Chapter 13
Bianca asked to see Evelyn alone.
Evelyn said no.
Good.
Bianca asked to see me.
I agreed.
We met in the bridal suite.
Her idea.
Probably punishment for herself.
She looked at the open floor panel.
“I used to hate this room.”
“Why?”
“Because everything changed here.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
She frowned.
“Everything was revealed here.”
Different thing.
Bianca sat on the old bench.
She admitted something I had not expected.
She loved Evelyn once.
Not romantically.
Like a sister.
That was why the betrayal became so poisonous.
My father convinced Bianca that Evelyn would isolate me from the Castellanos. That once married, I would leave the old house, close more routes, remove old captains, raise Ethan outside the traditions Bianca believed made us strong.
“She was doing that,” Bianca said.
“Yes.”
Bianca looked at me.
“You admit it.”
“I was changing things.”
“For her.”
“For us.”
She had never understood the difference.
I asked the question that mattered.
“After Father died, why didn’t you tell me?”
Bianca cried quietly.
“Because then you would know what I had done.”
There it was.
Not loyalty.
Not tradition.
Shame.
She kept Evelyn hidden because releasing her required confession.
Every day Bianca delayed made the truth more impossible to face.
So she fed Evelyn lies.
Fed me lies.
Let Ethan grow up without his mother.
All to protect the version of herself she still wanted to believe.
“I was afraid you’d hate me.”
I looked at her.
“I do.”
She flinched.
Then I continued.
“And I love you.”
That hurt more.
Families like ours teach people those feelings cannot exist together.
They can.
Love does not erase consequence.
Hatred does not erase history.
Bianca asked what I would do with her.
I looked toward the hole in the floor.
“You leave this house.”
Her face changed.
“Where?”
“I don’t care.”
She stared.
“No Castellano command. No access to Ethan. No access to Evelyn.”
“For how long?”
I thought about three years beneath a floor.
May you like
“As long as they need.”
For once, Bianca did not argue.
