Which means Teresa probably knows too, because those women communicate in ways that should be studied by intelligence agencies.
The recovery has been easier than it should have been because Caterina has done something I did not expect.
She listened.
Not always and not pleasantly. Definitely not without commentary, argument, and the occasional threat to fire me.
But she listened.
She is not in the casino every single day now. She still works too much, answers too many emails, and takes too many calls from people who seem to think an attempted assassination should have no effect on response time, but she does what she can out of the house.
She has also allowed me to increase coverage on her property.
That one cost me.
No, not financially.
But with patience.
She hates feeling watched. She hates seeing my people at her gates, in her camera feeds, near her garage, along her route.
She hates that the first thing she sees when she pulls into her own driveway is proof that someone forced her home to become a protected site instead of a private one.
What should be her retreat at the end of the day.
But she said yes.
For me.
That is the part I try not to think about while I am standing in her office and watching her work.
It would be easier if there had been another incident.
That sounds wrong. It is wrong.
I do not want another attack. I do not want another note, another rerouted vehicle, another staged fight, another moment where Caterina is in the open and someone is going after her.
But the quiet can be worse in some ways.
No more incidents since the casino.
No attempts on the homes, no threatening packages, no suspicious vehicles close enough to trigger a response. No new notes or obvious tails.
After one month of the quiet, some of the Contis have started to relax.
Not fully or stupidly. This family does not relax the way normal families do.
Their version of relaxed still includes guns close at hand and vehicles checked before use. But the shoulders have lowered. The conversations have grown less clipped.
The women have started taking the children outside again under supervision.
The men no longer look like they are thirty seconds from ordering everyone into armored vehicles.
The assumption that the enemy missed their shot and retreated.
I do not share it.
The silence puts me on edge.
