Chapter 7 #2
The motion is automatic. Giovanni’s eyes never leave me.
I look at Caterina. “How often do you use this restaurant during closed hours?”
Her expression hardens immediately, the way it always does when I pull us back to work.
“Are you serious right now?”
“Yes.”
Olivia reaches for her water with a look that says this is becoming entertaining. Bianca just sits back slightly, listening.
Caterina folds her arms. “It’s lunch.”
“It’s an assessment.”
“In a family restaurant.”
“A family currently under threat.”
My blunt words don't sit well with her.
Giovanni is the one who speaks first.
“He’s not wrong.”
His voice is deep, quiet, and absolute enough that everybody else just accepts it entering the conversation.
Caterina cuts him a look. “We're in an empty restaurant having lunch.”
“With staff walking in and out.”
“You think one of the kitchen staff is sending threats?” Bianca asks skeptically. “I hired each and every one of them myself.”
“Who better to get your guard down?” I say.
Bianca’s eyes narrow.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say to my face in my restaurant.”
“It’s a hell of a situation,” I reply. “And if there’s a leak inside the family’s structure, then everybody with regular access to family patterns matters.”
Roberto leans back slightly in his chair, studying me with that same scalpel-calm. “He’s talking about proximity, not accusing your staff.”
“Exactly,” I say. “I’m talking about routines. Visibility. Who sees who, when, and how often.”
Caterina’s mouth tightens. “You really do know how to make a pleasant meal feel like a hostage situation.”
“No,” Giovanni says before I can answer. “He knows how to make you see the room the way an enemy would.”
“How much does your staff know about what's going on?” I ask Bianca.
“None,” Bianca says, confused and a bit annoyed. “Why would they?”
“Say a patron orders the lunch special and really likes it, wants to compliment the chef, but you ran out for a couple of hours,” I start.
“If your staff doesn’t know what’s going on, their server will think nothing of saying, ‘Oh, I'm sorry.
She's not here right now, but she'll be here for dinner if you'd like to come back later...’ And now some random patron knows the next time you'll be in the restaurant.”
Bianca’s expression changes—understanding, but also a healthy dose of fear.
“That’s not much,” she says, but there’s less certainty in it now. She shoots Giovanni a look of alarm.
“It doesn’t have to be much,” I say.
Roberto’s fingers tap once against the stem of his glass. “Pattern confirmation.”
“Yes.” I look back at Bianca. “And it’s not limited to one staff member.
Asking pointed questions to, say, five different staffers can build a schedule fast,” I say.
“One person mentions dinner. Another mentions you’re usually here by 9:00.
Now they know when you're in the parking garage. A third says your husband stops by every Wednesday for lunch after a meeting upstairs. Another one mentions Roberto has weekly meetings with Caterina and Giovanni. Put two and two together, and now they know where all four of you are every Wednesday at a certain time. None of them thinks they’ve said anything important.
Together, it’s a map. And it gets bigger and bigger the more people you add. ”
Bianca is still and pale.
Olivia’s expression has lost its amusement entirely.
Giovanni’s gaze shifts toward the kitchen doors, then back to me. “So we tighten mouths.”
“Yes,” I say. “Starting now. And randomize your schedules. Don’t give any one person your full schedule, and change up your routes driving in and out. The safest schedule is a completely random one.”
Roberto nods once. “Need-to-know only.”
“Exactly.” I look at Bianca again. “Nobody discusses when you’re here, when you’re leaving, when family is expected, which entrances you use, or whether the children are with you.
Not casually. Not to regulars. Not to vendors.
Not to anyone who doesn’t absolutely need it.
In fact, I would recommend not bringing the children in at all.
Not only are they the most vulnerable, but they're a weak point.”
“A weak point?” she repeats, her voice edged. “They’re children.”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s exactly why.”
Bianca’s arm slides around Victoria, pulling her off the blanket and into her lap. “Absolutely not.”
I keep my tone even. “I’m not saying that to be cruel. I’m saying it because children change every calculation in a room. They pull attention. They limit movement. They make every adult here slower, more divided, and easier to predict.”
