Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Caterina
“What situation with Erica and Emma?”
The words come out sharper than I intend, almost a demand, but I don’t care. My heart is still banging too hard against my ribs from the note, from the image it conjures. And now something has happened to Erica and Emma?
And, damn it all to hell, no one told me about it?
Adrian is standing a few feet away on the deck, dark against the spill of kitchen light behind him, hands at his sides, posture easy in that impossible way of his that never actually means ease.
The night air is cool against my damp hair and hot face. Somewhere beyond the yard, something rustles softly in the dark. The sound makes me think of movement where I can’t see it.
I hate that too.
His expression doesn’t change, but I can feel the shift in him. He knows this is new information, but he wasn't expecting it to be. It’s subtle, but I can tell from the stillness, the way he holds for a moment before speaking.
“Two weeks ago, on their way back from a doctor’s appointment,” he says finally. "They were rerouted at the last minute."
I stare at him.
“Rerouted?”
He nods once. “Last minute. Something changed, and the driver took a different route than planned.”
“And?”
His pause is brief, but I feel it like a hand tightening around the back of my neck.
"And there was a vehicle positioned on the new route that forced them to a stop."
For a second, I just look at him.
I hear the words. I understand the words. But my mind does not want to understand them.
“A stop,” I repeat, and even to my own ears my voice sounds strange. Thin.
“Yes.”
My stomach drops.
“Were they hurt?”
“No.”
The answer comes fast enough that I know he anticipated the question before I asked it.
I get one shaky breath in.
“No. Their driver managed to get out of it before anything could happen,” he continues.
The deck railing is cool under my hand when I grip it.
I didn’t know this.
Not just that something happened. I didn’t know anything at all.
No one told me.
Not Papà. Not Vito. Not Nico. Not Teresa.
No one.
Anger flashes up so hot it almost scorches the fear away for one blessed second.
“They didn’t tell me.”
Adrian says nothing. He doesn’t need to.
We both know I’m right.
I laugh once, but there’s no humor in it. “Of course they didn’t.”
My mind is already moving ahead, trying to build the image anyway.
Erica, visibly pregnant, probably tired, Emma strapped into her car seat with absolutely no idea that someone had decided a child and her mother were acceptable leverage.
A car positioned to force them to stop. The calculation in that. The intention.
God.
I press my palm harder into the rail.
“Was it random?” I ask, though I already know the answer, or he would not be standing here looking at me like this. “Or do they know it wasn’t?”
“They know.”
I close my eyes for one second.
When I open them again, he is still standing there, and this is still life.
“How?”
“The route change wasn’t broad knowledge,” he says. “Very few people knew about it. That, coupled with access to a private garage that holds family vehicles, has your father convinced that there’s a mole in the ranks."
Erica and Emma.
The thought makes something cold and crawling move down my spine.
I wrap both arms around myself against the night air, though the cold is not really from the air at all.
"If someone tried to force Erica and Emma to a stop, then why was my family shocked when you brought up the idea that they might come after the children?" I ask. "Why was it only after you brought it up that Giovanni made the decision that the children would stay home?"
Adrian considers for a moment how to answer. "Likely, they thought what happened was more of a message than anything else. Not that they were being careless with the children," he explains, "but they're just not being safe enough."
“And they kept all of this from me,” I say.
This time, there is no anger in it at first. Just shock. Then, inevitably, anger follows.
Of course they did.
Of course they all sat in rooms and discussed routes and garages and notes and children and leverage and decided what I could handle later. What I needed to know. What version of the danger should be portioned out to me and when.
My mouth tightens so hard it hurts.
“I’m going to kill Vito.”
Adrian’s voice is monotone. “Get in line.”
That should not be funny.
It is not funny.
And still, something in me jerks in brief, incredulous acknowledgment before the fear crushes it again.
I look away from him, out over the yard, dark now except for the lights he adjusted and added. The side gate glows more clearly than usual. A stretch of grass. Shrubs. Fence line. All the ordinary pieces of my home, rearranged by knowledge into possible entries, exits, sight lines, vulnerabilities.
