Chapter Two #2
I move to the window, folding my arms again, staring out at the glittering pool and the sprawl of green lawn behind it.
The sun is lower now, the light deepening gold across the grass. Somewhere else in the house I can hear faint movement. Maybe Elena in the kitchen. Maybe one of the kids fussing. Maybe footsteps in the hall. Life going on while mine is being boxed in one more time.
Behind me, my father speaks again.
“This is temporary.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “That’s what everyone always says.”
“It is.”
“Until when?”
“Until we know where the breach is.”
“And if you don’t find it?”
“It’s not an option.”
The certainty in his voice should be reassuring. Instead, it just makes me tired.
I turn back toward him. “Why don’t Vito and Nico need extra security?”
The question has been sitting in me since the beginning, hot and bitter.
His face gives nothing away. “They have security.”
“You know what I mean.”
“They have measures in place.”
“So do I.”
“They are not in the same position as you.”
I stare at him for half a second.
Then I scoff.
“Oh, of course not. Because they’re men, and I’m a woman. Right?”
His eyes flash. “That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said.”
“No. It is what you heard.”
“Because it’s what you meant.”
He rises from behind the desk, and even after all these years, there is still something in that movement that can make a room feel smaller. He is older now than he was when I was a child, but power still sits on him like it was stitched into his bones.
“They are armed men who navigate this world differently than you,” he says.
I lift my chin. “I can defend myself, and I’m armed too.”
“You don’t use those skills as much as they do. Knowing how to defend yourself in practice and pulling a trigger at a target in a gun range is not the same as applying it. And they have that experience.”
“And still, if I were a man, you wouldn’t be doing this,” I say resentfully.
“If you were a man, you wouldn’t be my daughter,” he says. “It was over a year ago that Nico was jumped at that warehouse. Over a year ago that I walked into his house and saw the damage that was done to him. And I still remember it clear as day.”
I remember it like it was yesterday, too. Nico, bruised and cut, limping. His jaw still tight. His eye swollen. While he sat there, barely moving at all because every part of him was hurting.
How we learned that he almost died that night, and it was instinct and reflex that saved him from a killing blow.
I’m not an idiot. I know I’ll never be able to do something like that. I know I won’t be able to hold off five men long enough to survive. I’m not na?ve, but I’m also not helpless.
“Mia tesoro,” he says quietly. My treasure. “If that were you…”
He shakes his head, unable to finish.
I hate the way my throat tightens at that. Hate that some part of me still responds to it. Not because it makes me want to obey, but because it reminds me that underneath all of this iron and force and command, there is something else.
Love. Fierce and real.
But sometimes incredibly suffocating.
“So this is just about me.”
“This is about all of you.”
“So what about Erica? She’s pregnant again. And Emma?” I say, referring to Nico’s wife and the daughter they share. “And how about Teresa? Cristiano? He’s Vito’s heir. Why isn’t her cousin protecting her?”
“They are being protected. Vito and Nico are taking care of that personally.”
“Oh great,” I say, throwing my hands out and dropping them back to my sides. “So they get to cozy up with their spouses for the next few weeks, and I get a complete stranger in my space.”
“Yes,” he says simply.
I close my eyes for one second.
When I open them, he is still standing there, immovable.
I know this posture. I know this tone. I know when he has shifted from discussion into decree. But I am not done fighting.
I realize that I am being difficult about this. I realize that everybody else has already accepted it. That I am the one making this a war.
That realization does nothing to improve my mood.
“And what about Lucia?” I ask, referring to my older sister, who lives in Las Vegas most of the time with her husband and their three children.
“Nick Dixon’s security is separate from ours. He has no reason to suspect a breach on his end. They’ll be staying out of Atlantic City for the time being.”
I press my lips together.
My father sees the crack in me and goes for it.
“This is not an inconvenience,” he says. “This is not me being overprotective. Someone sent a message to me naming my children. There is uncertainty inside our own ranks. Until I know exactly who is involved and who they have spoken to, I am not trusting the usual channels with your safety.”
I look at him across the room and say the only thing left, even though I know it won’t change anything.
Nothing I said was ever going to change anything.
