Chapter 7
I found the family group messages that night.
Not because Delia hid them well.
Because she never thought I would look.
A private chat.
Seven relatives.
Marcus.
Delia.
Photographs.
Sofia carrying laundry.
Sofia wiping counters.
Sofia standing at the sink.
Captions.
OUR PRINCESS LEARNING REAL WORK.
THE BOSS’S LITTLE CINDERELLA.
One photograph showed Lily asleep on a kitchen chair while Sofia scrubbed pans beside her.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Lily had been there.
Watching.
Absorbing.
I opened the reactions.
Laughing faces.
Wine glasses.
One cousin wrote:
Maybe Raffaele finally realized what he married.
I looked around the council room.
Three people from that chat were sitting there.
They stopped breathing too.
Delia did not.
“It was humor.”
I looked at her.
“Explain the joke.”
Silence.
“No, really.”
I placed the phone down.
“Tell Sofia what part she was supposed to laugh at.”
Sofia was not in the room.
That was intentional.
I would not make her sit through their excuses.
One cousin whispered:
“We thought she agreed.”
I stared.
“To photographs of her being humiliated?”
He looked down.
Marcus scoffed.
“Everybody is suddenly moral.”
I turned.
“No.”
My voice went cold.
“Everybody is suddenly visible.”
That shut him up.
I looked through the chat again.
Then found something worse.
Delia had posted a photograph of Sofia’s raw hands.
Caption:
Maybe now she’ll stop acting delicate.
Six laughing reactions.
No one called me.
No one asked whether she needed help.
The family did what frightened groups do.
They watched the powerful person define the victim.
Then copied the reaction.
I looked at the names.
May you like
This was not one sister abusing my wife.
It was a culture giving her an audience.
