Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty Eight
Caterina
It is just dinner.
I tell myself that while I stand in front of my bathroom mirror with a makeup brush in one hand and my hair clipped back from my face.
Just dinner.
Dinner at my house, with my siblings, their spouses, and their children. No Papà. No uncles. No huge family turning the evening into something larger than I want it to be. No voices from every corner of the Conti family weighing in, hovering, managing, worrying, watching.
Just us.
Or as close to just us as anything can be now, given the guards outside, the secured perimeter, the restricted guest list, the staggered arrival windows, and Adrian’s general attitude toward flowers, windows, dinner, breathing, and anything else that might possibly be used as a threat vector.
Still.
Just dinner.
I lean closer to the mirror and sweep shadow over my eyelid with more care than the evening technically requires.
I know that.
It is not a gala. It is not a casino event. It is not a board dinner. It is not some formal public occasion where I need to be Caterina Conti in the way people expect.
It is dinner with my siblings in my own house.
And I want to dress up.
Maybe because I have been trapped between fear, and work, and security briefings for weeks.
Maybe because for the first time in a month, I want to feel like a woman hosting her family instead of a target being moved from secure location to secure location. Maybe because Lucia is coming.
I haven’t seen her in months.
I have only seen Gabriel once since he was born seven months ago, which still feels impossible.
Lucia had a baby, and somehow life became so complicated that I haven’t seen my nephew even once.
A chubby, dark-haired little thing with Nick’s blue eyes and Lucia’s stubborn expression already forming in miniature.
I smile faintly at the memory and blend the shadow a little darker at the outer corner.
Lucia has been to dinner with us plenty of times since she came back into our lives. At Papà’s house. At Giovanni’s. At Roberto and Olivia’s. At my place too, once or twice, though always with more family than furniture.
But dinner with just the siblings?
Without Papà? Without the uncles?
Only once, and it was shortly after Lucia and Papà mended fences.
And that dinner had been… difficult.
That is a charitable word.
Awkward. Stilted. Everyone trying too hard not to say the wrong thing, which of course guaranteed someone would say exactly the wrong thing.
That someone was Vito.
Or Lucia.
Depending on which side of the table you were sitting on.
I set the brush down and reach for eyeliner, my mouth twisting at the memory.
The argument had been needed. I know that now. At the time, I wanted to crawl under the table and stay there until everyone just shut the hell up.
Lucia is the oldest.
Vito is the second oldest.
That sounds simple when you say it like that. A birth order fact.
Not so simple in our family.
When Lucia testified against Papà, and he went to prison, it did more than tear the family open.
It rearranged it completely. Lucia disappeared into witness protection.
Papà was gone. Mama got sick shortly after.
My uncles were busy stepping into the family business and filling the big shoes of the don, while everyone outside our walls watched for weakness and the chance to swoop in.
Nico and I were young.
Too young for the things we were forced to understand anyway.
And Vito—
Vito stopped being the careless second child.
He was always the heir, but he was never the oldest.
Then he became the oldest son overnight. And more. The shield, the caregiver. Both father and mother, when Mama could not be, and Papà was behind bars, and Lucia was gone.
I pause with the eyeliner near my lashes.
My chest tightens at the thought.
It is strange how I can feel sympathy for him now and still remember being angry at him then. Angry because he was too serious. Too hard, too watchful.
I was just a child and didn’t understand.
But he was a child, too.
A tall, furious, terrified child pretending not to be.
The role took a toll on him. Of course it did; how could it not? It took his confidence in ways none of us understood then. It made him drop out of school to care for Mama. It made him think survival meant sacrifice, and silence, and carrying everything alone.
I shake my head and finish the line.
I still cannot believe he hid the fact that he had gone back to school from all of us.
High school. College. An MBA. Secretly, as if education were something shameful instead of something that should have had every one of us cheering loudly enough to embarrass him.
It took Teresa to get him to say it out loud.
Teresa, with her sharp eyes and sharper mind, and that impossible ability to see through Vito’s walls like they are made of glass. She got him to open up about things the rest of us had spent years not knowing how to touch.
And after only knowing him for a few weeks.
It makes me ashamed to think of it.
Which is why this dinner is so important. I can’t let it happen again.
