Chapter 15
Eight months later, Livia’s hair had almost grown even again.
She sat on a stool in a neighborhood salon wearing a small cape while Alessandro waited beside the window.
The stylist asked what she wanted.
Livia thought seriously.
“Just the ends.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Alessandro smiled.
The stylist looked at him.
“Dad okay with that?”
He answered without hesitation.
“It’s her hair.”
Livia heard him.
She smiled at herself in the mirror.
The Rizzano estate had changed.
The giant reception tent was long gone.
The west service kitchen had been renovated.
Not because Alessandro wanted to erase what happened.
Because the damaged counters and dented racks had become strange monuments to a day nobody needed to relive every morning.
Rosalie no longer worked there.
She attended culinary school downtown and worked three evenings a week at a bakery.
Once a month, she visited Livia.
Usually with something covered in too much frosting.
Damien remained out of Alessandro’s businesses completely.
The financial case continued moving through court.
His relationship with Bianca had collapsed.
The siblings who entered Alessandro’s life together now communicated almost entirely through attorneys.
Bianca lived alone.
She had written Alessandro several letters.
He returned most unopened.
One remained inside his desk.
Not because he intended to forgive her.
Because the envelope contained Livia’s name.
He had not decided whether destroying it or reading it was the better choice.
That Sunday morning, Alessandro cooked breakfast.
Badly.
Livia sat on the kitchen counter watching him burn one side of a pancake.
She laughed.
“You’re bad at this.”
“I have other skills.”
“Like what?”
Alessandro considered the question.
There were many answers he would once have given.
Negotiating.
Commanding.
Winning.
Making people afraid.
Instead he flipped another pancake.
“I’m learning.”
Livia looked suspicious.
“That’s not a skill.”
“It is when you’re forty-six.”
She laughed again.
A few minutes later the doorbell rang.
Rosalie stood outside holding a pastry box.
Livia ran toward her.
Alessandro opened the door.
Rosalie stepped inside.
No uniforms.
No bodyguards announcing anyone.
No bride waiting to control the room.
Just breakfast.
Later, while Livia and Rosalie decorated pastries at the counter, Alessandro opened the drawer in his study.
Bianca’s final letter was still there.
On the front she had written:
FOR LIVIA — WHEN SHE IS OLD ENOUGH TO ASK WHY.
Alessandro rested his hand on the envelope.
He still did not know whether Bianca had written an apology, an excuse, or another lie.
And for once, he did not believe he had the right to decide that Livia would never see it.
He closed the drawer.
Not today.
Someday the question would belong to his daughter.
When that day came, Alessandro intended to give her something nobody in the Rizzano house had been given enough of before.
May you like
The truth.
And the choice of what to do with it.
