Chapter 15
I had never met Bianca Torrisi.
Angelo rarely spoke of her.
When he did, it was with the careful voice people use around broken glass.
“She was sent away young,” he told me in the school parking lot.
“Sent away?”
“To boarding schools. Then Europe. My mother said Bianca was difficult.”
I laughed without humor.
“Your mother says that about every woman she cannot control.”
Angelo did not argue.
Bianca had written on the visitor slip that she wanted to meet her nephew.
Nephew.
The word made Luke shrink.
That night, Bianca came to my apartment.
Not with lawyers.
Not with guards.
She came with a grocery bag and red eyes.
I opened the door with the chain on.
She stood in the hallway, tall and thin, wearing a gray coat too light for the cold.
“I know you have no reason to trust me,” she said.
“You’re right.”
She nodded.
“I brought food because I panicked and did not know what people bring when they are sorry.”
I stared at her.
Luke peeked from behind me.
Bianca saw him and immediately looked down, like she was afraid her gaze might frighten him.
“I should not have gone to your school,” she said. “That was wrong.”
Luke said nothing.
Bianca’s voice trembled.
“Our mother told me Angelo had a child once. She said the child died. She said Grace blamed the family and disappeared.”
I gripped the doorframe.
Another lie.
Another grave Milena had dug for a living child.
Angelo stood behind me.
“You believed her?” he asked.
Bianca looked at him.
“You did too.”
Silence.
It was a clean strike.
Angelo absorbed it.
Bianca lifted the grocery bag.
“I do not want money. I do not want trust papers. I want to testify.”
My heart beat harder.
“Against Milena?”
May you like
Bianca nodded.
“She did not only hurt you.”
