Chapter Four
Caterina
I wake up before my alarm, and that alone puts me in a bad mood.
Not just because it’s early. I’m usually up early.
I like the quiet before the day starts pressing in from all sides.
I like getting coffee before my phone starts lighting up, before the casino starts demanding things from me, before there are people outside my office asking questions they should already know the answers to. Early is normal for me.
This is not normal.
This is too early.
The room is still dim, the first gray-blue wash of morning barely pushing through the edges of the curtains, and for one stupid second, I lie there staring at the ceiling, disoriented enough to think maybe I can still go back to sleep.
Then I remember why I’m awake.
And irritation flares hot under my skin all over again.
Of course.
Of course this is what does it. Not quarter-end reporting. Not audits. Not investor meetings. Not the hundred things that actually matter in my day-to-day life. No.
What drags me awake before dawn is the knowledge that at some point this morning, I am expected to meet the stranger my family has apparently selected to insert into my life.
I shut my eyes for a second and exhale through my nose.
Nerves. That’s all it is.
That annoys me even more.
I roll onto my back again and stare up at the ceiling, willing myself not to care.
It doesn’t work. The tension is already there, settled low in my body, irritating and restless and impossible to ignore.
It makes me want to get up and move, which is exactly what I do a few seconds later, throwing back the covers and swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
The hardwood is cool under my feet. The house is silent. For a moment, I stand there in my sleep shirt, hair half in my face, and let the quiet wrap around me.
My house.
Mine.
Not the family compound. Not one of Luca’s properties where there are always too many people coming and going and too many eyes on everything.
My place is closer to the city, closer to the casino, closer to the life I actually live every day, and I like it that way. I chose it that way.
I chose this house because it gave me some measure of distance, some illusion of control, some chance to wake up in my own space without stepping immediately into the full force of my family.
Apparently, that was too much freedom for the family to tolerate.
I push my hair back and head for the bathroom.
The mirror catches me the second I flick on the light. Dark hair tangled from sleep, wispy bangs a mess, eyes sharper than I want them to be this early. Too awake. Too keyed up. Too aware.
I hate it.
I turn on the shower hotter than necessary and strip out of my shirt while it warms. By the time I step under the spray, my jaw is already tight.
It’s not like I’ve never had protection before.
That’s the thing that makes this all so infuriating. I am not na?ve. I did not grow up in some fantasy world where I thought the Conti name came without consequences.
There have always been men nearby. Security at events.
Cars following at a distance. Quiet changes in routine that happened without explanation because someone somewhere had decided it was safer that way.
I know how this life works. I know what precautions are necessary.
I know better than most people why they matter.
But this is different.
This is not an extra car outside. Not a temporary adjustment. Not a detail for a specific event or a few tense days while something gets handled.
This is a man.
A stranger.
Someone outside the family.
Someone I have never met, who is apparently going to show up, and what? Start dictating where I go and how I move, and whether I can walk into my own kitchen without somebody tracking my location?
The water beats against my shoulders, hot enough to sting a little, and I brace one hand against the tile wall as irritation climbs again.
What burns most is that no one asked me.
Not really.
They informed me.
That’s what Papà did in his office yesterday.
He sat behind that desk and announced that a decision had already been made, an arrangement had already been put in place, a man had already been hired, and now I was expected to rearrange my life around it like I should be grateful anyone bothered to tell me before he showed up on my doorstep.
As if this is happening to some abstract problem instead of to me.
As if I am not the one who has to live with it.
I tip my head back under the spray and slick my hair back, trying to force some of the tension out of my shoulders. It doesn’t do much good. My mind keeps circling the same points, the same insults, the same aggravating truth at the center of all of it.
The men in my life always do this.
Not always in obvious ways. Not always with cruelty. Most of the time, they would tell themselves it comes from love, from worry, from duty, from all the things powerful men tell themselves when they start rearranging other people’s lives without permission.
But the result is the same.
