she pretended to leave."Never mind. I'll find somewhere else to stay. At least that way, the baby won't be in danger if the killer comes back."Carmela's eyes filled with tears at once."Someone just tried to kill her, and you want to throw her out? Bianca, you're a mother too. How can you be so heartless?"A lump formed in my throat. I'd nearly been permanently disabled after that fall

Dante kept petitioning the Commission to deny my divorce.I was still nursing, after all. No wife could leave her husband at a time like that.The next day, he warmed a glass of milk for me as usual, rocked Lia to sleep, and even wrote down every feeding and temperature reading himself.He didn't argue or question why I'd taken back my voting rights. Instead, he simply tucked the pen and divorce papers into a drawer, as though all he had to do was wait for my mood to pass and everything would go back to normal.That afternoon, Salvatore Conti flew in from LA.He was my father's most trusted confidant and had watched over me since I was a child, staying by me after my father's death. I thought he would at least ask first whether Lia's fever had gone down.But the moment he sat down, he said, "Dante tells me you've been emotionally unstable since giving birth and want to take the baby away."I set down my cup and met his eyes calmly. "You've got it wrong. What I want is a divorce.""Your

I lay on my side at the bottom of the metal staircase. My right wrist was useless, so I wrapped my left arm tightly around Lia."Dante, help me."He heard me. He even looked back at me.But Victoria caught his sleeve, complaining of dizziness and pain in her leg. Dante scooped her into his arms."Bianca, don't move. I'm taking her to the medical room. I'll be right back."Carmela ran after him, shouting at people to protect Ms. Valenti.Salvatore stood beside the steps, looking from me to where Dante had gone. For a moment, he didn't move at all.The first one to reach me was Rosa.She knelt and took Lia from me. A waiter took off his jacket and slid it under me. A doctor among the guests pushed his way through, saw the blood on my dress, and told someone to call an ambulance.Pain shot through my reopened incision. My teeth chattered from the cold, yet my back and wrist burned as though they were on fire.Paolo, the estate manager, rushed over to the ambulance and handed Rosa the secu

Paolo refused to release the preserved security footage. He would only let Dante watch it with the lawyer present.On the screen, Victoria carried Lia to the turn in the metal staircase.Her heel hadn't caught on anything. She didn't lose her balance.Right before the baby slipped out of her arms, she was standing perfectly steady.Dante rewound the footage over and over, watching himself race up the stairs. Bianca lay curled up at the bottom, clutching Lia and reaching out to him. He'd run straight past them without even slowing down.He shut off the footage, ran into the bathroom, and threw up.When he bent over, the USB drive fell out of his pocket onto the floor.That was when Dante remembered that Eli had sent Bianca the raw data from both cars after the accidents.The red car's brakes were functioning normally when it completed its final lap. The brake line wasn't damaged until the car returned to the pits, so it couldn't have caused the collision on the track.Eli had also kept

To keep Dante from harassing me, I rented a modest apartment in a busy LA neighborhood.My window looked out on an old street where delivery trucks rumbled by at five in the morning. Nothing about it resembled the estate.An old couple lived next door.When the woman heard Lia crying, she brought over an old baby bathtub.She didn't even know what the De Luca name meant.When I went to the docks the next day, the longtime steward still addressed me as "Donna.""Call me Bianca."He hesitated. Then he saw the divorce papers in my hand and quietly corrected himself."Ms. Bianca."Hearing it put a lump in my throat.For five years, I'd handed everything over to Dante. Whenever anyone wanted to know what I thought, they went to him instead. Now, sitting at my father's old desk, I realized how long it had been since anyone had asked me what I wanted. Not as Dante's wife, but as Bianca.The people who used to report only to Dante came to my office one after another.Some glanced at my cast, s