Chapter 3
Matteo arrived twenty minutes later.
He walked into the dining room and stopped when he saw the bowl.
Then he looked at Bianca.
Not surprised.
Disappointed.
That was worse.
I noticed.
“So you knew.”
He removed his coat carefully.
“Knew what?”
I almost smiled.
“You should ask what happened first.”
His eyes moved toward the overturned chair.
Then back to me.
“What happened?”
Too late.
I pointed toward the bowl.
“What was supposed to happen?”
Bianca stood.
“Alessandro—”
“Sit.”
She stared at me.
I did not raise my voice.
She sat.
Matteo stayed standing.
I looked at him.
“Sophie asked why you sat in my chair.”
His expression changed slightly.
There.
Elena saw it too.
Matteo finally sat.
“She’s a child.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So Bianca started taking meals away afterward.”
He looked toward my aunt.
She avoided him.
That interested me.
“What did you tell her?”
Matteo sighed.
“I told Bianca Sophie watches too much.”
I felt something in my chest tighten.
“What does that mean?”
“She notices who enters the council room. Who leaves. Where people sit.”
“She is three.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back.
“She repeats things.”
I remembered.
Sophie once asked at breakfast why Uncle Matteo called my guards his men.
I laughed then.
Thought it was childish confusion.
Maybe it was not.
I looked at him.
“What has she repeated?”
Matteo said nothing.
Bianca answered too quickly.
“She heard things she didn’t understand.”
Again.
Wrong person answering.
I turned toward her.
“What things?”
Silence.
Elena spoke.
“She told me Bianca said you were becoming soft.”
I looked at my aunt.
Elena continued.
“And that Matteo would know what to do when the family needed a man who could make hard decisions.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
“Enough.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
Same word.
Different meaning.
Sophie’s humiliation suddenly had a purpose.
Not punishment.
Conditioning.
Make her afraid to speak.
Make the family accustomed to seeing the boss’s daughter beneath them.
Make Matteo’s presence beside my chair look natural.
Bianca had not been teaching my daughter manners.
May you like
She had been teaching the room hierarchy.
And Sophie had been the smallest person available to push downward.
