Chapter 3 - What Bianca Was Looking For
I returned to the Thorne estate with police.
Not Dante.
That was deliberate.
I did not want his security staff turning a property retrieval into a confrontation.
The protective order temporarily barred Bianca from approaching me.
Preston was allowed at the estate.
Senator Malcolm Thorne was not home.
The household manager, Mrs. Evelyn Price, let me into the staff wing.
She looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry.”
“Who went through my room?”
“Mrs. Thorne.”
“Bianca?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Before the cemetery.”
“Yes.”
There.
She had not stumbled across the pregnancy test while looking for a scarf or cash.
She had searched deliberately.
The police officer asked:
“Did she say what she wanted?”
Mrs. Price hesitated.
“Jewelry.”
My chest tightened.
“What jewelry?”
“She asked whether Mara kept an old silver bracelet in the room.”
I stared.
The officer wrote.
“Did she describe it?”
“Yes.”
“Before seeing it?”
“Yes.”
Everything became quiet.
“How?”
Mrs. Price looked toward the floor.
“She showed me a photograph.”
My pulse accelerated.
“A photograph of what?”
“Two women.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
One was my mother.
I knew before she showed me.
The photograph had been printed from somewhere.
Eleanor was perhaps thirty five.
Standing beside another woman with black hair and a tailored white coat.
Both wore matching silver bracelets.
Dante’s mother.
Isabella.
I had never seen the picture.
On the back, in handwriting I recognized as Bianca’s:
Find the bracelet. Ask Dad before touching anything else.
The officer photographed it.
“Where did Mrs. Thorne get this?”
“I don’t know.”
My pregnancy test had been in the same drawer as Mom’s keepsake box.
Bianca found it while searching for the bracelet.
Jealousy was real.
But it was secondary.
She had come to the cemetery because she believed I might be carrying Preston’s child.
She had grabbed my bracelet because she had already been hunting it.
The two motives collided.
I collected clothes.
Mother’s recipe book.
Photographs.
Legal papers.
The wooden box.
One thing was missing.
A small envelope Mom had written my name on.
It had always been empty.
At least I thought it was.
I called Dante.
“Did your mother ever write the words ‘Lark two fourteen’?”
Silence.
“Why?”
“Because I found it carved into the underside of Mom’s box.”
“Spell it.”
I did.
Dante exhaled.
“Isabella wrote ‘Lark’ in the journal.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we’re equal.”
I almost smiled.
The police asked Bianca to surrender any property taken from my room.
Through her attorney she denied taking anything.
Mrs. Price’s statement contradicted her search denial, not necessarily theft.
We needed proof.
I moved into a modest extended stay apartment.
Dante offered a hotel suite.
I refused.
He offered security.
I accepted one thing.
A panic button linked to a licensed security service until the protective order hearing.
Not guards outside my door.
Not a driver.
I needed boundaries.
Dante respected them.
That surprised me.
Three days later the court extended the protective order against Bianca.
No contact.
No workplace retaliation.
No approaching my residence or cemetery visits.
The Thorne household officially terminated my employment for “insubordination and safety concerns.”
My attorney, Naomi Price, laughed when she read it.
“You were assaulted by the employer’s daughter, reported it, and then terminated.”
“Yes.”
“They put that in writing?”
“Yes.”
“People do gifts for lawyers in strange ways.”
We filed wage and retaliation claims later.
Not immediately.
My immediate problem was income.
Dante offered money.
I said no.
He did something better.
He gave me the number of a staffing company unrelated to him.
They placed me temporarily at a small corporate guest residence after verifying I could work while pregnant.
No Moretti contract.
No debt to Dante.
Another boundary.
Then Preston called.
I almost did not answer.
Naomi suggested recording? Virginia one-party consent perhaps, but better not operational. I put him on speaker with Naomi present after telling him she was there.
“Mara.”
“What?”
“You need to stop digging into the bracelet.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“Because Bianca’s father is scared.”
“Of jewelry?”
“Of your mother.”
“Mom is dead.”
“I know.”
“What did Eleanor know?”
Silence.
“Preston.”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Then why call?”
“Because Bianca told me Senator Thorne has people looking for something Eleanor hid.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
At least he knew.
Then:
“But I owe you the truth about one thing.”
“What?”
“Bianca didn’t hire you by accident.”
I froze.
“What?”
“When your staffing agency sent profiles three years ago, Bianca saw your name.”
My stomach turned.
“She chose me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“At first because she wanted to humiliate you.”
I closed eyes.
“And later?”
“Her father told her Eleanor Whitfield’s daughter might have something he needed.”
The job had never simply been bad luck.
May you like
I had walked into the Thorne house because Bianca wanted her husband’s former wife beneath her roof.
And Senator Thorne had eventually realized my mother’s daughter had just become accessible.
