Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Caterina
Basement.
The word hits me a second before the fear does.
Not because I do not understand what Adrian is doing. I understand immediately. His voice has changed. His body has changed. The man who sat beside me through dinner, answering Sofia’s questions with careful patience and pretending to be relaxed at my table, is gone.
This is the man from the casino floor.
The man who saw danger before anyone else did.
The man who dragged me through chaos while I thought he had lost his mind.
My stomach twists.
Not again.
But it is again.
It is happening again.
Lucia is already on her feet, Gabriel clutched against her chest. Nick has Sofia and Charlotte between him and their mother, his face calm in a way that is clearly for the girls and not because he feels calm.
Teresa has Cristiano in her arms now, one hand cupped protectively over the back of his head.
Vito is beside her, every line of his body ready for violence.
Nico has Emma against his chest with one arm and Erica close with the other.
Adrian does not wait for an argument. He turns, gun low, and leads us out of the dining room.
He is a soldier now, leading us to safety.
As we walk out, napkins fall to the floor. The flowers I arranged for Sofia and Charlotte sit bright and useless in the center of the table, yellow roses glowing under warm light, while the entire evening tears apart around us.
I follow because there is no choice.
There is no room for questions now.
My house feels different as we move through it.
I know every hallway. Every doorway. Every piece of art on the walls. Every polished surface and carefully chosen detail. I know the turns from the dining room to the side hall, the narrow corridor past the service pantry, the door that leads down to the lower level.
But now Adrian is seeing my house in a way I never did.
Angles. Exposure. Cover. Choke points. Escape routes.
He moves us as if he has already done this in his head a hundred times, maybe more. Adrian is leading us, but somehow keeping all of us covered at the same time. I don’t know how.
The children are too quiet.
That frightens me more than crying would have.
Sofia grips Nick’s hand with both of hers. Charlotte is pressed close to Lucia’s side, eyes wide and bright. Emma is looking around with her little red cheeks serious now, as if she knows something has changed. Cristiano is making soft, unsettled sounds against Teresa.
“Keep moving,” Adrian says.
No one argues.
The basement door opens with a soft click that sounds too loud in the stillness.
Adrian goes first, checks the stairwell, then motions us down.
The stairs feel endless.
I have been in this basement a thousand times. Storage. wine room, utility area. The room I told Adrian he could use for whatever security setup he wanted when he first insisted on more coverage at my house.
I have not been down here much since that first week.
I knew he brought in a desk.
I knew he added monitors.
I knew he moved some equipment in because I signed the invoice and complained about the cost just to annoy him.
I did not know this.
At the far end of the basement, past the wine storage and utility closet, Adrian opens a door I do not recognize.
The old wooden door that separated a small storage room from the rest of the basement is now a steel door.
My steps slow despite everything.
There’s a keypad and a manual lock and everything. Even the trim has been changed to metal framing sunk into the wall.
“What the hell?” I whisper.
I get no answer, of course.
He keys in a code, scans the hall once more, then shoves the door open.
“Inside.”
We file in.
And I stop again.
For one wild second, even through the fear, I am amazed.
The room is not the plain basement office I expected. It is not just a desk, monitors, and a few pieces of equipment.
It is a command room.
A small one, yes, but still.
There is a desk near the far wall, a wall of monitors above it, camera feeds covering every inch of my property.
The front gate, driveway, garage, rear lawn, garden wall, kitchen access, side entrance, perimeter trees, interior hall outside the basement.
There are even emergency supplies stacked neatly against one wall.
There are new panels on the walls, too, reinforced.
This is not an office.
This is a damn bunker.
He built a panic room in my basement.
Of course he did.
I should have known he would do something like this. Adrian Donato does not just set up a desk. He sets up a fallback position, hardens the walls, reinforces the door, installs feeds, and says nothing because apparently that counts as normal behavior in his mind.
The room is not big.
That becomes obvious very quickly.
It was not designed for this many people. It was probably designed for me, Adrian, maybe one or two others. Not four women, one of whom is pregnant, four men who are built bigger than average, and many small children.
We fit anyway because we have to.
Nick pulls Sofia and Charlotte close beside Lucia.
Erica takes one of the few chairs while Nico keeps Emma in his arms. Teresa sits in the chair nearest the wall with Cristiano held tightly to her chest. Vito stays standing near Teresa.
Lucia rocks Gabriel automatically, even though his eyes are wide open now.
I end up near the desk, because that is where Adrian goes.
He shuts the door behind us.
The sound is heavy, and a lock slides into place. Then another.
