"Earlier, you said she's the only one who doesn't have a man in her house to protect her. That's true. It's because she's the only woman in the family. Every other woman has married into the family, or in Lucia's case, married out," Teresa corrects. "And even then, she's still protected by her husband's resources. But Caterina... Caterina is different. She was born into it. She is Luca's daughter. She doesn't just have the name, she is the name."
"So is Vito," I point out.
"Yes, but he's a man. He's the heir. He's being groomed to take over. His path has always been clear. Nico has his place. Roberto, Antonio, Giovanni. Even if they didn't always know exactly what they were going to do, they always knew that they were part of the core of this. They had roles to play."
"And Caterina doesn't?"
"No," Teresa says firmly. "She had to carve out her own place. She went to school for finance so she would have a place within the family business. It's not like Roberto. Whether he became an attorney or not, he had a place. She had to fight for her place at the table, to prove that she was more than just a pretty face.Come on, you know the stereotype. What everyone expected of her."
I do. I know exactly what people looking at them would expect. I've seen it a hundred times.
“You mean the beautiful daughter of a powerful man, meant to be decorative? Flighty, foolish, spending her daddy's money, marrying someone her father approved of? To be quiet and look pretty?”
"None ofusexpected that of her," Vito says, fired up in a way that tells me this is a rehash of an old argument. Or at least an old wound.
"Maybe not to that extent," Teresa says, not backing down. "But even you have to admit, there was a different expectation for her. There still is."
He doesn't argue with that.
"So, you're saying she feels like she has something to prove," I say, putting it together.
"She shouldn't," Vito fires back. "Not to us. Not to me."
"You're right. She shouldn't," Teresa agrees. "But she does. And she feels like this is another instance of being treated like a little girl who needs to be taken care of rather than the competent woman who envisioned and built the most successful division of your family business."
Teresa's voice rises in her passion. "When she got the idea for the casino, she had to fight to get your father to even hear her out. Then she had to fight for her role at the casino, even though it was her idea, because it was immediately assumed that Roberto was going to be the one in charge. She built that place from the ground up. The investors, the vendors, the regulators, she handles them all. And she is brilliant at it. She deserves every bit of respect she's earned."
"No one is arguing against that," Vito says, annoyed. "But this is about her safety. Not her ego."
"Of course, you would see it that way," Teresa says, scoffing. "It's easy for you to brush this off and call it ego, when you don't have to deal with the constant fight for respect and credibility that she does. You get it automatically."
"That's not fair." Vito's eyes are hot. "And not just because I'm the heir. I earned my position as well. I had to learn this business from the ground up, too."
"I'm not saying you didn't," Teresa says. "But no matter what the situation was, what you did or didn't do, it would never, in a million years, occur to anyone to just assign you a bodyguard, then tell you after the fact and expect you to just fall in line. It would never happen."
Until this point, I was listening silently, cataloging the information. Vito is all about protecting his sister and the family. Yes, he loves her, but her life and safety is his number one priority. Teresa is trying to protect the woman herself.
But that—the last thing that Teresa said—makes me lean forward.
"Hold on a second," I say, interrupting their continuing argument. "Back up. What do you mean 'assign a bodyguard'? She wasn't told that I was coming?"
My gaze shifts between them.
Teresa and Vito both stop and look at me. The tension that was simmering between them now shifts, directed at me. Teresa looks apologetic. Vito looks... stubborn. As if he already knows he should have done it differently, but will die before admitting it.
"No," Teresa admits. "She wasn't told."
"I'm going to her house early tomorrow morning to start my assessment, and she doesn't know I'm coming?"
"She knows," Vito says, a touch defensively. "She knows she's getting a bodyguard."
"We think, anyway," Teresa says, giving him a look. "Luca said he was telling her this afternoon. I don't know if he actually did, or how that conversation went."
I turn to Vito. I keep my voice even. "You didn't think it was important to give her more of an advance notice?"
"Advance notice would have given her more time to argue," Vito says, his logic blunt and unapologetic.
I push my chair back from the table and stand up. I'm not angry. But the situation has just shifted from difficult to potentially volatile. I can work with a difficult client. I can't work with a client who views me as an enemy combatant from the first second I step through her door.
