Page 14 of Caterina
I move to the window, folding my arms again, staring out at the glittering pool and the sprawl of green lawn behind it.
The sun is lower now, the light deepening gold across the grass. Somewhere else in the house I can hear faint movement. Maybe Elena in the kitchen. Maybe one of the kids fussing. Maybe footsteps in the hall. Life going on while mine is being boxed in one more time.
Behind me, my father speaks again.
“This is temporary.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “That’s what everyone always says.”
“It is.”
“Until when?”
“Until we know where the breach is.”
“And if you don’t find it?”
“It’s not an option.”
The certainty in his voice should be reassuring. Instead, it just makes me tired.
I turn back toward him. “Why don’t Vito and Nico need extra security?”
The question has been sitting in me since the beginning, hot and bitter.
His face gives nothing away. “They have security.”
“You know what I mean.”
“They have measures in place.”
“So do I.”
“They are not in the same position as you.”
I stare at him for half a second.
Then I scoff.
“Oh, of course not. Because they’re men, and I’m a woman. Right?”
His eyes flash. “That is not what I said.”
“It is exactly what you said.”
“No. It is what you heard.”
“Because it’s what you meant.”
He rises from behind the desk, and even after all these years, there is still something in that movement that can make a roomfeel smaller. He is older now than he was when I was a child, but power still sits on him like it was stitched into his bones.
“They are armed men who navigate this world differently than you,” he says.
I lift my chin. “I can defend myself, and I’m armed too.”
“You don’t use those skills as much as they do. Knowing how to defend yourself in practice and pulling a trigger at a target in a gun range is not the same as applying it. And they have that experience.”
“And still, if I were a man, you wouldn’t be doing this,” I say resentfully.