Roberto’s gaze stays on me, unreadable. “And if they stay home?”
“Then you remove one variable,” I say. “A major one.”
Olivia looks down at Isabella, then back at me. “You make it sound like they’re bait.”
“No,” I say. “I’m saying anyone who wants leverage goes for what matters most.”
That kills what little softness was left at the table.
Giovanni leans back slightly in his chair, one hand resting near Bianca’s. “Then they don’t come in.”
There’s no hesitation in it. No debate. Just a decision.
Bianca shoots him a look, half protest and half fear. “Giovanni—”
He turns his head toward her, and whatever she sees in his face makes her stop.
Not because he shut her down. Because she knows he already sees the same thing I do.
Olivia looks at Roberto. “And Isabella?”
Roberto’s eyes go to his daughter, then to me. “How much safer is home, realistically?”
“Depends on who knows the routine,” I say. “But a private residence with fewer variables is always easier to harden than a casino restaurant with public access points, staff traffic, vendors, and half a dozen casual conversations happening at once.”
Caterina exhales through her nose. “You really do suck all the air out of a room.”
“I’m not here to improve the atmosphere.”
“No,” she mutters. “Clearly.”
“But we’re limited,” Olivia says quietly.
“We’re already stretched thin on protection.
The kids are here because we don't have enough people we fully trust to cover every house, every route, and every child at once.
If Roberto is here with me, who's going to be home with Isabella?
We can't just give up our lives and all sit home until the threat is eliminated.”
“If you're limited in protection, you get more protection,” I say simply.
“Oh, so this is a sales pitch?” Caterina says, irritated. “You're scaring the hell out of everyone to drum up business?”
“I'm scaring the hell out of you because it doesn't seem to have gotten through to everyone that you don’t have enough people.”
“We were already reluctant to bring in one outsider,” Giovanni says, “and only because you're Teresa's cousin. If we can't trust our own people, how can we trust strangers?”
“Strangers don't have personal connections,” I say. “Hired protection is a job that's based on reputation. You don't get a good reputation by letting your clients die. You don't want to hire my company, don't. But find someone else. Six of you can't protect the whole family.”
Giovanni’s gaze stays on mine. “That’s easy to say when it isn’t your family.”
“Teresa is my family.”
That stops his next words.
“The last time she was threatened, I was out of the country and out of range. By the time I got back, she’d already been gone for weeks,” I say. “Now she has a kid who is also my family. And apparently, she actually loves your jackass of a nephew. So you’re wrong about that.”
For a second, nobody says anything.
Then, to my surprise, Bianca snorts softly into the silence.
Olivia presses her lips together like she’s trying not to smile. Roberto’s mouth shifts at one corner. Even Caterina’s eyes flick sideways, sharp and briefly disbelieving, before she reins it back in.
Giovanni, on the other hand, just studies me.
Not offended. Not amused. Measuring.
Finally he says, “You’re getting comfortable.”
“I’m sure he'll have a similar assessment of me,” I say.
"He'll be right," Caterina mutters.
Then Roberto leans back slightly in his chair and says, “He’s not wrong.”
“About which part?” Olivia asks dryly. “Needing more security or Vito being a jackass?”
Roberto’s mouth twitches. “Both.”
That gets an actual laugh out of Bianca, albeit brief and strained.
I look back at Giovanni. “You don’t have to like outside protection. But if you don’t add more people, then you start cutting exposure. Fewer locations. Fewer public meals. Fewer children in shared spaces. Fewer overlapping obligations. You can’t have all of it at once.”
Giovanni’s gaze stays on mine another second, then shifts to Bianca, to the children, to the room around us.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet and flat.
“Then we make changes.”
Bianca’s expression tightens.
“Giovanni—”
“This is not a debate,” he says, and the finality in it is absolute.
He’s not talking just to her. He’s talking to the table, and by extension, the rest of the family. He may not be the don anymore, but I suspect Luca listens to him more than anyone else.
Caterina’s arms are still crossed, her posture tight. She is not happy with me right now.
Giovanni looks back at me. "What else?"
"I've got a whole list," I say.