Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Adrian
I know she’s in the kitchen before I reach it.
Not because I hear her. She moves more quietly than most people, I suspect, even when she knows she's alone.
Even after less than a day, I'm beginning to get that sixth sense of her whereabouts the way I do with my clients.
I step into the kitchen and find her standing at the island with containers of food open in front of her.
Bianca’s doing. The whole house smells like garlic, tomato, baked cheese, and bread. Something rich and heavy enough. Caterina has changed since we got back from the casino.
She’s barefoot now, in lounge clothes, her hair damp and loose down her back, one hand braced against the stone countertop, the other resting near the foil she’s peeled back from the container.
For a second, she doesn’t realize I’m there.
I see it then; in the line of her shoulders and the way her head is slightly bowed.
Not just resentment.
That’s still there. It’s been there all day, sharp and present and easy enough to understand. A woman whose life has been rearranged around a threat and a man she didn’t choose and doesn’t want.
But this is something else now.
Fear. Real fear.
Not panic. Not helplessness. Just quiet, cold fear. The kind that settles in when the stakes become real and stop sounding hypothetical.
I stand there for one beat longer and feel something tight pull in my chest.
I regret it.
Not being here. Not the work. Not the decisions. Not the rules I put in place the second I understood how exposed she was.
I regret that I had to be the one to drag the reality into the light and leave it where she could no longer step around it and ignore it.
I regret Regalia. The children. The women going pale. The men’s faces hardening even more.
Everyone having to look directly at what they had all apparently spent days avoiding.
But they had to know.
All of them did.
Because families like this survive by handling things in-house. They trust blood, history, loyalty, shared language, old debts, old wounds, long familiarity. They assume they can tighten their own circle and muscle through whatever threat comes next because that is how they’ve always done it.
This time, they can’t.
This time, the threat is too close, too real.
It was aimed at Luca’s children. His heirs.
However the sender meant it, it comes down to the same thing in practice. Hurt the legacy. Hurt the future. Hurt the people carrying the name forward.
Cut into the family where it matters most.
Maybe the motive is punishment. Maybe it’s leverage. Maybe it’s some version of inheritance war, old grudge, new enemy, fractured loyalty. Doesn’t matter. The result is the same.
Luca’s children are exposed.
Their spouses are exposed.
Their children are exposed.
And whatever they think, the men in the family are not somehow outside the blast radius just because they carry guns and have more practice with violence than Caterina does.
If those men are spending all their time protecting wives, and babies, and sisters, and homes, then who is protecting them?
There aren’t enough bodies for this.
Not when the trusted circle has shrunk this badly. Not when there are so few long-time made men they still feel safe leaning on. Not when every familiar face has to be looked at twice and every routine reexamined from the ground up.
Six men cannot hold a whole bloodline together by themselves.
Not with this many houses. This many routes. This many women. This many children.
Not if the leak is somewhere already inside the walls.
I step farther into the kitchen, letting my shoes make enough sound against the floor that I don’t startle her.
She doesn't turn right away, but the fear vanishes so fast it’s almost impressive. Not gone, exactly. Buried.
What she shows me instead is the same cool irritation she’s worn all day, though it’s different now that I know what’s under it.
“There you are,” she says.
I glance at the containers. “Bianca packed enough for an army.”
“She usually does.”
Her tone is dry. Flat.
I nod once and move toward the far side of the island, not too close, not crowding. I’ve learned enough about her in one day to know that if I start taking up too much of her air, she’ll bristle on instinct even if she’s tired enough not to want to.
“How’s the perimeter?” she asks.
The question is practical. That matters.
“Secure for tonight,” I say. “I reset two camera angles on the east side, checked every exterior door myself, and added one more motion light by the side gate.”
She doesn’t react outwardly, but I catch the tiny shift in her face when I mention that I added.
Not because she thinks I overstepped. Because she's reminded once again that this is real and ongoing.
I keep my voice even.
“I’ll do another pass before I turn in.”
She looks at me then, and I can see the urge to tell me not to bother rise and die behind her eyes. Too tired to argue. Too smart to waste the effort.
Instead, she says, “You think that’s necessary?”
“Yes.”
A beat passes.
