7. Kylie
— ? —
Kylie
I found her in the conservatory.
That was the word Giovanni used for it, conservatory, like we were living in a Victorian novel instead of a Brooklyn brownstone.
Really it was just a sunroom off the back of the house, all windows and white wicker and plants that Lucia watered twice a week.
But it had the best light in the house, and someone had put a chaise lounge in there years ago, and on quiet afternoons you could sit and pretend you were somewhere else entirely.
Bianca was curled up on that chaise like she owned it. A book in her lap, something in Italian with a leather cover. The late morning sun caught her hair and turned it golden, and for one disorienting moment she looked like a painting. Girl in Sunlight, Oil on Canvas, Artist Unknown.
She looked up when I walked in. Smiled that sweet smile.
“Kylie! I was just about to make tea. Would you like some?”
I closed the door behind me.
The click of the latch was loud in the quiet room. Bianca’s smile flickered, just for a second, just enough for me to see something else underneath, and then it was back, warmer than ever.
“Or coffee? I know you prefer coffee. I can ask Lucia-”
“Lucia has Sundays off.”
“Of course. I forgot.” She set the book aside, marking her page with a ribbon. “I could make it myself? The machine is complicated, but I think I’ve figured it out.”
“Drop the act.”
The words landed in the space between us like a stone in still water. Bianca blinked, her head tilting slightly to one side.
“I’m sorry?”
“The act.” I walked further into the room, positioning myself between her and the door.
Not threatening. I wasn’t here to threaten anyone.
Just… present. Unavoidable. “The sweet grieving daughter routine. The helpless houseguest who just keeps accidentally ending up in my chair, my kitchen, my husband’s study. Drop it.”
For a moment, she didn’t move. Just sat there on the chaise with the sunlight in her hair, looking up at me with those big dark eyes.
Then her face changed.
It was like watching a mask slide sideways, not off, exactly, but adjusted. The sweetness didn’t disappear so much as it… clarified. Became sharper. More precise.
“Well.” She uncurled herself, swinging her legs over the side of the chaise with the grace of a dancer. “That’s a relief, actually. The ingenue thing is exhausting.”
Her voice was different. Still musical, still pleasant, but there was something underneath now. Steel wrapped in velvet.
“I was wondering when you’d finally say something.” She stood, smoothing her dress, black again, always black. “I thought after the gala for sure. But you just kept smiling. Very professional. I was almost impressed.”
“I’m not here to impress you.”
“No, you’re here to - what? Warn me off?
Stake your claim?” She laughed, and it was nothing like the laugh she used in front of Giovanni.
This one was lower, darker, with an edge that could cut glass.
“Please. I’ve been playing this game since I could walk.
You think I don’t know how to handle a jealous wife? ”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Of course you are.” She moved past me toward the windows, trailing her fingers along the back of the wicker chairs. “You should be. He talks to me, you know. Really talks - about business, about family, about the things that actually matter. When’s the last time he did that with you?”
I didn’t answer. She smiled like I had.
“That’s what I thought.”
“What do you want, Bianca?”
The question stopped her mid-stride. She turned, and for just a second I saw something real in her face, the mask and the performance gone for once, leaving something true and hungry and patient as stone.
“What do I want?” She repeated the words like she was tasting them. “I want what’s mine. What was always supposed to be mine, until you came along with your red hair and your architecture degree and your charming little fish-out-of-water routine.”
“I never asked for any of this.”
“No. You just stumbled into it, didn’t you?
Wrong place, right time. The pretty Irish girl who caught the don’s eye at some charity function.
” She was moving again, circling me slowly like a shark scenting blood.
“Do you have any idea how many years I spent preparing for that seat? How many lessons, how many hours learning to smile the right way and walk the right way and be exactly what a donna should be?”
“I didn’t know-”
“Of course you didn’t. That was always the point.
” She stopped directly in front of me, near enough to catch her perfume, something expensive and subtle, the kind of scent that announced money without ever raising its voice.
“You don’t know anything. You never did.
You just showed up and took what I’d been promised, and everyone acted like it was the most natural thing in the world. ”
“Giovanni chose me.”
“Giovanni chose what his father told him to choose. An alliance with the Irish. A bridge between the families.” Her smile turned pitying. “You were never the point, Kylie. You were just… logistics.”
The words should have hurt. Maybe a week ago they would have. But I’d already heard my husband call me a contract with good posture, what was one more confirmation?
“And you think you’re different?”
“I know I am.” She said it simply, like stating a fact. “I was raised for this. Trained for this. Every dinner party, every political conversation, every lesson in which fork to use and which lies to tell - it was all building toward this moment. Toward this house. Toward him.”
“He doesn’t love you.”
“He doesn’t love you either.” She shrugged, elegant and dismissive. “But he trusts me. He relies on me. And in this world, that’s worth more than love ever was.”
I kept my voice level. Kept my hands still at my sides. Kept my face arranged in an expression of mild interest, like she was telling me about her plans for the weekend instead of her plans for my marriage.
“You think I’m just going to step aside?”
“I think you already have.” She reached out, straightened my collar with a gesture that was almost maternal. “You moved out of his bedroom, Kylie. You sleep in the guest wing. You’ve been packing for weeks - did you think no one noticed? The staff talks. They always talk.”
“Then you know I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh, I know you’ll fight. That’s fine. Fighting is predictable.” She let her hand drop. “But you’re fighting blind. You don’t understand what you married into. You have no idea what this family is capable of. And you certainly don’t understand what I’m willing to do to take back what’s mine.”
“Try me.”
The words landed harder than I’d meant them to. Something flashed in Bianca’s eyes, surprise, maybe, or reassessment. Then she smiled again, and this time it was almost genuine.
