“About which part?” Olivia asks dryly. “Needing more security or Vito being a jackass?”
Roberto’s mouth twitches. “Both.”
That gets an actual laugh out of Bianca, albeit brief and strained.
I look back at Giovanni. “You don’t have to like outside protection. But if you don’t add more people, then you start cutting exposure. Fewer locations. Fewer public meals. Fewer children in shared spaces. Fewer overlapping obligations. You can’t have all of it at once.”
Giovanni’s gaze stays on mine another second, then shifts to Bianca, to the children, to the room around us.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet and flat.
“Then we make changes.”
Bianca’s expression tightens.
“Giovanni—”
“This is not a debate,” he says, and the finality in it is absolute.
He’s not talking just to her. He’s talking to the table, and by extension, the rest of the family. He may not be the don anymore, but I suspect Luca listens to him more than anyone else.
Caterina’s arms are still crossed, her posture tight. She is not happy with me right now.
Giovanni looks back at me. "What else?"
"I've got a whole list," I say.
Chapter Eight
Caterina
By the time we leave the casino, I feel worn down. Much more than usual, even on a long day like this.
But it hasn't left me exhausted or numb.
Instead, it has left me alert in all the wrong ways, like my nerves never got the message that the day is over.
My mind keeps looping over everything Adrian said in Regalia, the look on Bianca’s face when the message got through, the wayOlivia’s hand went immediately to Isabella, the way Giovanni didn’t argue so much as absorb it and start making decisions.
Then Bianca, because she is Bianca and because food is how she loves, packed us food to take home.
Us.
That in itself is still strange enough to irritate me.
Adrian drove us back in that armored SUV of his with the same unbearable calm he always displays, taking one of the routes he had mapped out earlier, changing lanes with purpose, checking mirrors constantly without making it look like a nervous habit.
I sat in the backseat with Bianca’s containers warm in my lap and told myself I was irritated by the silence and not oddly aware of it. The silence around him is not empty. It feels like work is still happening inside it.
Now it’s late.
Later than I usually let myself stay at the casino unless quarter-close is chewing through my patience or some vendor problem has snowballed into something bigger.
The house is quiet again, but not in the same way it was this morning or the way it usually is at night. Usually, it’s my quiet. Alone, peaceful. Tonight it feels occupied, watched in ways I can’t see, every shadow and doorway carrying the knowledge that I am not alone in it.
I took a shower the second I got home anyway.
Partly because I wanted to wash off the day. The casino, the stale air of meetings, the restaurant conversation still buzzing under my skin uncomfortably, the ride home, Adrian’s constant presence, the way his gaze seems to move through walls and rooms and lines of sight instead of simply looking at things like other people do.