“So you trust Teresa’s cousin more than your own men.”
“For the time being.”
I walk back toward the desk slowly this time, not pacing now, just thinking. My mind catches on all the practical horrors of it.
A man in my driveway. A man outside my office. A man waiting while I have dinner, while I work late, while I go to my own goddamn kitchen for coffee in the morning. A stranger seeing the rhythms of my life from the inside.
“Absolutely not,” I say again, quieter now but no less firm. “I am not having some man in my house every day.”
“Yes, you will,” he says. “He is a professional.”
“How comforting.”
“He is good at what he does.”
“I don’t care if he’s the best in the country.”
“I do.”
I just look at him.
He does not smile. Not even a little.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
“You’ve met him already?” I ask.
“I will soon.”
“So you don’t even know him.”
“I’ve checked his credentials and history.”
“And?”
“And he is competent.”
“That is your glowing character review?”
“Caterina,” he warns.
I rub a hand over my forehead. “This is insane.”
“That feeling will pass.”
“You don’t know that.” My hand drops. “You don’t get to decide that.”
The air in the room changes.
It is slight. But I feel it.
My father’s patience, already stretched thin, gives another inch.
“You are talking as though this is about preference.”
“It is about preference. Mine.”
“It is about survival.”
“It is about trust.”
“Yes,” he says. “And right now, there are not many people I trust with yours.”
That shuts me up for a second.
Not because I have no answer, but because I have too many.
I know what it cost him to say that.
Men like my father do not speak their fears often, and certainly not plainly. He is not sentimental. He is not soft. He does not sit people down and confess worry. He arranges things. He handles them. He moves pieces until the threat is gone.
This is his version of fear.
And I still resent it.
I square my shoulders. “I won’t be able to do my job like this.”
“Yes, you will.”
“You have no idea what it is like to have someone hovering over every move you make.”
His stare pins me where I stand.
“No?”
The word is quiet.
The effect is loud enough that I wish I had chosen a different line.
Because of course he knows. He was in prison for twelve years, faced with a much longer sentence, before being released early on good behavior.
For twelve years, every day, every move he made, he was watched. By guards, by other prisoners, by cameras.
I can feel my temper building for another round, feel the argument gathering in my chest, all the things I want to throw at him about autonomy and image and capability and the fact that I am not some porcelain thing to be locked up because men around me can’t get their loyalty straight.
I open my mouth.
He cuts me off before I can speak.
“Enough.” Flat. Final.
I go still.
I pushed him too far.
“This discussion is over,” he says, his tone leaving no more room. “You are getting the bodyguard. When the threat is over, he will be removed, and you can continue your life as it was. Until then, I won’t hear another word about it.”
My hands curl at my sides, but I don’t say anything.
“He will be at your house tomorrow morning.”
My jaw drops. “Tomorrow?”
“Early. You will put this mood away and be professional and courteous to the man who stands between you and danger. Do you understand?”
I stare at him, rage and disbelief tangling so tightly in my chest I can barely sort one from the other.
Then I grab my bag off the chair so hard the strap nearly slips through my fingers.
“This is insane,” I say.
He says nothing.
Because he does not have to.
Because he has already won.
I turn and head for the door, every step clipped and hot with anger. My hand is already on the knob when his voice stops me.
“Caterina.”
I do not turn around.
After a beat, he says, quieter now, “This is not a punishment. It’s for your safety.”
My throat goes tight for one stupid, aggravating second.
I keep my hand on the knob and stare at the dark wood of the door in front of me.
“You think I don’t know that? That I’m so stupid and na?ve that I don’t understand that?
” My fingers tighten on the knob. “The punishment is not the bodyguard. It’s the reminder that, no matter what I do, my family will always look at me and see a little girl throwing a tantrum, and not a woman who feels disrespected because you only bothered to tell me after it was already done. ”
I press my lips together to hold back a sob. I will not cry here. No fucking way. I turn my head and look at him.
“You can make all the decisions you want about my life and what it takes to protect it, but at the end of the day, I’m the one who has to live with them because it’s my life. Yes, I am your daughter. But that’s not all I am.”
Then I walk out before he can answer.