Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
GIA
I smell something that might be actual food and I am following that smell.
I have not eaten since yesterday. I married a man, survived a wedding night fully clothed, and I deserve a good breakfast.
I hear them before I see them.
Laughter. Real laughter, the kind that bounces off kitchen walls and means someone said something they probably shouldn't have, then a voice saying no, no, stop, I'm going to choke, and more laughter on top of that.
I stop in the doorway of the kitchen because it's the last sound I expected to find in this house this morning and I need a second to make sure I'm not imagining it.
Three women are sitting around the kitchen island the size of a small country. One is perched on the counter swinging her legs. One has both hands wrapped around a mug, shaking with suppressed laughter. One is gesturing wildly with a piece of toast and talking with her whole body.
They all look vaguely familiar and I know I must have seen them at my very unplanned wedding ceremony.
They all look up when I appear.
"Ah there you are," the one with the toast says, her face breaking into a grin that looks like she's genuinely been waiting for me. "We were wondering when you'd come down. I'm Alessia. Sit, sit, there's coffee and Marta made her good eggs, not the healthy ones, the real ones with the butter."
I have no idea who these women are but I already like Alessia.
"Bianca," says the one on the counter, lifting her mug. "And before you ask, yes, we let ourselves in, we do this every time the men have their brooding morning meetings and honestly this kitchen is better than mine so. Hope you don’t mind?”
“Uh…” I don’t know if I mind.
"Isabella." The third one slides a mug across the island toward me with a grin. "We know who you are. I’ve been dying to meet you ever since I saw you yesterday, but you looked like you had your hands full."
I sit down. I pull the mug toward me. I look at the three of them, cheerful and completely at home in someone else's kitchen, and my chest goes tight in a way I wasn't prepared for.
They're normal. Funny, loud, happy to be here, and they look genuinely at ease.
I didn’t know anyone around here would be capable of feeling any of those.
"Which one of you is married to which terrifying man?" I ask. "Because I saw them last night and I need to understand how any of you can still laugh like this."
Bianca nearly falls off the counter.
"Terrifying," Alessia repeats, delighted. "Oh, I'm telling Matteo that."
"Please don't," I say quickly, because I love my life, thank you.
"She's right though," Bianca says. "From the outside they're absolutely horrifying. I remember the first time I met Dante I thought, this man is going to be a problem for my blood pressure."
"Was he?"
"Constantly. Still is. Different reasons now." She grins into her mug. "I'm Dante’s. Isabella is Enzo’s. Alessia is Matteo's."
I look at Alessia. "You married the one in charge."
"Someone had to keep him from being insufferable full time," she says, completely unbothered. "It's basically a public service."
"They're all bark," Bianca says. "Genuinely. Terrifying to everyone else and then they come home and Dante spent forty minutes last week looking for his reading glasses that were on his own head." She pauses. "Don't tell him I told you that."
"They're protective to the point of insanity," Isabella says. "Enzo once threatened a man for standing too close to me in a line. At a bakery."
"Was the man a threat?" I ask.
"He was seventy years old and buying focaccia."
I laugh, and it surprises me, and the three of them look pleased with themselves for producing it.
These women are married to three of the scariest men I've ever seen in my life––and that is coming from the daughter of a mafia boss––and they're sitting here laughing about reading glasses and focaccia and they look, genuinely and unmistakably, loved.
Not managed. Not handled. Loved. I grew up in this world, and I have never once seen that.
"Does it get easier?" I ask, and I mean for it to sound casual and it doesn't quite come out that way.
Alessia looks at me. Not with pity. With the specific understanding of someone who has been exactly where I'm sitting.
"The world gets smaller," she says. "In a good way. It stops being this enormous terrifying thing and starts being just your life." She pauses. "It takes time."
"And a very thick skin," Bianca adds.
"And the ability to ignore them completely when they're being dramatic," Isabella says.
"Which is often," Bianca says.
"Constantly," Alessia confirms.
I drink my coffee and eat Marta's good eggs and for twenty minutes I forget, almost completely, that I am a spy in my own marriage. That there is a burner phone upstairs. That the woman across from me is married to the man my father wants me to help destroy.
