Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Caterina
By the time we leave the casino, I feel worn down. Much more than usual, even on a long day like this.
But it hasn't left me exhausted or numb.
Instead, it has left me alert in all the wrong ways, like my nerves never got the message that the day is over.
My mind keeps looping over everything Adrian said in Regalia, the look on Bianca’s face when the message got through, the way Olivia’s hand went immediately to Isabella, the way Giovanni didn’t argue so much as absorb it and start making decisions.
Then Bianca, because she is Bianca and because food is how she loves, packed us food to take home.
Us.
That in itself is still strange enough to irritate me.
Adrian drove us back in that armored SUV of his with the same unbearable calm he always displays, taking one of the routes he had mapped out earlier, changing lanes with purpose, checking mirrors constantly without making it look like a nervous habit.
I sat in the backseat with Bianca’s containers warm in my lap and told myself I was irritated by the silence and not oddly aware of it. The silence around him is not empty. It feels like work is still happening inside it.
Now it’s late.
Later than I usually let myself stay at the casino unless quarter-close is chewing through my patience or some vendor problem has snowballed into something bigger.
The house is quiet again, but not in the same way it was this morning or the way it usually is at night. Usually, it’s my quiet. Alone, peaceful. Tonight it feels occupied, watched in ways I can’t see, every shadow and doorway carrying the knowledge that I am not alone in it.
I took a shower the second I got home anyway.
Partly because I wanted to wash off the day.
The casino, the stale air of meetings, the restaurant conversation still buzzing under my skin uncomfortably, the ride home, Adrian’s constant presence, the way his gaze seems to move through walls and rooms and lines of sight instead of simply looking at things like other people do.
Partly because I needed a few minutes behind a locked bathroom door to feel like myself again.
Now I’m in soft lounge clothes, dark cotton pants, and a loose long-sleeved top, my hair still damp and hanging loose down my back as I pad barefoot into the kitchen.
The overhead light is low, warm against the stone counters and dark cabinets. One of the under-cabinet lights is on too, throwing a softer glow over the island. The oven hums quietly where Bianca’s food is keeping warm.
The whole kitchen smells like roasted garlic, herbs, tomato, bread, and slow-cooked meat. Comforting and familiar enough to make my chest ache in a way I was not expecting tonight.
I stop in front of the oven and just stand there for a moment.
The smell takes me straight back to earlier. Straight back to Regalia after lunch.
With Isabella tottering unsteadily across the floor, Victoria crawling enthusiastically toward abandoned bread, Stephano orbiting the table like a tiny tornado.
Bianca’s face changing when Adrian laid out, in calm precise terms, how easy it would be for harmless-seeming scraps of information to become a map that could put us, or the children, in danger.
Olivia pulling Isabella closer. Giovanni deciding in one moment that the children wouldn’t be brought in anymore for the time being.
And Adrian standing there in the middle of it all, not cruel, not trying to be dramatic, not even trying to be right in the self-satisfied way a lot of men do.
Just laying the truth on the table and letting everyone take it in. More like choke on it.
I resented him for it then.
I resent him for it now.
Maybe even more now.
Not because he frightened them.
Because he frightened them, and I could not convince myself he was wrong.
That is the part I really hate.
I pull the oven open, and the heat rushes out over my face.
Bianca packed enough for five, of course.
She always does. Neat containers covered in foil, bread wrapped separately in a kitchen towel so it won’t go hard.
Efficient and generous in a way that makes me feel ten years old and cared for by my mother again. And completely intolerable right now.
I set the containers on the island and close the oven again.
My family has always been under threat.
That is the truth of it.
Not every day in some obvious way. Not always with notes and messages and last-minute route changes and the cold, sick knowledge that somebody close might be feeding information out.
But threat has always been threaded through the life I come from.
It is part of the air. Part of the rules.
Part of the things you learn not to say, and the things you learn not to ask, and the things you are taught to notice from such a young age that you eventually stop realizing they are strange.
Because of that, I think, maybe I stopped letting the idea of danger take up so much space.
Not that I ignored it.
I didn’t.
I knew this one was different. I knew Papà was taking it more seriously. I knew Vito was wound tighter than usual, knew Antonio’s mood when he reset my systems was not normal, knew there was a real possibility of a mole somewhere close. I knew all of that.
But some part of me still thought it would turn out all right.
The way it always does.
Or the way we tell ourselves it does after the dust settles and everybody who matters is somehow still standing.