For one second, the room feels airless.
“What is this?” Vito asks, voice low.
“A safe room,” Adrian says, already at the monitors.
“Typically, I would say this is overkill, but I’m having a hard time just now,” Lucia says hoarsely.
I stare at the screens over Adrian’s shoulder.
At first, I cannot process what I am seeing.
Too many angles. Too much movement. Dark lawn. Shadows. Security lights. The gate camera flickers once, then stabilizes. The rear access camera catches a shape moving fast. The garage feed shows one of Adrian’s people on the ground.
My heart clenches so hard it hurts.
“Oh, God.”
He is not moving.
I do not know his name.
I should know his name.
He is lying half on his side near the garage entrance, one arm out, his weapon several feet away.
Maybe he is alive.
Maybe he is not.
Another feed shows two bodies near the side gate. One I do not recognize in black tactical clothing. One of Nick’s security, I think, because of the earpiece and jacket. They are both down.
A third feed shows movement.
Fast.
Violent.
Two of Adrian’s people are not down. They are fighting.
One woman near the rear patio fires twice and ducks behind the stone wall.
Another of his people comes in from the left, drops low, and takes down a man coming over the side of the landscaping.
There is no sound in the room except our breathing and the low hum of equipment, but I can see the recoil, see the flash, see the bodies move.
Nick is beside me now.
His face is expressionless, but his jaw is hard enough to cut glass.
“There,” he says, pointing to a feed near the front approach. “That’s mine.”
One of his security team is on the ground near the front drive.
Another is dragging himself behind a vehicle.
Definitely alive.
For now.
My stomach turns.
More movement at the edge of the lawn catches my eye.
Not ours.
Them.
They are on my property. Marching through the garden I love so much.
Inside the perimeter of my house.
Where my siblings are. Where the children are. Where I put yellow roses on the table because I wanted to see the girls smile.
“How did they get in?” I whisper.
Adrian does not answer.
His hands move over the panel. He changes feeds, zooms, switches angles. His face is colder than I have ever seen it.
Then the monitors go black.
All of them.
The room plunges into a horrible dimness lit only by the emergency strip along the floor and the small red glow of equipment.
Adrian curses.
It is low and vicious.
He hits a sequence of buttons on the console.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
“I have a backup power source,” he says, more to himself than to us. “It should have kicked in.”
He tries another switch.
The monitors stay black.
“Adrian,” I say.
He is already moving.
Toward the door.
The realization hits me so fast my body reacts before my mind catches up. I step in front of him.
“No.”
His eyes come to mine.
Not Adrian from the bedroom. Not the man who smiles against my throat. Not the man who touches me like I am something precious.
The soldier.
“Move, Caterina.”
“No. You are not going out there.”
“My people are out there.”
The words are flat. Final.
“I know,” I say, my voice breaking despite every effort to hold it steady. “I saw.”
“I can’t leave them like that.”
Nick steps forward immediately. “Neither can I.”
Adrian’s gaze cuts to him. “You stay here.”
Nick’s expression hardens. “Those are my people, too.”
“I know.”
“Then you know I’m not sitting in a locked room while they’re out there getting killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Adrian says, and there is nothing soft in it despite the words. “But you have no formal combat training. You go out there, you become another liability I have to protect.”
Nick’s eyes flash.
Lucia’s face goes pale. “Nick.”
He looks at her, at Gabriel in her arms, at Sofia and Charlotte pressed against her sides.
That stops him in a way Adrian’s words do not.
But Vito is already moving.
“No,” Adrian says. “Absolutely not.”
Nico sets Emma into Erica’s arms and turns toward Adrian. “I’m not staying in here.”
Adrian’s jaw tightens. “Yes, you are.”
“You can say that to him,” Vito says, jerking his chin toward Nick. “You can’t say it to us.”
“I can.”
Vito’s eyes go dangerous. “Careful.”
“No,” Adrian says. “You be careful. Those people out there are not just here for Caterina. They are not just here for the women and children.”
My breath stops.
Adrian’s gaze moves from Vito to Nico, then to Lucia, then to me.
“They’re here for all of you.”
No one speaks.
The silence is brutal.
Adrian continues, voice hard. “They attacked tonight because somehow, they knew all four of you were here. They knew how to get onto the property undetected, take out our heads of security, and take the monitors and backup power source out. This wasn’t done on a whim, and it isn't just an attack. This is a full-scale assault. These people are here to wipe out as much of Luca Conti’s family line as they can in one go, and that’s exactly what they mean to do. ”