This morning, the house felt invaded by his presence.
Tonight it feels invaded by information.
I hate that I know what to look for now.
I hate even more that I understand why he sees it everywhere.
“They were right,” I say, though I’m not sure whether I mean Papà, Vito, Adrian, all of them, or none.
Adrian doesn’t answer right away.
Then: “Yes.”
I turn back to him.
No pity. No triumph. No satisfaction in being proven right.
Just yes.
That strips the last of my resistance down to something much smaller and much less useful.
I look at him and realize I am suddenly, intensely tired.
Not sleepy.
Bone-tired. The kind that gets into your chest and behind your eyes and makes everything feel heavier than it did an hour ago.
“They should have told me.”
“Yes.”
That one lands hard, because he doesn’t argue it. Doesn’t tell me they were trying to protect me. Doesn’t make excuses for them. He doesn’t even soften it.
Just yes.
I swallow against the ache rising in my throat and look away again before my face does something humiliating and starts leaking tears.
“They keep doing that,” I say quietly. “Making decisions, arranging everything, deciding what I can know and when I can know it. As if I’m supposed to be grateful for being handled.”
The words sound bitter, but they are also too honest to call back.
“Do they really think I’m so stupid or fragile that I can’t handle the truth?” I ask, shaking my head. “Or is it that they don't trust me not to… what? Panic? Make things worse? Do something unpredictable? What is it they think I’m going to do?”
Adrian takes a step closer to the railing, not crowding me, just shifting position on the deck.
“I don’t think they think you’re stupid, Caterina,” he says. “Or fragile.”
I glance at him.
“I think they think you’re not supposed to be in this fight at all,” he says.
"It is my fight because it is my family," I snap.
"What I mean," he says, "is that your uncles and your brothers were all destined for this life.
The moment they were born, it was written into their future.
It's all they've ever known, all they were ever going to do.
And yes, it's because they're men. You can slap a sexist label on it if you want. But this is tradition in the mafia."
He pauses, looking out over the yard.
“And like you said before, the other women in your family have all married into it.
This is not a life they grew up in. But it is a life they chose.
And they have their roles. Yes. They have jobs and successful businesses, but they are also the wives and mothers of the next generation. Again, more traditional roles."
I am not sure where he is going with this, but I do not interrupt.
"Now, your older sister, she chose to leave it altogether, and that takes her out of the picture for the most part.
And then there's you," he says. "You were born into it, but you weren't groomed for it.
You haven't married into it or given any indication that you want to, from what I can tell.
As far as tradition is concerned, you've blown it out of the water.
You may not be involved in the violent nitty-gritty of it, but you are involved in the family business.
You have an important, high-level position.
They have never had to deal with a woman like you before. "
He looks at me directly.
"And I think it scares them," he says.
"Me?" I say. "Scares them? I'm their daughter, their sister. How could I possibly scare them?"
"Because you're not playing the role they expected you to.
Because you've carved out a space for yourself in their world that tradition doesn't dictate," he explains.
"Your father may be more modern than some of the old-world families, but he still looks to them for an expectation of how things should be.
"You're the daughter. You were meant to be protected from it. Not brought into it."
It hits me, then, the whole ugly truth of it. Of how my family sees me.
I've always resented the way they try to shield me, but I'd always chalked it up to them being overprotective, or them being sexist, or them being possessive of the women in the family.
But it's more than that.
It's fear.
They're afraid of me.
Not because they think I'm going to betray them, or because they think I'm going to get hurt, but because they don't know what to do with me.
And when people don't know what to do with something, they either try to control it or they try to get rid of it.
"They don't know how to handle me," I say, the words a quiet revelation. "So they try to manage me."
"Exactly," he says. "They love you. But they don't understand you. And their fear of not understanding you, of not being able to control the situation, is what's driving them to keep you in the dark."
I think about all the times I've felt frustrated, all the times I've felt like they were treating me like a child. All the times I've felt like they were holding me back. And now I see it for what it is.
Fear.
"I've been fighting the wrong battle," I say, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow.