Copyright © 2017 by Bethany-Kris. All Rights Reserved.

PROLOGUE

“It’s Catherine, right? Catherine Marcello.”
The click-clack of heels on hardwood floor echoed to Catherine’s spot on the floor of the sitting room. She continued her staring contest with the ceiling. It seemed to be the only thing lately that wasn’t constantly hovering, asking questions, or demanding answers.
“You were aware I was coming to chat with you today, weren’t you?”
Catherine’s gaze slid to the side, but the rest of her didn’t move an inch. It was just enough for her to discern a tall woman, likely in her mid-forties or slightly older, with wild red curls and warm blue eyes. She was dressed in black skinny jeans, sky-high heels, and a flowy red blouse. The woman must have been who Catherine’s father meant when he said they would have a guest, and she should get her ass up off the floor.
Clearly, Catherine didn’t follow that advice.
“Aren’t people like you required to wear … I don’t know, pant suits or something?”
The woman glanced down at her attire. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Doesn’t seem very therapist-ish to me in skinny jeans and stiletto heels, that’s all.”
“Ah, I see.” She smiled lightly, and took a seat on the end of the chaise near Catherine’s head. “Well, I wouldn’t call this dressing down, but since you’re a special case, I figured I could dress how I was comfortable.”
“Is that what we’re going to call this? A special case?”
“What would you call it, Catherine?”
“My father thinks I’m crazy, and here you are.”
“Okay, let’s start with that, for one. Your father doesn’t think you’re crazy. He’s very concerned about you, and for good reason, considering what he told me.”
“You know I’m not going to talk about what happened, right?” Catherine asked.
The woman looked at her watch. “That’s a shame because I’ve got the next two hours cleared to sit here and chat with you. Your house is empty. I asked your parents to leave, and it doesn’t seem like you have anything else better to do except stare at the ceiling. That’s a bore, by the way, but if that’s what you want to do this session, we’ll do it.”
Catherine’s gaze narrowed. “This session.”
“Expect there to be a few more.”
Awesome.
“You actually got them to leave?” Catherine dared to ask.
The woman’s lips quirked up at the edges, and she nodded. “I don’t think they’ve gone far, likely for a walk around the property. It’s a beautiful home. Next time, pick a new room for me to see.”
Again with the more sessions thing.
“They have this house on lockdown,” Catherine pointed out. “I’m not allowed to leave. You can see why I would be surprised that they actually left while you are here, even if it is just to walk around the property.”
“What would you do if you could leave?”
“Is that your thing? You ignore what I say, except for one thing, latch onto it, and shoot me a question based on that?”
“My name is Cara Guzzi. Your father asked me to come speak with you for several reasons. Would you like to know what they are?”
“I’m eighteen, Cara. Can we speak like adults, and not like one adult talking to a child?”
Cara lifted a single brow. “Perhaps if one of us wasn’t lounging on a ten-thousand dollar rug, staring at the ceiling, and ignoring the very expensive therapist their father called in for them, we could absolutely do that, Catherine.”
Damn.
Catherine liked this woman. She was kind of bitchy, and Catherine tended to like that in a person. That was bad. She preferred it when she didn’t have to talk at all lately.
“How do you know this rug costs ten-thousand dollars?” Catherine asked.
“I have expensive taste.”
“Oh?”
“My husband likes to indulge me,” Cara added with a smirk. “Now, answer some of my questions, Catherine.”
“No, but thanks.” Catherine sighed. “You don’t sound like any New Yorker I’ve met.”
“I grew up in Chicago, actually. I moved to Ontario, Canada when I was fresh out of high school, and that’s where I have lived ever since.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed. “So wait—you still live there?”
“With my husband and sons, yes.” Cara peered down at Catherine when she stayed silent. “What is it, Catherine?”
“You flew here from Canada to speak to me?”
“I flew this time, yes. I may drive through the Niagara Falls border next time, depending on how I feel.”
“And you’re a therapist?”
