Chapter 4
The cut dress contained another insult.
Not monetary.
History.
Emma’s flower-girl dress had been made from fabric preserved from Sophia’s mother’s wedding gown.
My late wife, Alessandra.
I did not know.
Sophia had kept it quiet because she wanted the detail for herself.
The lace at Emma’s hem came from Alessandra’s train.
Bianca knew.
Sophia had told her during alterations.
Then Bianca cut directly through it.
That changed something.
Not because old fabric was sacred.
Because Bianca understood what the dress meant and chose the place that would hurt most.
She wanted Emma removed from the photograph.
Then wanted Sophia emotionally destabilized enough not to fight.
Cruelty used as logistics.
Bianca cried when I confronted her.
“I was angry.”
“At a three-year-old?”
“At Sophia.”
There.
Why?
Because Sophia refused to move out of the central family table at the rehearsal dinner.
Bianca had asked politely first.
Sophia laughed.
Thought it was seating nonsense.
Then Bianca said Gregory needed to be beside me.
Sophia answered:
“He can sit wherever Dad invites him.”
Simple.
That sentence infuriated Bianca.
Because it reminded her that none of their imagined authority existed without my permission.
So the next day she attacked the easiest target.
Emma’s place.
Emma’s dress.
Emma’s visibility.
May you like
Adults who cannot defeat another adult sometimes punish the smaller person standing beside them.
That was what Bianca had done.