She glances back down at the food.
“The restaurant was a bit much,” she says at last.
It’s the closest she’s come to mentioning it since we left.
I don’t answer too quickly.
“Yes,” I say. “It was.”
Her fingers rest against the edge of the foil. “You scared them.”
I study her face.
Not accusation, exactly. Not entirely.
Observation. Maybe a little resentment still. Maybe a little disbelief. Maybe the first honest admission that the thing bothering her is bigger now than just my presence.
“I know,” I say.
“You didn’t enjoy that at least, did you?”
There’s sharpness in it, but less than before.
“No.”
She lifts her eyes to mine.
I hold them and give her the truth because that’s the only thing that’s worked between us so far.
“I regret that it had to happen like that,” I say. “But I don’t regret making the situation clear.”
Her mouth tightens.
“They needed to know,” I continue.
She looks away first, toward the dark window over the sink.
For a second, I think she’s going to throw back something bitter. Something about fear tactics, or dramatic outsiders, or pitching my company.
Instead, she says quietly, “I knew there was a threat.”
I say nothing.
She keeps going, still looking toward the window.
“I knew this was different. I knew it was being taken more seriously. I’m not an idiot.”
“I don't think you are.”
Her laugh is small and humorless. “But I still didn’t think…” She stops.
I let the silence sit.
When she starts again, her voice is tighter. “I didn’t think that far.”
There it is.
The children.
"It's because you're a good person," I say. "You want to believe that there are lines nobody would cross."
Her gaze snaps back to me, dark and wounded.
“You say that like it’s a weakness.” Her words are clipped. Cold.
“It’s not a weakness,” I say. “It’s just wrong.”
Her anger is sharp enough now to cut the quiet. “Wrong? To believe that there’s some decency left in the world? To not immediately jump to the conclusion that someone would hurt babies?”
“Decency is the exception, not the rule, in our world,” I say. “In our families.”
“We’re not the same,” she snaps.
“Maybe not,” I concede. “But our enemies are.”
She glares at me.
I do not flinch away from it.
“You have no children,” she says. “What would you know about it?”
I think about the families I’ve protected over the years. I think about the mothers, the fathers. I think about the things I’ve seen and the calculations I’ve had to make.
Then I think about the families I've encountered on all my tours. They may not all be the same, and not all of them have the same principles. But among the ones with similar principles, one thing does remain the same, no matter what.
“No,” I say quietly. “I don’t. But I’ve protected enough families to know that a child’s safety is the one thing a parent will compromise every other principle for.”
She looks at me for a long second.
I let her look. I don’t soften the truth.
Finally, she shakes her head and looks away.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
She puts the foil back over the chicken container. The motion is precise. Controlled. A way to anchor herself when everything else is shifting.
"No, you don't," she says, her hands busy.
“Bianca has been bringing her children into the restaurant since they were born. Olivia has been doing the same. Papà and Elena have been bringing Alessandra and Cristiano to the casino garden. It’s normal. It’s how we live. We don’t hide our children away like they’re dirty secrets.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” she says, and the anger is closer to the surface now, raw and painful. “Because that’s what it felt like in there. You talked about them like they were liabilities. Variables in a risk assessment you could either account for or discard.”
“Because that is exactly how an enemy will see them,” I say. “And the faster you accept that, the faster you can do something about it.”
She lifts her head. Her eyes are bright in the warm kitchen light.
“Do you have any idea what you’re asking? What it means to keep children from the places that are their whole lives? To make them prisoners in their own homes because some nameless coward sends a note? To make their mothers prisoners? That’s not living. That’s a siege.”
“Their mothers and fathers have already agreed, Caterina," I say. "It's you who's pushing back on this right now. Not them.”
Her expression shifts, the righteous anger faltering just enough to let the fear show through again.
“Because they’re scared,” she says, but there’s less conviction in it.
“Of course they’re scared,” I say. “They’re parents. They see danger, and they want to wrap their children up and lock the door and throw away the key."
"That can't happen," she says, walking to the cabinet and grabbing plates with sharp movements. "This situation can't last forever. It can't."
She turns back around, and the plates in her hands tremble.
"I refuse to let this become their new normal."
"It won't," I assure her.