They swoop in. They decide. They adjust the board. And I’m the one expected to absorb the change with grace.
I reach for the shampoo and work it through my hair harder than necessary.
I have spent years proving myself.
Years.
At Wharton, where nobody gave a damn who my father was except as a point of curiosity.
Back here, where I took over the financial side of family operations and then the casino, and had to fight to be seen as anything but the youngest Conti child playing at business.
Every report, every meeting, every ugly stretch of numbers, every negotiation, every late night, every decision that turned out well because I made it and not because some man hovered behind me whispering instructions into my ear.
I built that. I did.
And still, when it comes down to it, I get handled like the fragile one.
The little girl.
The daughter.
The one who can be patted on the head, swept aside, and managed.
I rinse the shampoo out and try not to think about the worst part.
It doesn’t work.
Because the worst part is not even Papà deciding this. Not entirely.
It’s Vito.
Or maybe not him alone, but the fact that I found out late last night that when this Adrian Donato got into town, he didn’t go to meet Papà first.
He went to Vito’s house.
I squeeze more conditioner into my palm than I need.
Of course he did.
Of course.
And yes, I know exactly what the logic is supposed to be. Vito is the heir. Vito is the next Don.
Vito’s responsibility in family matters has only expanded since he and Teresa moved back from Pittsburgh.
I know all of that. I know the structure.
I know why people defer to him. I know why Papà trusts him with operational details.
I know why a man coming in for an assignment tied to a threat against the family would be brought into that orbit first.
I know it.
I still hate it.
Because Vito is my brother, not my keeper.
He is not the one who has to put up with this man in his space.
He is not the one whose house is about to stop feeling like his own.
He is not the one whose movements will be tracked and assessed, and probably criticized, by somebody with military training and a security background and a whole professional vocabulary built around risk and compliance and the assumption that his judgment matters more than the principal’s comfort.
So why is he the one meeting him?
Why is he the one getting the first look?
Why is he the one discussing my life before I’ve even laid eyes on the man?
It makes my teeth clench.
I quickly finish my shower, turn off the water, and stand there for a second in the steam with water sliding down my skin.
The bathroom is warm now, the mirror fogged over, the air thick. I reach for a towel and wrap it around myself, then another around my hair, and walk to the sink, leaving damp footprints on the tile. I brush my teeth, and take care of my skincare, and walk back into the bedroom.
The house is still quiet.
Usually I like that.
This morning it just makes me more aware of myself moving through it. My room. My dresser. My clothes laid out where I left them last night because I already knew I was going to want one less thing to think about today.
I drop my towel and start getting dressed.
Black skirt. Cream blouse. Gold hoops. Watch. My usual choices, sharp enough for the office, easy enough to move in.
I do my makeup at the vanity by muscle memory, but my thoughts keep running hot underneath everything.
What is he like?
The question annoys me on principle.
I do not want to care. I do not want to wonder.
I do not want to give this man that much space in my head before I’ve even met him.
But my mind keeps going there anyway because uncertainty is its own irritation, and right now this stranger is one large moving question mark dropped directly into the middle of my life.
Teresa’s cousin. Because even Teresa gets to be part of conversations that have to do with me. Even she gets a voice in the decision.
Hell, everybody probably knows.
I know Roberto doesn’t keep anything from Olivia. Olivia, my best friend. My roommate at Wharton. A part of my family for less than three years and already given a seat at the table.
Everyone probably knows everything about him, has discussed this whole thing in one of a dozen conversations I was not included in. That part alone is enough to make me furious all over again.
Everyone knows.
Everyone discusses.
Everyone adjusts.
And I’m the one expected to smile and accept it once the final version gets handed down. After all the details have been hammered out without my input.
I set down the mascara wand and stare at myself in the mirror.
My dark eyes look back at me, sharper now with makeup on. More like me. More like the version of myself that walks into the casino every day and gets things done without asking permission.
Good.