Chương 2
Isabella saw the change too.
“This was planned,” she said. “You brought a child into the middle of my wedding and staged an accusation with corrupted footage.”
Sophia found her voice.
“No one brought Emma into anything.”
The sentence came out thin, but it held.
Isabella’s gaze moved to her. “You let her walk into a private ceremony.”
“She was already here.”
“Because you brought her to work.”
“Because the sitter canceled.”
“You were told staff children were not permitted.”
Lucia said, “I gave permission.”
“Of course you did.”
Emma stepped out from behind Alessandro just enough to see Isabella. Her fingers remained clamped around his sleeve.
“Mommy said not to talk,” she whispered.
Sophia closed her eyes.
Alessandro looked at her. “You knew she heard the threat?”
“I knew she heard Isabella’s voice.” Sophia swallowed. “I didn’t know what she understood.”
“Enough,” Isabella said. “This is enough.”
She turned toward Father Paul.
The train of her white lace gown dragged through the petals scattered near the altar. She gathered the fabric with both hands, as though preparing to continue with an inconveniently interrupted ritual.
“Father, we need the chapel cleared.”
Father Paul did not answer immediately.
Then he removed his reading glasses and folded them.
“There will be no wedding today.”
A guest in the third row began to cry. It was Isabella’s aunt, though the sound seemed less connected to grief than shock at hearing a priest state what everyone else had been afraid to say.
Isabella stood still.
Alessandro closed the ring box.
The click was quiet, but she heard it.
She looked at the box, then at him. “You’re going to decide our lives based on fifteen seconds of a damaged recording?”
“No.”
Something almost hopeful entered her expression.
“I’m deciding there will be no marriage until I know why a three-year-old recognizes the sound of you threatening her mother.”
The hope disappeared.
He slipped the ring box into his pocket.
“Marco, close the doors. No one leaves with a recording.”
That brought the guests back to life. Several people reached for their phones. Chairs shifted. Someone protested that the doors could not legally be locked. Alessandro lifted one hand.
“No one is being detained. Put your phones away and leave through the side entrance when Marco’s team clears it. The family will remain.”
“What family?” Isabella asked.
Alessandro turned to her.
She had not cried. The controlled surface of her face had cracked, but beneath it was not fragility. It was calculation moving too quickly to hide.
“Mine,” he said. “Yours. Sophia and Emma.”
Sophia stared at him. “We’re not family.”
The correction landed harder than he expected.
Lucia placed a hand near Sophia’s elbow but did not touch her. “You and Emma should come with me.”
“No.” Sophia shook her head. “I need to leave.”
“We need your statement,” Marco said.
She looked at him with immediate distrust. “I gave you a statement.”
“You gave me enough to recover the footage. We need a complete account.”
“No, you need something your lawyers can control.”
Marco’s expression did not change, but Alessandro saw the hit.
Sophia bent and lifted Emma into her arms. The child’s lavender lace skirt bunched against the service uniform. Emma rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder and watched Alessandro over it.
“Mister,” she said softly.
He stepped closer. “Yes?”
“Is the wedding over?”
The entire chapel seemed to wait with her.
“Yes.”
“Because she was mean?”
“Because I didn’t know the truth.”
Emma considered that. “Do you know it now?”
“No.”
Sophia shifted the child higher. “We’re leaving.”
Alessandro glanced toward the entrance. Outside, the stone steps were crowded with catering staff, drivers, florists, and guests being funneled toward the side path by security. News of the confrontation had already reached the bottom of the hill. He could see people raising phones beyond the iron gate.
“You can’t take her through that crowd.”
“I can take my daughter wherever I need to.”
“I didn’t mean you can’t.”
“You sounded like you did.”
He stopped.
The habit of giving instructions had become so complete that he rarely heard it in his own voice. Other people did. They heard his father, his grandfather, the family name on courthouse donations and construction permits. They heard the men who entered rooms expecting space to be made.
Sophia heard all of that while holding a frightened child.
Alessandro stepped back.
“Lucia’s car can leave through the service road,” he said. “No cameras. You choose whether to use it.”
Sophia looked at Lucia.
Lucia took a key from the small blue purse hanging at her wrist and held it out, not to Sophia but to Marco.
“Have Nina drive them.”
Sophia hesitated. “I need my bag.”
“It’s in the staff room,” Marco said.
“I know where it is.”
He nodded once. “I’ll have someone clear the corridor.”
“No one comes with me.”
Marco looked toward Alessandro.
Alessandro said, “Do what she asked.”
For a moment, Sophia seemed surprised.
Then she carried Emma down the side aisle. The child kept watching him until they passed through the small oak door beside the sacristy.
The chapel felt larger when she was gone.
Isabella sat in the first pew.
Her gown spread around her in white folds. One of the scattered petals had stuck to the lace near her knee. She picked it off and rubbed it between two fingers until it tore.
Her father, Vittorio Romano, rose from the opposite side of the chapel. At sixty-eight, he remained a handsome man in the formal, preserved way of an old photograph. His silver hair was combed straight back. He wore a black morning coat despite the heat and carried a cane he did not physically need.
“This device belongs to my family,” he said.
Marco replied, “The tablet belongs to Moretti Security. The copied archive came from a storage server purchased during the 2018 Romano estate systems upgrade.”
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“You had no authorization to access it.”
Lucia turned. “I authorized the upgrade.”
