Elena.
“You.” She points at me. “You get one minute to brief your people. Then you come right back in and let me fix you up. Everybody else, inside. Shoo.”
Everyone else starts moving back to the living room, and Elena turns to me and holds up one finger. “One minute. I mean it. Or I let Teresa loose on you. Got it?”
Every smart man has to know when he’s been outgunned.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter Fourteen
Caterina
For one second, nobody moves.
Then Elena claps her hands once. “I said inside.”
And just like that, the foyer stirs.
People start moving because Elena told them to, which is not surprising and still somehow always impressive. Vito’s hand goes to Teresa’s back, not stopping her, just guiding her out of Adrian’s path before she can argue again.
Teresa lets herself be moved two steps, but her eyes stay fixed on Adrian as if she’s calculating how much blood he can lose before she has to physically tackle him.
I am doing the same thing.
Adrian turns toward the door again, one hand still pressed to his side, his face set into the kind of composed mask that makes me want to shake him. Or hit him. Or maybe shove him into a chair and sit on him until he stops pretending a bullet hole is a minor scheduling complication.
He is too pale.
Not enough for anyone else to panic, apparently, because everyone in this house has lost their mind and decided that gunshot wounds are just another thing to handle between phone calls and logistics.
But I see it.
I see the tightness around his mouth. The slight drag in the way he moves when he turns. The way his hand presses harder over the bandage when he thinks no one is looking.
I am looking.
I cannot seem to stop looking.
Papà’s arm is still around me, heavy and firm across my shoulders. It should comfort me. It does, in some distant part ofme that is still a child and always will be, the part that believes if my father is holding me, then nothing can get through him to hurt me.
But that part is smaller tonight.
Because something did get through.
Something got through our casino, through our security, through all the routines and layers and assumptions that were supposed to make us untouchable.
Something got close enough that Adrian bled for it.
For me.
I pull away from Papà’s hold before I can think better of it.
His hand tightens for half a second.
“Caterina,” he says quietly.
I look up at him.
