Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Adrian
Twenty-four hours.
Exactly.
I know because I’ve been counting.
I have been watching the clock like a hostile witness since Caterina Conti stood in this room with her arms crossed, threatened me with Teresa and my mother, and ordered me to stay in bed for one day.
One day.
I agreed. I still don’t know why.
That’s a lie.
I know exactly why.
Because she looked exhausted and angry and humiliated and worried enough that winning the argument would have cost more than staying put.
Because she had almost died the night before.
Because I had kissed her back, and if I had pushed her on anything after that, it would have felt like using the wrong kind of leverage.
So I stayed.
It nearly killed me.
Not literally, though everyone in this house has spent the past day acting like movement might finish what the bullet started. The wound is stable. Sore as hell, yes. Stiff. Hot around the stitches. Angry every time I breathe too deeply or turn too fast. But stable.
Dr. Alfonsi came back this morning, checked the dressing, again recommended imaging, again got the answer he expected, and again looked at me like he was deciding whether professional ethics allowed him to sedate a patient against his will.
Elena supported that possibility more than I liked.
Teresa actively encouraged it.
This house is a strange place to be injured.
That is the part I did not expect.
I’ve recovered in field hospitals, military barracks, safe houses, cheap motels, back rooms, once in the rear seat of an armored vehicle with a medic telling me to stop bleeding on his boots. I know how to be injured in places where injury is common, even expected.
Luca Conti’s house is not one of those places.
The room is too clean. The sheets too soft. The food too good. The women too determined. The men too silent, standing in doorways like they are all weighing what they owe me and what they might resent about owing it.
And the whole family is under this roof.
All of them.
A house full of Contis is not quiet even when everyone tries to be.
Doors open and close. Babies fuss. Women murmur.
Men take calls behind half-shut doors. Footsteps pass my room at regular intervals, some cautious, some heavy enough to be deliberately announcing themselves.
Some are the running steps of the young.
Nobody is fully at rest. Nobody fully leaves.
They took turns coming in to see me.
Not formally.
No one said that was what they were doing.
But I'm not an idiot, and I know that's what it was.
Elena came most often, bringing food, checking water, checking the bandage with the authority of a woman who has decided medical training is less important than competence and stubbornness.
Teresa came with endless questions. Fever? Chills? Dizziness? Shortness of breath? Pain level? Lying?
She asks that last one every time and somehow makes it sound like a diagnostic category.
Even Vito came.
Once to stand at the foot of the bed and ask, “You alive?”
I said, “Apparently.”
He nodded, said, “Good,” and left.
The second time, he brought coffee.
That may have been Teresa’s influence.
Some of the visits brought tears, and some brought food. I preferred the food over the tears, but I could deal with both.
Everyone came.
Except Caterina.
That was expected.
It was also not.
She made her position clear yesterday morning. Twenty-four hours. Rest. Medication. Off duty. Bed.
She delivered the order, won the argument, and disappeared.
Efficient.
Cowardly, maybe.
No.
That’s unfair.
Caterina is not a coward. She is embarrassed. Angry at herself. Probably angry at me. Definitely determined to pretend nothing happened in the dark between the moment she walked into my room and the moment she walked out, as if the floor was burning under her feet.
Fine.
I let her.
Just like I told Teresa I would.
That does not mean I liked it.
I didn’t ask for her. I didn’t send for her. I didn’t let myself call through the wall or request an update I did not need just to see whether she would answer.
I stayed in bed. I did my job from the room. I briefed my team by phone or when they came by. I took reports. I reviewed perimeter changes. I gave instructions.
And I did not once ask where Caterina was.
Now the twenty-four hours are over.
Officially.
I am out of bed.
Getting dressed was a slow, humiliating process that took twice as long as it should have and involved more pain than I will admit to anyone.
The dark sweatpants were easy enough. The black T-shirt was worse.
Lifting my arm pulled at the stitches, and for a second, I stood bent over beside the bed, breathing through the kind of hot, white pain that makes the room narrow with black bleeding around the edges.
I managed.
The shirt is on. The bandage is covered. My side feels like it is on fire, but it is not bleeding through.
Good enough.
My boots are by the chair where someone placed them after confiscating them yesterday. Elena, probably. I am halfway through tying the second one when Teresa makes a disgusted sound from the bed.