So yes, maybe the tension between Vito and Lucia had to be released. Maybe that disastrous dinner did what it needed to do. Maybe all the things they said had been sitting on everyone’s chests for too long.
It is better now.
I hope it is better now.
That is what tonight is supposed to be.
A dinner where Lucia can sit at my table with Vito, and Nico, and me, and maybe we can be something like siblings instead of survivors, trying to keep our heads above water.
Like actual siblings who care about each other.
Well, almost all my siblings will be here.
Not Alessandra and Sebastian, Luca and Elena’s two little ones.
That part makes me feel a little guilty, though not enough to change it. They are still so young, and if they come, it becomes a full family affair.
I have no problem with them coming for the evening. There are children their age here, but it won’t be so simple because Elena will want to come, and I will feel guilty and give in.
But then Papà comes. And the uncles come. The entire orbit follows.
I love them, but tonight is not that. I will include Alessandra and Sebastian in sibling dinners when they are older, when the age gap is less, and they can attend without Elena and Papà being involved.
Tonight is Lucia, Vito, Nico, and me.
Spouses and children, too.
Well.
Their spouses and children.
I apply one last swipe of mascara and lower my hand.
My reflection stares back at me.
The makeup is soft and casual. Smoky enough to make my dark eyes stand out, not so dramatic that I look like I am going to a club instead of hosting dinner.
My hair falls in smooth waves over my shoulders, dark and glossy.
The dress hanging behind me is deep wine, fitted through the waist, soft around the hips, elegant without trying too hard.
Trying too hard would be humiliating.
I am trying exactly enough.
I turn from the mirror.
Adrian is leaning against the bathroom doorjamb.
He is dressed in black. He has to know how it affects me to see him in all black.
His dark hair is neat, his jaw shadowed, his body relaxed in a way I know by now is a lie. He is not relaxed. He is never relaxed. He is watching me, watching the doorway, watching the window behind me through the mirror, watching everything.
But mostly, right now, he is watching me.
Hunger crawls through my stomach immediately.
It happens every time.
Every time I see him, every time his eyes move over me, every time I remember that beneath the discipline and the tactical calm and the quiet authority is a man who can put me over my own desk and make me forget my name with just his mouth.
I was excited about dinner five seconds ago.
Now I want to cancel the entire evening, lock the bedroom door, and drag him into bed.
Or against the wall.
Or onto the vanity.
I am not particularly picky at the moment.
His gaze slides down me. Back up to my eyes.
“You planning to stand there silently and just watch me?” I ask.
“I’ve been here almost a minute.”
“That does not answer the question.”
His mouth moves slightly. Barely a smile. Enough to make my pulse trip.
“You were busy.”
“I was thinking.”
“I know.” His eyes hold mine. “You get quiet when you think important thoughts.”
His comment makes me go soft inside, which is very inconvenient because I was prepared to tease him, not feel seen by him.
I reach for the clip in my hair and release the last section. “That sounds dangerously close to insight.”
“I try to limit it.”
“Good. I would hate for you to overextend yourself.”
His gaze drops to my hands as I run my fingers through my hair. The air between us changes.
It does that so easily now.
One look, one breath, one memory.
This afternoon comes back in vivid detail.
His hand around my wrists, in my hair, holding me hostage.
My body bent over the desk. The cool wood pressed against my breasts.
His mouth between my thighs, ravaging me.
His voice in my ear, rough and filthy, telling me to take what I asked for, as he presses that big cock deep inside me.
My thighs rub together as my pussy clenches at the memory.
My panties are getting wet.
Adrian’s eyes sharpen as if he can read every thought on my face.
He probably can.
That is deeply inconvenient.
“You promised you’d be good,” he says softly. That voice of his is low and rough, and I remember it just how it felt against my thigh.
My breath hitches.
“‘Good’ can be very subjective,” I manage to say.
A slow smile finally spreads across his face, and oh, it’s a beautiful thing.
“It can be,” he agrees.
I have to bite back a whimper.
"But not tonight," he continues.
I have to get out of this bathroom.
I have to get dressed.
Or I might do something very, very bad.
I grab my lipstick and fumble it open.
“Go away.” I look at him in the mirror, and my pulse is suddenly loud in my ears. “Dinner is in less than an hour.”