Chapter 10 - The Morning Room Talk
I found her in the morning room with her laptop open and a wedding binder spread across the coffee table.
It was just past eight. The drapes were pulled back and the light coming in was pale and clean, nothing like the warm chandelier glare from the night before. She'd changed into cream slacks and a silk blouse, hair pulled back neat. She looked rested. Composed. If you hadn't been in that dining hall, you'd never know anything had happened.
"Good," she said when I stopped in the doorway. "We need to talk vendors before my mother calls."
On the table were fabric swatches, a seating chart, a printed timeline for the ceremony. She tapped the timeline with a pen like we were picking up where we'd left off.
I stayed standing. "Bruno had a rough night."
She nodded, but her eyes stayed on the paper. "I called the clinic this morning to check the balance. I'll cover whatever it is."
That was scene one, I guess. Her being efficient. I walked in and sat across from her because my legs felt heavy, and the leather chair sighed under me. The coffee she'd poured for me was already cooling. I didn't touch it.
"We have the tasting Thursday," she said. "And flowers Friday. If we cancel anything now, people will ask why."
I looked at her. "Let them ask."
She finally looked up. "Luca." Her voice was even. Practiced. "Last night was messy. For everyone. We can clean it up with one sentence."
I waited.
She closed the laptop halfway so I would focus on her. "We say Bruno wandered. Gate left open, gardener, whatever. He got stuck in the garage overnight. It's simple. No one has to look bad."
I felt my jaw tighten. "He didn't wander."
"I know that," she said quickly. "But the version matters. My parents have three tables of business friends coming to this wedding. The photos from last night are already circulating. Do you understand what it looks like?"
I stared at the swatches. White, ivory, champagne. "What does it look like?"
She exhaled through her nose. "Like we starve dogs in our garage during engagement dinners."
The bluntness surprised me. I almost laughed, but nothing about it was funny.
In the hallway upstairs, twenty minutes later, we kept talking because she followed me when I got up to check on Bruno. Emma had him settled in the guest suite with blankets and the heater on low, and I'd told her I'd be back up after coffee. Vanessa caught my sleeve at the top of the stairs.
I stopped. The house was quiet except for the hum of the vacuum downstairs. Morning light cut across the runner in hard lines.
"Listen to me," she said, low. "I'll pay the vet. All of it. And I'll make a donation to the shelter downtown. Five thousand. Ten. We'll put our names on it. That tells a better story than some fight about a water bowl."
I pulled my arm back gently, not hard. "You think a check fixes it?"
"I think optics fix things," she said. "That's how this works. You apologize, you donate, you move on. My father did it when one of his drivers got a DUI in a company car. It works."
There it was. The pattern I'd been trying not to name since the dining room. Not panic. Not cruelty, exactly. Management. Everything was a release to draft, a narrative to control.
"Vanessa," I said. "He was locked in. His bowl was empty. You told me he died."
She glanced down the hall toward the guest room door, then back at me. Her voice dropped. "I told you what the vet tech told me on the phone. That he was failing. That it would be soon. I didn't want you distracted before the dinner."
"That's not what you said."
"I was trying to protect the night," she said. "And us."
I leaned against the wall. My tattoos itched under my collar. I was tired in a way sleep wouldn't fix. "You asked me to say he wandered."
"I'm asking you to be smart," she said. Her hand went to my chest, flat over my shirt. "One line. That's all. Bruno got out, got stuck. We found him. We're grateful. Emma's a hero for finding him. Everyone wins."
I looked at her hand, then at her face. Her eyes were clear. No tears now. Last night she'd been shaking with that wine glass. This morning she was negotiating.
"I can't say that," I said.
Her hand stayed there a second longer, then dropped. "Why not?"
"Because it's not true."
She laughed, short. "Truth doesn't get printed, Luca. Headlines do."
Downstairs again, back in the morning room, she tried a different angle. Softer. She sat beside me this time instead of across, knee almost touching mine. She talked about her mother, about the deposits we'd lose, about how hard she'd worked on the seating chart to keep her uncles apart.
"We've built something," she said. "Don't let one bad night tear it down."
I thought about Bruno upstairs, breathing shallow on blankets that smelled like laundry soap. I thought about Emma's face when she carried him in, wet to the bone. I thought about the garage lock clicking under my thumb.
"I need to ask you something," I said. "And I need a straight answer."
She nodded.
"Who told the staff not to go in the garage?"
A pause. Barely a beat, but I caught it. She smoothed a swatch with her fingertips.
"I asked for privacy for the event," she said. "Caterers everywhere, valet in and out. I didn't want anyone back there moving things."
"By name? Did you say Bruno?"
She didn't answer right away. She reached for her coffee. "I don't remember exactly what I said. I was managing fifty people."
That was enough for me to see it. Not a confession. A wall. She would give me donations and vendor lists and her father's playbook, but not that.
I stood. My coffee was cold all the way through now.
"I'll pay the vet," I said. "You don't need to do that."
She stood too. "So what are you going to tell people?"
"Nothing yet," I said. "I'm not lying for the photos."
Her mouth tightened. For a second the composed surface cracked, and I saw how scared she was — not of losing me, maybe, but of losing control of how it looked.
"You're making a mistake," she said quietly.
May you like
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm not saying he wandered."
I left her there with the binder open and the timeline staring up, and headed for the stairs. Behind me I heard her laptop open again, keys clicking. Already drafting the better story without me.