I rest my palms on the cool stone of the island and stare at the closed containers.
I knew people were in danger.
I just… never let myself think as far as the children.
That realization sits heavy and ugly in my stomach.
Because how could someone hurt children?
The thought feels obscene, even here, even in this family, even in the world I grew up in, where violence is never as far away as “respectable” people like to pretend.
Children.
Isabella, with her solemn little face and uncertain steps.
Victoria, crawling after bread. Emma, with her soft cheeks and blond curls.
Cristiano, still just an infant who can’t sleep through the night.
Stephano with his spoon-sword imagination.
The twins, Mia and Elio, and the way their parents still dress them alike.
And even my own half-siblings, Alessandra and Sebastian.
So far apart in age, but still part of my world.
The babies. The toddlers. All of them so small, so breakable, so vulnerable.
They are the only truly innocent things in the whole damn organization.
How could someone out there want to hurt them?
Or at the very least, use them as leverage?
And someone out there wants to hurt them.
Or would, if it got them what they want
How could someone decide that was a line they were willing to cross?
The answer, of course, is that anyone who would send a threat to Luca Conti’s children has already crossed every line that matters. I know that. I do.
Still, knowing something and really letting yourself believe it are not the same.
I didn’t let myself go that far.
Adrian did.
That’s what he brought into Regalia. Not just procedures or risk assessments or some tidy professional system. He forced everyone at that table to look directly at the ugliest possibility and stop turning their faces away from it.
Was he overreacting?
I want the answer to be yes.
I want it so badly it hurts.
Yes, he’s good at what he does, yes, he sees danger everywhere because that’s his job, yes, maybe men like him are trained to assume the worst and build everything outward from that.
Maybe that is all this is. Maybe he is a man with military instincts and a security business and a brutal way of speaking, and maybe he is pulling every thread tight because that is what keeps him employed and respected and indispensable.
Maybe.
But then I think about the route change with Erica and Emma. The vehicle positioned to force a stop. The garage accessed with the correct code on the first try. The message.
The way Papà’s face looked when he said there were not many people he trusted with my safety right now. The way Vito accepted, however grudgingly, that Adrian was right about how badly they handled my side of this.
And the ‘maybe’ gets thinner.
I pull the foil back from one of the containers. Pasta. Something slow-cooked and beautiful under melted cheese, the sauce still bubbling slightly at the edges from the oven’s heat. The smell deepens, richer now. My stomach reminds me abruptly that annoyance and fear do not count as dinner.
I should plate it.
I should sit down and eat and pretend this is normal, or at least survivable.
Instead, I stand there in the warm kitchen with Bianca’s food open in front of me and the whole day pressing against the back of my ribs.
And it makes me feel a little sick. The thought of putting food in my stomach.
I hear the faint sound of movement somewhere deeper in the house.
Not loud. I get the feeling he could be completely silent if he really needed to.
He’s probably finishing his perimeter for the night. Doors, windows, exterior lines, blind spots, cameras, garage, side gate, maybe the yard.
No, no maybes about it. He did a complete and thorough walkthrough of the house. And didn't miss a single thing. I've come to realize that he's not the type of man to miss anything.
I close the container again, suddenly irritated by the idea of eating while he’s still moving through my house as if it is now partially his to assess.
No. Not his.
Never his.
I lift the foil from the second container just to have something to do with my hands. This one is chicken, golden and fragrant with rosemary and lemon, resting on a bed of wilted greens. A third container holds roasted vegetables, caramelized at the edges, still steaming slightly.
It’s a feast.
It’s Bianca trying to take care of everyone because she doesn’t know what else to do when fear moves in.
And it’s also a reminder of the people I love, and that I’m scared for them now in a way I wasn’t this morning.
This is ridiculous.
I am standing in my kitchen, arguing silently with myself about whether a man I did not ask for might be right about the level of danger surrounding my family.
I hate him for making me ask the question seriously.
I hate my family for making him necessary in the first place.
And I hate, maybe most of all, the part of me that is no longer sure he is overreacting.
I hear the soft click of a door somewhere down the hall. Then footsteps. Quiet, yet unmistakable.
I don’t turn around immediately.
Instead, I stand there with both hands on the kitchen island, looking down at Bianca’s food and the warm light on the stone, and think, absurdly, that this must be what it feels like when your life has begun shifting under your feet so gradually that you only notice when you finally lose your balance.