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.