Almost.
The kitchen door opens and Rafael enters.
He's changed into a jacket, which on him looks less like getting dressed and more like arming himself.
He takes in the kitchen, the three women, the egg situation, me in the middle of all of it, and his expression settles into neutral, which I'm learning means he's clocked everything in the room and filed it away neatly.
"Ladies," he says.
"He speaks," Bianca says. "Good morning, Rafael."
"Don't scare her," Isabella says, pointing at him with her mug. "We just got her comfortable and she's ours now, so whatever face you're about to make, don't."
The corner of his mouth moves. He looks at me. "I need a few minutes."
"He needs a few minutes," Alessia says to me in a stage whisper. "This is code for he has a list."
"I don't have a list," Rafael says.
"He absolutely has a list," Bianca says.
The three of them stand, unhurried, collecting their mugs with the energy of women who are leaving on their own terms and not because they've been asked to. Alessia squeezes my shoulder as she passes.
"Come find us after," she says quietly. "We'll be in the garden."
Then they're gone and it's just me and Rafael and the remains of breakfast and I already miss them.
He sits down across from me. No coffee, no food, just his hands flat on the island and his green eyes on my face and the particular quality of his attention that means I should probably listen.
"Security," he says. "We need to go through it."
Here we go.
"You have a detail," he continues. "Two men, rotating. They go where you go outside the estate."
"I met Dmitri last night," I say. "He's the head of security."
"Dmitri manages the estate. Your personal detail is different. They're assigned specifically to you." He pauses. "You don't go outside the gates without them. Non-negotiable."
I keep my face even. "Okay."
"Unsupervised outings aren't happening. Not right now, not with the current territorial situation." He holds my gaze. "There are ongoing conflicts. Active ones. Being my wife makes you a person of interest to people I have problems with."
He means I am a target. He's saying it in the most clinical way possible but that is what he means.
"So I'm under house arrest," I say.
"You're under protection."
"They sound different and feel identical."
His jaw shifts. "Gia."
"I'm just being accurate." I wrap both hands around my mug. "You're telling me I can't leave without permission and two armed men. In what world is that not confinement?"
"In the world where the alternative is you leaving alone and someone using you to get to me." His voice stays even but there's an edge underneath it now, something controlled and direct. "I've seen what that looks like. I know what it costs."
The way he says it lands differently than everything else he's said this morning.
"I understand the danger," I say, and I mean it genuinely, I grew up in this world and I know what happens to people who get careless.
"I'm not arguing about the security. I'm telling you that two armed men following me everywhere and no unsupervised outings feels like being kept, not protected, and those are two different things and I need you to understand that distinction even if the protocol stays the same. "
He looks at me for a long moment.
Say something. Argue with me. Tell me I'm wrong. Give me something to push against because you sitting there actually considering what I just said is significantly harder to deal with than if you'd just told me to stop being difficult.
"I understand the distinction," he says.
I blink.
"The protocol stays the same," he continues. "But I hear you."
That's it. No negotiation, no apology, no concession. Just: I hear you, protocol stays. It lands better than it should, which is annoying.
He heard me. He didn't fix it and he didn't dismiss it and I don't know what to do with a man who does neither.
"Fine," I say, finishing my coffee.
"The detail starts today," he says, standing. "Dmitri will introduce you."
"Great."
He picks up his jacket from the back of the chair, the meeting concluded in his head, and I sit there watching him prepare to leave this kitchen the same way he entered it, contained and purposeful and giving absolutely nothing away.
"Rafael," I say.
He stops.
"The girls said you are the more rational one." I hold his gaze. "I find that hard to believe."
He looks at me. One beat. Two.
"They talk too much," he says.
He leaves.
I sit in the kitchen alone with my empty mug and the remains of Marta's good eggs, thinking about Alessia's face when she said it takes time and Bianca laughing about reading glasses and Isabella's seventy-year-old focaccia man.
Happy, they're actually happy.
I look at the door Rafael just walked through.
I wonder what that costs in a world like this. I wonder what you have to survive first.
I go find the girls in the garden.