“What if it is the target?”
The words stare back at me.
I do not like them, but I do not cross them out.
Instead, I turn to a new page.
If I am going to understand what is happening, I cannot only ask the men. They will tell me the tactical pieces. The violent pieces. The things they think matter because those are the things they are trained to see.
But women hear different things.
Staff says things to women they would never say to Vito or Nico. Wives know the routines no one writes down. Olivia knows guest services and VIP behavior. Bianca knows restaurant staff andvendors. Erica knows exactly what happened with the reroute. Elsa knows money and access. Teresa knows the note and understands the mind of someone who would write it.
And me?
I know the casino.
For the first time all morning, my frustration stops spinning in place and turns into momentum.
I grab my notebook, my phone, and my coffee, even though it has gone cold.
Then I leave the bedroom.
Halfway down the stairs, I hear Olivia’s voice from the sitting room off the kitchen.
I head toward it.
She is seated on the sofa with Isabella tucked against her side, a half-eaten piece of toast abandoned on a small plate near her knee. Roberto is not with her for once, though I doubt he is far. Olivia has a phone in one hand and a legal pad on the cushion beside her, because apparently, none of us know how to experience trauma without turning it into work.
She looks up when I appear in the doorway. She gestures me in while she finishes her phone call.
“Of course,” she says into the phone, her voice smooth and professional despite the baby half-asleep against her. “Send it to Roberto and copy me.”
Then she ends the call, sets the phone facedown, and looks at the notebook in my hand.
Then back to my face.
“Well,” she says. “That looks serious.”
“It is.”
“Good. I was afraid this was going to be an emotional check-in.”
I take another step closer. “Absolutely not.”
“Thank God.”
I feel that.
Isabella lifts her head from Olivia’s side and gives me a sleepy, solemn look.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I say softly.
She blinks at me, then drops her head back against her mother as if I have been assessed and deemed uninteresting.
Olivia strokes a hand over her daughter’s hair. “She’s been in a mood all morning.”
“She comes by it honestly.”