Cara leaned forward, and rested her arms over her knees to fold her hands together. “For the last decade, yes. I went back to school a few years after graduating to further what I had already taken. Then went on to finish a three-year residency, and my focus is now on young women, children, and those struggling with addiction. Again, though, mostly women.”
“Huh.”
“Do you feel like getting up to talk to me?”
“Not really.”
“Shame,” Cara murmured.
“Sorry my father wasted your time.”
“Dante wasted nothing, Catherine. It’s you who is wasting my time. Never blame others for problems you cause or your own shortcomings; that isn’t any way to fix something that is wrong.”
Ouch.
“Why would my father call you to come here and talk to me? Why not someone from the city?”
Cara smiled. “Would an answer entice you to get up off the floor?”
“Not really.”
“How long have you been down there?”
Catherine had to think about that one. “Last night around ten. My room was too quiet.”
“Have you slept at all?”
“I don’t like the things I dream.”
Wordlessly, Cara moved from the couch, kicked off her heels, and rested down on the rug alongside Catherine. The woman didn’t turn to look at her, but rather, stared at the ceiling, too.
“Your father called me,” Cara said, “because you are a special case, and I am a special woman.”
“How so?”
“I may understand whatever your situation is better than someone else might. I also may have an inside look at what your life has been like up until this moment, given where you come from, and where I came from. You may not feel as though you can talk openly with someone else about your family and the things in your life as you can with me.”
Catherine frowned.
She was doing that a lot lately.
That was … when she did anything at all.
“Why is that?”
“My husband is a lot like your father,” Cara said. “Involved with things that put us women into situations where outsiders are not as welcome, and our life is not up for discussion. I grew up in a famiglia much like yours with my twin sister and older brother. You may know my brother, actually. I know he occasionally has meetings or dinners with your father and his brothers. Does Tommas Rossi ring any bells?” 
Catherine stilled.
Tommas Rossi was the boss of the Chicago Outfit. An Italian-based, criminal organization that was much like the one Catherine’s father controlled in New York.
“And your husband is also like my father?” Catherine asked.
“Gian is, although a bit more French, I would say.”
Catherine nodded to herself.
“Now does it make more sense why I would be the one to come?” Cara asked.
“I suppose.”
“You’ve had a rough couple of months, haven’t you?”
Catherine let out a shaky exhale. “You could say that.”
“You told me they have the house on lockdown, and you can’t leave.”
“I would go to the beach,” Catherine murmured. “If they let me leave, that’s where I would go.”
“Why?”
“Better memories.”
“I see,” Cara said.
“I like the floor because they don’t ask me questions when I’m like this. They don’t hover, or stay too long. They don’t look at me too hard, or wonder what I’m doing now. They see me here. They don’t know what to do, so they leave. I don’t have to talk, or answer questions, or go back over what happened and why I did it. I don’t have to pretend or lie. The walls have to be built up somehow, right? So, I started mine from the ground. Nobody is getting over these walls now.”
Catherine’s chest had progressively gotten tighter and tighter the longer she spoke. She wasn’t used to doing that lately—talking a lot. Her hands balled into such tight fists that her fingernails dug into the skin of her palms, likely leaving behind crescent shaped marks. She found it was harder to breathe all of the sudden, and despite being on her back on the floor, the room almost tilted.
“Take three breaths,” Cara said softly.
She had a nice voice. Catherine noticed. Soft, caring, and smooth.
Catherine took the breaths.
“Find three things you can see,” Cara said.
The ceiling. A crystal chandelier. The family portrait on the far wall.
“And three things you can smell,” Cara added after a moment.
Cara’s vanilla perfume. The flowery detergent their maid used. Lingering cinnamon and sugar from her mother’s baking.
“Three things you can feel—emotions, not touch, Catherine.”
A black vortex in her heart. Panic. Numbness.
“Three things you can hear, now.”
Cara speaking. A tick-tock of the Grandfather clock. Her own heartbeat.
“Lastly, three things you can touch, please.”
 The rug beneath her tickled her neck. Her dress felt a bit too tight around her throat. And her finger swept over the ridged line of a clean scar on her inner, left wrist.
