Chapter 10 - The Woman Behind the Scar
Sterling’s arrest turned Delphine into news.
For eleven years, the Bowmont family had controlled her story by keeping her absent.
Now absence was impossible.
Reporters gathered outside Mercy Saint Anne.
Old photographs appeared online.
Headlines called her THE HIDDEN HEIRESS.
One television host referred to her as “the scarred bride who brought down two dynasties.”
Delphine threw a pillow at the screen.
Casius, sitting beside her, caught it against his chest.
“Violence.”
“Journalism.”
“Related fields.”
The humor helped.
It did not solve the problem.
Patients began recognizing her.
Colleagues asked whether she would resign.
Hospital administrators worried about security.
Delphine refused to disappear again.
“I worked too hard for this license.”
Casius nodded.
“Then don’t resign.”
“Security will make patients uncomfortable.”
“Then we make security invisible.”
“You’re good at invisible security?”
“Professionally.”
He hired two plainclothes guards who looked like tired uncles.
Delphine approved.
The more difficult decision involved her face.
A national morning show requested an interview.
So did three magazines.
Delphine declined all of them.
Then a burn survivor from Baton Rouge wrote her a letter.
The girl was sixteen.
She had stopped attending school after an accident scarred her neck and cheek.
Her mother included a line that Delphine read three times.
She watches you walk into work every morning on the news footage. I think it helps her imagine leaving the house.
Delphine sat at the kitchen table holding the letter.
Casius came in from therapy.
He had walked eight steps with forearm crutches that morning.
He had not told her yet.
Her face stopped him.
“What happened?”
She handed him the letter.
He read it.
Then placed it down.
“What do you want to do?”
There it was again.
Not what should be done.
Not what was useful.
What do you want?
“I want to meet her.”
“Privately?”
“Yes.”
They drove to Baton Rouge two days later.
No press.
No Ferraro display.
The girl, Hannah LeBlanc, met them in a rehabilitation garden.
She wore a hoodie despite the heat.
Her scar ran from her left ear to her collarbone.
She stared at Delphine for almost a minute.
Then said, “Yours is worse.”
Casius nearly choked.
Delphine laughed.
A real laugh.
“Thank you?”
Hannah smiled for the first time.
They talked for an hour.
Not about bravery.
Not about beauty.
About strangers staring.
About makeup.
About doctors who meant well.
About the rage of being congratulated for leaving the house.
At the end, Hannah looked at Casius’s wheelchair.
“Does everybody tell you you’re inspiring too?”
“Constantly.”
“I hate that.”
“Me too.”
They became allies immediately.
On the drive home, Delphine was quiet.
Then she said, “I want to build something.”
Casius looked over.
“What?”
“A rehabilitation program for people whose injuries become public property. Burns, spinal injuries, visible trauma. Medical treatment plus legal advocacy, employment support, media privacy.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“You’re a mafia boss.”
“Formerly diversified criminal-adjacent businessman.”
She stared at him.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“My lawyers are workshopping language.”
She laughed.
Then he told her about the eight steps.
She stopped laughing.
“You walked eight steps?”
“With crutches.”
“And you waited three hours to tell me?”
“You were busy changing lives.”
“Casius.”
He smiled.
She hit his arm lightly.
At home, he showed her.
Not because he needed to prove anything.
Because he wanted to share it.
Gideon and Dr. Cho stood nearby.
Casius pushed up from the chair.
Forearm crutches locked.
One step.
Pause.
Second step.
His right leg dragged.
Third.
Sweat appeared immediately.
Fourth.
Delphine covered her mouth.
Not pity.
Emotion.
Fifth.
His left knee buckled.
Dr. Cho moved.
Casius recovered.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Then he sat.
Delphine knelt in front of him.
For a second, memory flashed between them.
The first dinner.
Everyone staring at the chair.
The city assuming he was finished.
Camille calling him a corpse.
Delphine touched his hand.
“I’m proud of you.”
He exhaled.
“Careful.”
“Why?”
“I might become inspirational.”
She laughed through tears.
Then kissed him.
The rehabilitation program became the Delphine Initiative only because Casius refused every other name she proposed.
“I don’t want my name on a building.”
“Good. It’s not a building.”
“You are impossible.”
“Married.”
They began planning with Mercy Saint Anne.
Then Marjo asked to see Delphine.
Alone.
Delphine almost refused.
Casius did not advise her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
She hated him for using her own principle.
“I want answers.”
“Then go.”
Marjo met her at a quiet café.
No jewelry.
No makeup.
She looked smaller.
“I signed papers,” Marjo said.
“What papers?”
“After the fire. Your father brought them. Confidentiality agreements. Medical authorizations.”
Delphine’s stomach turned.
“I signed without reading everything.”
“Why?”
“Because he said it would protect you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I know.”
Marjo cried.
“I loved you badly.”
Delphine said nothing.
It was the first truthful sentence her mother had offered.
Marjo pushed an envelope across the table.
Inside was a photograph from the warehouse charity event.
Sterling in the background.
Matteo beside him.
And another man Delphine did not recognize.
On the back, Marjo had written a name.
Remy Vale.
Casius’s investigators knew it immediately.
Remy Vale had been the explosives contractor connected to the mechanic who planted the bomb.
The final link was no longer theoretical.
The warehouse fire and the car bombing had shared a man.
Delphine looked at her mother.
“Where did you get this?”
“I kept it because your father told me to destroy it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Marjo looked at her.
“Because somewhere inside my cowardice, I knew one day you might need proof that you were not crazy.”
Delphine closed her eyes.
It was not redemption.
It was not forgiveness.
But it was something true.
And truth, she had learned, was where rebuilding had to start.
The photograph also changed Marjo’s role in the investigation.
For years, Delphine had thought of her mother as passive—the person who looked away, lowered her voice, and let Sterling decide. The photo proved passivity had limits. Marjo had hidden evidence while obeying him publicly. Cowardice and resistance had somehow occupied the same woman.
That complexity irritated Delphine.
She wanted villains to remain simple.
Casius understood.
“My mother spent years pretending not to know what my father did,” he told her that night.
Delphine looked over.
“You never talk about her.”
“There is a reason.”
“Did you forgive her?”
“She died before I understood what I was angry about.”
Delphine absorbed that.
“Does that make it easier?”
“No.”
He reached for her hand.
“But it made me stop treating unfinished relationships like equations with one correct answer.”
Delphine looked at the photograph again.
Marjo had failed her.
Marjo had also kept proof.
May you like
Both things could be true.
For someone raised in a house where every story had one approved version, that was almost revolutionary.
