Chapter 9 - The Daughter in the Black Dress
Bianca chose a quiet restaurant several miles from the mansion, a place with scratched tables and nothing worth photographing.
She arrived wearing jeans and a plain black coat instead of the expensive clothes that usually made her appear untouchable.
Without her perfect makeup and carefully arranged hair, she looked exhausted rather than arrogant.
Rachel advised that any conversation involving possible wrongdoing should be voluntary and should not include promises of immunity nobody could grant.
Bianca agreed to speak with an independent attorney present, and we arranged a recorded meeting through counsel two days later.
I had wanted to confront her immediately, but waiting gave me time to decide what I actually needed to know.
I did not want a theatrical confession that let us skip the truth.
I wanted to understand why someone who had shared our table for almost a decade could smile while another person cried.
When we finally met, Bianca could barely look at me.
She began by saying she hadn't meant for the coat incident to turn violent.
Daniel asked her not to begin with the worst outcome as though everything before it had been harmless.
Bianca flinched, and for a moment I saw the frightened daughter beneath the swagger she had borrowed from Victoria.
“She told me Emma was taking over the foundation,” Bianca said.
“She said the board would force us out once Emma got voting rights.”
I asked why she believed that, because I had never sought to remove either of them from a home they shared with my father.
Bianca admitted that her mother repeated stories about my supposed jealousy until the stories felt like facts.
Victoria claimed I blamed them for Mom's death, resented their clothes, and planned to humiliate Bianca in front of donors.
None of it was true, but Bianca had preferred the version where she was defending herself rather than hurting me.
Three days before the gala, Victoria told Bianca to take a photograph of the wallet on her dressing-room table.
Bianca did as instructed, and later that afternoon her mother ordered her to say she'd seen me near the bedroom.
She knew I had only passed the doorway, but she repeated the insinuation anyway.
“Did your mother tell you the wallet was missing?” Rachel asked.
Bianca nodded, then admitted that she had seen it in Victoria's hand later that same evening.
When she asked about it, Victoria said she'd recovered it and no longer wanted the incident discussed.
Bianca couldn't explain why her mother continued telling guests that I had stolen from her.
I asked why she didn't correct the story when she knew the wallet had been found.
“Because she said people were finally seeing who you really were,” Bianca whispered.
“She said you needed to be frightened enough to stop asking questions about the foundation.”
Daniel leaned forward, but I raised my hand because I needed to hear the rest without another interruption.
Bianca said her mother had already prepared a document for me to sign before the gala.
The plan was to confront me with a public accusation and offer a quiet resolution if I apologized and withdrew from the foundation board.
Bianca had been told the document was necessary to protect the family from a scandal over stolen property.
She admitted she never read it beyond the signature lines, because accepting Victoria's explanation was easier than questioning her.
The decorative hat and coat-rack stunt were Bianca's idea after her mother complained that I needed to learn humility.
She had planned to post the photographs in a private friends' group with mocking captions.
When Daniel entered, Bianca was already afraid the joke had gone too far, but she still didn't help me.
I asked her to look at the photograph of my arms taken by the medic after the gala.
She stared at the marks and covered her mouth.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
The apology reached me, but it did not erase the memory of her laughter.
I told her that I wasn't ready to forgive her and that she should not ask me to pretend otherwise.
She nodded, tears gathering in her eyes, and for once did not try to make the conversation about her feelings.
Her attorney asked whether she had personally moved the wallet into Victoria's gala dress.
Bianca said she had seen her mother transfer it from a handbag into the pocket while dressing, but she had not touched it.
That statement, if credible, made the idea of an accidental rediscovery at the gala far less persuasive.
She also confirmed that Victoria knew my father would be delayed at the beginning of the party.
When asked why the foundation board mattered so much, Bianca hesitated and looked toward her attorney.
She then disclosed that Northbridge Events had provided her with paid influencer and publicity work for more than a year.
She claimed to have performed actual promotional services but acknowledged that some invoices described jobs she never completed.
Victoria had told her that the paperwork was an accounting convenience and that the family paid taxes properly.
Rachel did not accuse Bianca of inventing everything, but she asked her to preserve contracts, messages, and payment records.
Bianca agreed, although she looked terrified of what those documents might reveal.
As the meeting ended, she admitted that her mother had called her repeatedly since learning about the recordings.
Victoria wanted her to say that Daniel pushed first and that the serving tray had merely slipped during the commotion.
Bianca had refused, and her mother threatened to cut off her allowance and remove her from the mansion.
I looked at the woman who had called me a coat rack and wondered whether she was finally learning the difference between comfort and safety.
Neither Daniel nor I offered to rescue her from every consequence of her choices.
But we gave her information about independent support and made clear that telling the truth did not have to mean facing intimidation alone.
Before leaving, Bianca looked at me directly for the first time.
“She said you were weak because you always tried to be kind,” she whispered.
May you like
I remembered Mom's handwriting in the recipe notebook and shook my head.
“Kindness was never the part of me she should have mistaken for weakness.”