“I like you, you know. I really do.” She moved back toward the chaise, settling onto it with the ease of a woman who assumed the throne was hers. “You’ve got more spine than I expected. It’s almost a shame it won’t matter.”
“What won’t matter?”
“Any of it.” She picked up her book again, smoothed the leather cover with her fingertips. “You’re temporary, Kylie. You always were. I was raised for this seat. And sooner or later - probably sooner - you’re going to realize that there’s nothing left here worth fighting for.”
I should have left. Should have walked out the door and gone to Giovanni and told him everything, the dropped mask, the threats, the naked ambition underneath all that sweetness.
But something kept me rooted there. Some instinct that said she wasn’t finished yet.
“Unless,” she said, and the word landed between us, edged and waiting.
“Unless what?”
Bianca looked up at me. Her face had gone soft again, not the fake sweetness from before, but something almost kind. Almost sympathetic. Like a doctor about to deliver bad news.
“You want to know what family you married into?” Her voice was gentle now, almost tender. “Really want to know? Ask your husband how my father died.”
“Your father died protecting-”
“Ask him what your wedding really cost.” She cut me off, still gentle. Still kind. “Ask him why there’s a file in his safe with your name on it. And why that file has a Ferraro seal.”
The room had gone very quiet. Even the sunlight seemed dimmer somehow, like a cloud had passed over it.
“My father died in a car accident.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Distant. “Six years ago. Wet road, bad turn. They showed me the police report.”
“Did they?” Bianca tilted her head, curious as a cat. “How thorough of them.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that accidents happen in this world.
They happen conveniently. They happen when alliances need to be broken or remade, when old loyalties become inconvenient.
” She stood again, moving toward me with slow, deliberate steps.
“Your father’s death created a vacuum in the Irish organization.
That vacuum made room for new leadership - leadership that was willing to negotiate a marriage alliance with the Ferraros. And wasn’t the timing just perfect?”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” She was close now. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes, the faint dusting of powder on her cheeks. “Then why does the file exist? Why did Giovanni’s father investigate your father’s death so thoroughly if it was just an accident? Why did my father-”
She stopped. Let the silence stretch.
“Your father what?”
“Ask your husband.” She reached up, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with terrible tenderness.
“Ask him what Tommaso Russo ordered. What Salvatore Ferraro did. And ask yourself why the man who knows all of it - who has known for years - moved the murderer’s daughter into your kitchen and called it a debt. ”
I couldn’t breathe.
The sunroom was too bright, too warm, dense with the scent of flowers and earth. I could hear my own heartbeat, loud and unsteady, like something was breaking inside my chest.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you asked me to drop the act.” Bianca smiled, and it was the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “Because you deserve to know what you married. And because, when you finally understand, you’ll leave on your own - and I won’t even have to push.”
She gathered her book, her empty teacup, her dignity. Paused at the door.
“Welcome to the family, Kylie. It’s not too late to run.”
Then she was gone, and I was alone with the sunlight and the silence and a father’s grave I suddenly wasn’t sure I understood.
***
I called Declan from the guest suite, sitting on the bed with the door locked and my hands shaking.
My uncle answered on the third ring. “Kylie girl. Everything all right?”
“I need you to pull something for me.”
A pause. Declan Jordan had run the family’s legitimate operations since before I was born, shipping, primarily, and real estate on the side.
He was the clean face of a dirty business, the one who shook hands with city councilmen and testified at regulatory hearings.
But he was also my father’s brother, the man who’d taught me to ride a bike and paid for my college and walked me down the aisle when there was no father left to do it.
He knew what “pull something” meant.
“What do you need?”
“My father’s accident.” The words tasted like ash. “The police report. The insurance paperwork. The coroner’s findings. Everything.”
Silence. Longer this time.
“Kylie-”
“Just pull it, Declan.” My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that, distantly.
“That was six years ago. The files will be archived, if they even still exist. And asking questions about a closed case-”
“I need to know.”
More silence. I could picture him sitting in his office in Boston, the one with the view of the harbor and the photos of family on the walls. My father’s face in half those photos, frozen in time.
“What’s this about?” His voice had changed. Harder now. Colder. “Did someone say something?”
“Just… please, Declan. Please pull the files.”
He sighed, a long, heavy sound that carried decades of weight. “I’ll make some calls. It might take a few days.”
“Thank you.”
“Kylie.” He paused. “Whatever you find - or don’t find - you call me first. Before you do anything. You understand?”
“I understand.”
I hung up and sat there in the gathering dark, watching shadows lengthen across the floor, waiting for answers I already dreaded.
***
The call came at 2:17 a.m.
I’d been lying awake for hours, staring at the ceiling’s painted stars, running Bianca’s words through my head like beads on a rosary. Ask your husband how my father died. Ask him what your wedding cost. Ask him why there’s a Ferraro seal.
When the phone rang, I was reaching for it before my eyes were fully open.
“Declan?”
Silence on the line. Not empty silence. I could hear him breathing, could hear the faint clink of ice against glass. Drinking. My uncle only drank when the news was bad.
“I found the files.” His voice was careful, low. Wrong in a way I felt in my teeth. “And it’s not what they told us, Kylie. The accident report is too clean, and the coroner’s copy is worse. Somebody made sure the right questions never got asked. Somebody with money.”
I couldn’t speak. The phone felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Your father’s death got the same treatment we give files that need to stay closed.” He stopped. When he spoke again his voice had gone quiet and hard. “And there was another file under it. Private. Older. It had a seal on it. A family seal - and not ours.”
The room tilted.
“Kylie.” A breath, and under it, for the first time in my life, my uncle sounded afraid. “Who have you been talking to?”
I opened my mouth to answer.
Nothing came out.