“And how do you feel now?” Cara asked.
Catherine swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “Better.”
“How often do you get anxiety attacks?”
“Lately? Every day.”
Cara tipped her head to the side, and Catherine met her gaze. “Try that trick when you’re alone and having one. Try it when you’re not alone and having one. It helps to give your mind different things to focus on while reminding your body and brain you are still here.”
“Okay.”
“Would you like to hear my rules for our talks?” Cara asked.
Catherine pursed her lips. “I suppose you won’t care if I say I don’t want to talk, or that you don’t need to come back.”
“Because those are lies, Catherine. You do need to talk, and I will be back.”
“I figured.”
Cara pushed up into a sitting position, and rested into an Indian-style pose. “The rules for me are simple.  You can speak about whatever you want, and I expect you to, but you can also trust that nothing you say will ever go beyond you and me.”
“Not even to my mom and dad?”
“Especially not to them,” Cara replied. “That’s up to you to tell them whatever you need or want to, not me. As long as you’re not planning to harm yourself, or someone else, I’ll never say a word. Also, you’ll find no judgement from me. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help.”
“And what about the rules for me?”
“No lying. No wasting my time. Simple enough.”
Catherine glanced away when Cara shot a look over her shoulder. “I do that a lot.”
“Hmm?”
“Lie.”
“Not to me, you won’t.”
“You think you can tell the difference?” Catherine asked.
“I think you should not test me where that is concerned,” Cara said frankly. “You see, I sincerely do not want my time wasted, especially when I know there are a dozen more young women just like you that I could be helping in one way or another. Women who are in desperate need, yet, I chose to get on a plane today, and come to you. I chose, out of the dozens of files on my desk, that you would be the young woman I needed to sit with and talk to. But I do have others. So if you plan to make this difficult simply because you can, then maybe my first instinct to come here was wrong. Right now, however, I know you are the one in need of my help. I would like to give that to you.
“Tell me, Catherine,” Cara continued, still calm and soothing in her tone, “about what you might like to get from me being here with you. Say you do decide to talk, and that perhaps I can help. What would you like to walk out of here having gained from this?”
Catherine didn’t even have to think about it.
Not really.
She wanted him—Cross Donati.
That meant she had to … get up off the fucking floor, get better, and figure her goddamn life out. She had to do it alone.
She was a mess.
“I want to be healthy,” Catherine said, “in my head. I’m so tired of it being dark there—it’s always dark. I want to like who I am, and not depend on others to stand me up on my feet when I crash and burn. I want to be okay again. It’s been a long time since I was okay.”
“Those are good things to want for yourself. Let’s start with why your father decided to lock you down in this house, and finally made a call to my husband to ask for me to make a special trip here for you.”
Catherine rubbed at her wrist again, feeling a tender scar that was finally healed. “I would rather not.”
“Why?”
“Catherine! Catherine, open the door for me, sweetheart! Please let me in!”
Catherine blinked. “He was hitting that door so hard. I thought he was going to put his fist through it.”
“Who?”
“My dad.”
Water edged over the side of the tub—stained pink and turning colder by the second.
Catherine breathed.
In and out.
It wasn’t so hard to do now.
The banging on the door got louder, but she was still staring at a perfect red line on an olive-toned canvas.
“Have you ever self-harmed before that day?” Cara asked quietly.
“Depends on what self-harm includes. I never cut myself before, but I used different prescription drugs—abused them—because it numbed me to things. I knew it was hurting me, but I liked where it took me, too. I figured that outweighed what I was doing.”
“And how long has it been since you self-medicated?”
Catherine ignored the stabbing ache in her heart. “Almost three months now. It was only a couple of weeks after he made me leave when … all the rest happened. Daddy has finally had enough, I think, and that’s why you’re here now.”
“And this he is who, exactly?” Cara pressed.
“My father wants to blame him, you know? That’s the easiest thing for Dante. To say what I did was because of him leaving me. If you can suddenly fix my broken heart, then I’ll go back to being okay again.”
“But you know that’s not the case.”
