Chapter 3
Bianca’s attorney sent a letter forty-eight hours later.
It accused Domenico of assault, intimidation, and making a death threat in front of dozens of witnesses.
It also demanded that he preserve all security footage from the reception.
Domenico’s attorney almost smiled when he read that part.
“We already did.”
Bianca’s lawyer was apparently expecting the Bellandis to make inconvenient footage disappear.
Domenico had done the opposite.
Every camera angle was copied and preserved by an outside forensic company.
The footage clearly showed Bianca grabbing Emma’s backpack.
Stomping on the project.
Shoving Emma.
Shoving Helena.
Then reaching toward Emma again before Domenico intervened.
It also clearly captured Domenico saying she was “about to die.”
Ethan looked at him.
“The video helps you and hurts you.”
“I know.”
“That phrase gives her attorney something to work with.”
“I know.”
“You don’t sound bothered enough.”
Domenico looked toward the closed office door.
“My daughter asked me when she had to move out of her own home.”
Ethan’s expression softened slightly.
“That still doesn’t make the sentence smart.”
“No.”
It was one of the first times in years Domenico had admitted that quickly that he had been wrong.
The larger problem emerged from Emma’s preschool.
Her teacher contacted Domenico after hearing the engagement had ended.
She had been trying to schedule a meeting for nearly three weeks.
Bianca had canceled twice.
Domenico stared at the teacher.
“Bianca canceled meetings with you?”
“She said you were unavailable.”
“No one told me there were meetings.”
The teacher opened Emma’s school file.
Emma had recently started drawing houses with people placed in separate rooms.
That alone meant very little.
Three-year-olds drew strange things constantly.
But she had also repeatedly told her teacher:
“Daddy stays big house. Emma goes little room.”
The teacher originally assumed the family was moving.
Bianca reinforced that assumption.
“She told us Emma was having trouble adjusting to upcoming household changes.”
“What changes?”
“She didn’t specify.”
Then the teacher showed Domenico an email.
Bianca had asked whether the school could recommend a behavioral specialist because Emma was supposedly becoming “possessive” of Domenico and “hostile toward the transition to a new maternal authority.”
Domenico read the phrase twice.
“Maternal authority?”
The teacher looked uncomfortable.
“That was her wording.”
Bianca was not Emma’s mother.
She was not yet even her stepmother.
And she had begun constructing a narrative in which a three-year-old’s attachment to her father was a behavioral problem.
Domenico thought of the packed bedroom.
The third floor.
The phrase “big girls sleep far away.”
May you like
This had not begun at the reception.
The reception was simply the first time Bianca had done it where Domenico could see.
