I knew it the second she opened her mouth in that church. Most women in her position would have gone quiet, kept their heads down, made themselves easy to manage. Gia De Luca looked at her father in front of three hundred witnesses and said no like it was the most natural word she'd ever spoken.
I've been thinking about it the whole drive home.
The convoy pulls through the estate gates just after nine, headlights cutting across the tree-lined approach, gravel crunching under three vehicles' worth of Brotherhood security. I don't look at the house when we arrive. I've lived here eleven years and I stopped seeing it a long time ago. What I look at is her.
She steps out of the car and stops dead.
She takes in the estate the way a person takes in a storm front, calculating the distance before impact. Behind the formal line of staff, standing in the shadows where the light doesn’t reach, are Matteo, Dante, and Enzo.
The facade is lit from below, all pale stone and dark windows, and the staff are already lined up at the entrance because Carla runs this house like a military operation and always has.
Twelve people in a neat row, formal, waiting.
And behind them, off to the side, not lined up, not performing anything, just standing there in the way that men like them stand, are Matteo, Dante, and Enzo.
I see the exact moment she notices them.
Her step doesn't falter. I'll give her that.
But something in her posture changes, just slightly, the way people shift when they've registered something their body has classified as dangerous before their brain has finished processing it.
Matteo has that effect on people who know what he is. All three of them standing together in the dark, watching a woman they don't know arrive at a house she didn't choose, is something else entirely.
"They don't bite," I say, low, just for her.
She doesn't look at me. "You really don't know that," she says, and her voice is steady, which under the circumstances is impressive.
Her chin comes up.
Stubborn.
Carla, sixty-two years old and approximately five feet tall, steps forward as we reach the entrance. She runs my household with an exactness that would make military generals feel inadequate. She takes one look at Gia and I can see her make a decision about her in four seconds flat, the kind Carla makes about people and is never wrong about.
"Mrs. Caruso." She says it like it's already true, which it is. "Welcome home. I'm Carla, head of household. Anything you need, you come to me first."
Gia blinks. Like the word welcome threw her entirely.
"Thank you," she says. "Carla."
I introduce her to Dmitri, head of security, who greets her with a nod that from him constitutes a formal welcome address. Then to Marco, her personal driver, who actually smiles, which from Marco is practically a declaration of love.
She shakes each hand. Meets each set of eyes. Holds herself together and doesn't let the seams show.
Good,I think, and I leave it at that.
I turn to Carla. "Show her upstairs. The master bedroom wing." A pause. "Get her settled in."
Carla doesn't react to this. She just nods, which is why I've kept her for eleven years.
Gia does react. Just slightly. Her eyes flick to mine and there's something in them that I can't name, and then she looks away.
"I have business," I tell her. "Get some rest."
She looks like she wants to say something. She doesn't.
She follows Carla through the entrance and I watch her go until she turns the corner at the top of the stairs and disappears, and then I stand there for three seconds doing nothing before I go find my brothers in everything but blood.
They're already in the study when I get there. Matteo at the window, glass in hand, wearing the expression he gets when he's been thinking for a while and none of it has been good. Dante in the chair nearest the fireplace, jacket off. Enzo at the drinks cabinet, because Enzo is constitutionally incapable of being anywhere else.
