Chapter 176 CHAPTER 176
Lady Bianca’s Last Breath
Lady Bianca had always lived as if each moment was a performance meant for the most exacting of audiences. Even in frail health, she kept the air of a woman who had never learned to ask for pity. Her shawl was shawl enough to disguise weakness in the daytime; at night, it was her armor against a world that had made her a queen of grudges.
When the news of Marcus’s death reached her, it struck not only at the center of her grief but at something deeper, the idea that the life she had tried to control had unravelled in the most public of ways.
Ares found her in the drawing room, propped in the old armchair that had been in the family for generations. They took it anywhere they went to. He saw her before he heard her, the way her shoulders slumped, the hollow that had opened beneath the neatness of her hair and the shawl.
He moved to her side with the brisk, purposeful step of a man who had spent years learning what to do when the world demanded forward motion. Julian was behind him, a steady presence, less a comfort and more a hand on the tiller while the sea roiled.
“Mom,” Ares said softly. The word hovered between them like a pulse.
Lady Bianca lifted her eyes. For a moment they were clear; for a moment, her composure held. She offered her son the practiced smile that had kept him in line through his worst decisions and his best. The smile was a lie he loved, it had been their language.
Then the mask slipped.
“It’s too much, Ares,” she whispered. Her breath was shallow. “They’re killing me, one by one.”
Julian knelt at his brother’s side, placing a hand on the arm of Bianca’s chair as if he could anchor her. Outside, the hospital lights had been a pallid presence on the night air for hours. The family had run there as if speed could outrun ruin.
When the doctor stepped into the waiting area with the clip board, Ares’s world narrowed to the sound of the shoes on stone. He could not read the man’s face; no one could. The words that followed, when they came, were a soft, practiced form of cruelty.
“We did everything we could,” the doctor said. “Her heart was already compromised. The stress… it was too much. I’m so sorry.”
Ares felt the world tilt. For a dizzy second he could not breathe. The room smeared, and sound fell away like rain. He heard Julian, a doorway of sound, something held down and measured.
“Take me to her,” he commanded, his voice cracked but decisive. “What do you mean by sorry?”
They let him through. Hospital lights and the rhythmic beeping of machines filled the corridor. Lady Bianca lay small and pale beneath the sterile sheets, an image in contrast to the woman who had once stormed alleys and boardrooms alike with a single glance. The doctors’ hands were gentle, their motions familiar. Machines monitored a body that had been a fortress.
“Mom? Mom please…”
Ares took his mother’s hand. It was limp under his thumb. For a moment he let himself sink into the past, the little boy she’d coaxed into being prudent, the adolescent she’d scolded into decorum, the man she’d demanded lift responsibilities on shoulders that sometimes felt too young. He thought of the spark in her eyes when she plotted a minor social coup; he thought of the nights she’d nursed him through heartbreak as if it were only a superficial fever.
Lady Bianca turned her head slightly. Her eyelids fluttered like shuttered windows. She forced air through her chest and, with great effort, smiled at Ares once more.
“Go … be something steady,” she managed. Her voice was a rustle. “Take care of… your mess.”
He laughed then, a choked, terrible sound. “Mom, don’t talk like that. You’re not going anywhere.”
Her fingers tightened briefly around his hand, a small, stubborn grip that said all the things the lips could not. Then, slowly, as if pulled by the tide, her hand relaxed. The monitors sighed. A soft silence, clinical and absolute, swept the room.
Ares held his mother until the cold settled beneath his skin. He felt the life leave her like a tide drawing back to the ocean. He pressed his forehead to her hand, and the sound that tore out of him was not a sound he had allowed himself since childhood, it was a raw, animal grief, unpracticed and enormous. Julian wrapped him in an arm that tried to be both a father’s and a brother’s.
Outside the hospital, the world carried on in small, indifferent ways. Taxis took passengers to anonymous hotels; overhead lights buzzed; somewhere, a siren wailed and
faded. Inside, the grief gathered like fog.