“You are insufferable.”
I glance up. “You’ve mentioned.”
“I thought repetition might help.”
“It hasn’t.”
She came in while I was putting on the first boot and now sits cross-legged on the mattress
Cristiano is beside her, wedged safely against her thigh with one of her hands always near him, even when she’s glaring at me. He is sitting with that unstable baby posture that means he might tip over at any second.
Six months old. Dark hair in a wild little mess. Deep Conti eyes that make the resemblance to Vito impossible to ignore.
He has a soft fabric ring clutched in one fist and is currently chewing on it with total commitment.
I only saw him briefly the night I got into town.
He woke up briefly after dinner, but had fallen asleep again shortly after Teresa fed him. This is the first real time I’ve spent with him.
It is strange.
Not because I don’t like children. I don’t have a problem with them. They are unpredictable, loud, structurally fragile, and terrible at following instructions, but none of that is their fault.
Cristiano looks up from his ring and stares at me.
Very serious.
Like he is taking my measure and finding me questionable.
Fair.
I look back at him.
He blinks once, then lifts the ring toward me like an offering or a threat.
Hard to say.
Teresa glances down at him and smiles before she can stop herself. It changes her whole face.
That is still new to me.
Not Teresa smiling. I’ve seen that. But this version of it. Softer and less guarded, pulled out of her on instinct. Motherhood has changed her in ways she probably does not even realize yet.
Or maybe she does. She always notices more than others.
I finish tying the boot and sit back carefully.
Cristiano gurgles.
The sound is small and meaningless and pulls my attention back to him.
This child is the heir to the Conti legacy. The oldest son of the oldest son.
And he has no idea.
That’s the part that’s so strange.
He has no idea what he was born into.
No idea what kind of empire he is set to inherit. No idea that men have killed and died for the blood that runs through him before he could hold his own head up. No idea that people were repositioning guards around him before he knew what danger was.
Right now, his world is Teresa’s hand on his back, the toy in his mouth, the soft blanket under him, and whatever sound I apparently make when I stand too quickly because his eyes snap to me the second pain catches in my side.
Teresa notices too.
“Sit back down.”
“No.”
“Adrian.”
“No.”
Cristiano bangs the fabric ring against the mattress, delighted by the sound.
Teresa looks at him. “Don’t encourage him.”
He does it again.
I smile. “He has your timing,” I say.
“He has Vito’s stubbornness.”
“And I suppose none of yours.”
She looks at me dryly. “You can criticize me when you are not actively competing for the ’most stubborn’ award in the house.”
“I’m winning.”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s why everyone is annoyed.”
I stand fully and wait for the pain to either subside or put me back down. It settles into a hard burn along my side and waits.
Manageable.
Teresa tracks the whole thing and says nothing for once.
Maybe because Cristiano has just discovered his own foot, which apparently requires intense concentration.
I reach for my watch from the nightstand and fasten it around my wrist.
“What’s the current perimeter?” I ask.
She sighs. “You know I don’t know that.”
“You know enough.”
“I know your men are outside. Giovanni’s checking out the back of the property. Antonio has been on the phone on and off since yesterday. Roberto and Luca are in the study. Vito is off with Nico somewhere, checking something out.”
“That’s not a perimeter report.”
“That is a family report. It’s what you get from me.”
Cristiano makes another noise and drops the ring. It rolls toward the edge of the bed. I catch it before it falls, then hold it out to him.
He looks at it.
Then at me.
Then at it again.
Suspicious.
Teresa laughs softly. “He gets that from Vito, too.”
“He has good instincts.”
“Don’t encourage either of them.”
Cristiano finally takes the ring from my hand. His fingers close around my thumb for half a second before he pulls away.
Tiny grip. Warm. Completely unaware.
Something about that is worse than any of the rest of it.
I think about the note. The Conti tree. Branches. Pruned.
I think about Erica and Emma’s car. About the staged fight. About Caterina barefoot in a stairwell while men fired behind her. About this baby sitting on a guest bed with a toy in his fist, carrying a legacy he cannot understand and becoming a target he did not choose.
My jaw tightens.
Teresa sees it.
“What?” she asks.
I shake my head once. “Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at my son like he’s a case file.”
I look at her then.
The softness is gone from her face.
Good. She should be hard about this.
“I’m looking at him like he’s part of the threat picture.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s what I don’t like.”
“You asked me here.”
“Yes. To protect Caterina. Not to stare at my baby like you’re calculating how someone could get to him.”
“I'm only calculating it because someone else likely is as well.”
Her mouth tightens. She hates that answer. She also knows it’s true.
The silence stretched between us for a second.
Cristiano, unaware that he is the subject of one of the worst conversations his mother could be forced to have, shoves the ring back into his mouth.
Teresa looks down at him, and her voice changes when she speaks again.
“I know what he is in this family.”
I don’t answer.
“He’s Vito’s son,” she says. “Luca’s grandson. The heir, or whatever.” Her hand smooths over Cristiano’s hair. “But he’s also just my baby.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says quietly. “You don’t.”
She is right. I don’t; not really.
I have protected children. I have carried children out of buildings. I have stood outside nursery doors and watched parents make impossible decisions. I know the logistics, the tactics, the pressure points.
I do not know what it is to look at a child who is now the center of my world.
Teresa does.
Caterina understood that the other night, too, even without children of her own. That was part of what broke through her anger. The children, the innocent parts of a guilty world.
I look back at Cristiano.
He is trying to eat the ring sideways now.
It is not going well.
“I know enough to take it seriously,” I say.
Teresa exhales, some of the anger leaving her shoulders. “I know you do.”
A knock sounds at the door.
Teresa turns. “Come in.”
Vito opens it.
He takes in the scene in one fast sweep. Me standing. Boots on, weapon holstered.
His dark gaze narrows.
“You were told twenty-four hours.”
“It’s been twenty-four hours.”
“Barely.”
“Still counts.”
Teresa mutters, “Unfortunately.”
Vito steps inside and closes the door behind him. “Luca wants everyone in the study.”
Vito’s mouth twitches, but only for half a second before his attention drops to Cristiano. The change in him is immediate. Not soft, exactly. Vito Conti does not do soft in any way that announces itself. But something in his face loosens.
Cristiano notices him and lights up.
A full-body baby reaction. Arms jerking, legs kicking, ring abandoned in favor of reaching. A sound of delight shrieks out of his mouth.
Vito crosses the room and picks him up. The baby grabs at his shirt, fist closing in the fabric, and makes a babbling noise.
The heir in his father’s arms.
Vito kisses the side of his son’s head, then looks at me over him. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Let me rephrase. Can you walk without reopening anything and making the women in this house blame me?”
“Probably.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Teresa points at me. “See? Insufferable.”
Vito adjusts Cristiano against his chest. “I noticed.”
For a second, looking at them together, I understand Vito better than I did when I first arrived. Kidnapper, heir, killer, yes.
But also husband, father, protector. The man Teresa came back pregnant and in love with. The man I came here, partly, to judge.
I did judge him.
Still am.
But there is no performance in the way he holds his son.
No calculation. Just a father holding a son.
Vito’s eyes move over me again. “Caterina is already downstairs.”
I keep my expression still. “Good.”
Teresa watches me.
Vito watches me too, but for different reasons.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Vito says.
I do not believe him.
From the look on Teresa’s face, neither does she.
I reach for the folded overshirt Elena left on the chair and pull it on carefully, slowly, buttoning it just enough to cover the holster and the bandage. The movement hurts. I keep that off my face as much as possible.
Vito notices anyway.
So does Teresa.
Cristiano does not.
He is chewing on Vito’s shirt now.
When I’m done, I take one steadying breath and nod toward the door.
“Let’s go.”
Teresa rises with Cristiano’s discarded ring in hand and gives me one last assessing look. “Slowly.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
She rolls her eyes.
Vito opens the door and steps out first with Cristiano. Teresa follows at my side.
The house is brighter now. Noisier. More awake with the voices below not bothering to stay hushed.
Just a normal family. With armed guards outside and a weapon on each man inside.
And somewhere downstairs, Caterina is waiting.
Or avoiding me.
Probably both.
I start toward the stairs, each step pulling at the stitches in my side, and remind myself of the line that still exists, whether or not she crossed it last night.
Whether or not I crossed it with her.
Client. Principal. Protection.
Complication.
The words should keep me focused and on task.
I'm not entirely sure that they do.