“No,” Catherine admitted. “I was already broken, and I expected someone else to keep holding me together.” 
“Attempting suicide is always a symptom of deeper issues,” Cara said, shrugging. “Certain events can certainly exacerbate depression or suicidal thoughts, but those events are not usually the core issues that led a person to a place where they feel ending their life is the only option. No one causes someone to commit suicide. It’s a choice that’s made by only the person trying to end their life.”
“You should tell my father all of that. Not sure he would agree right now, but hey.” Catherine rested her arms behind her head to use as a pillow, and moved onto something else Cara had said. “I have a few of those—issues, I mean. He helped with them for a while.”
“Again, who is—”
“Can I tell you a story?” Catherine asked suddenly.
“Is it a good one?”
“I think so.”
“What’s it about?” Cara asked.
“A wild boy and a sly girl.”
Cara rested back to the floor with Catherine. “I suppose we do have some time.”
Catherine ignored the tear that slid down from the corner of her eye.
“He’s always saving. She’s always lying.”
“Always?” Cara asked.
“Always,” Catherine assured, “until the end, anyway.”

 
CHAPTER ONE
 
There was nothing like a call from a frantic woman in the wee hours to get a person to break every traffic law known to man. Cross Donati made it from his penthouse in Manhattan to the suburb in Newport in half the time it should have taken to drive the route.
In all his twenty-six years, he couldn’t remember a time when he had driven that fast. He didn’t think he hit the brakes once, not until he parked in front of his parents’ home.
3:00 AM blinked on the dashboard of Cross’s Porsche. It wasn’t often he brought the car out to play; he preferred his new Range Rover because cars moved when a vehicle that big was coming through. However, the Porsche had the speed.
And probably a nice scuff under the bumper from coming off that bridge too fast, he thought as he stepped out of the car.
It didn’t matter.
Cross had more pressing issues to deal with at the moment. Inside his parents’ home, he found chaos and madness.
Glass shattered in the entryway. An oversized vase tipped over, and glass beads spilled throughout the hallway. An overturned coffee table. Papers scattered between the living room and kitchen.
Cross figured he could help his mother clean up that mess later. Probably in the morning once everything calmed down. This wasn’t the first time. It likely wouldn’t be the last.
He followed the shouts to the back of the house where the large library and music room sat on one side, and his step-father’s office sat on the other.
“Cal, just listen to me—”
“He took him, Emmy. He fucking took him.”
“No, you’re confused again, that’s all. Look, Cal. Look at the pictures on the walls. They’re different, aren’t they? They’re not the same. They’re our children.”
“I have to find his paperwork. Something in there …”
Calisto’s ramblings trailed off as Cross stepped into the office doorway. Instantly, his mother’s worried gaze flew to him, and wetness edged the line of her lashes as she held back tears. His step-father yanked out drawers on his desk, and dug out papers. He threw files, uncaring of the mess he was making.
Or maybe he didn’t understand at all.
“None of this makes sense,” Calisto snarled as he flipped through papers.
“Ma,” Cross said quietly, “head upstairs for a bit, okay?”
Emma shook her head. “It’s fine.”
“Ma.”
“Cross.”
“Ma.”
“He’s just mixed up again, that’s all,” she whispered.
Except … it wasn’t just being mixed up this time, Cross knew. It couldn’t be, not when Calisto was physically acting out by breaking things or whatever else in his frustrations.
Almost four years ago, Cross was living in Chicago and had been for three years by that point, when he got the first call. Something was very wrong with his step-father. He came home, no questions asked. What he found at home, and what he learned his parents had been hiding from him, damn near killed him.
Traumatic head injuries from Calisto’s younger years had left the man with an unhealed lesion on his brain, and an aneurism that occasionally leaked. That created pressure on Calisto’s brain, which started causing what the Donatis simply referred to as episodes.
Almost always, when an episode happened, Cross found his step-father was mentally thrown back into his past. His twenties, sometimes earlier, and other times, his thirties. There was never any rhyme or reason, and they couldn’t predict when the next episode would happen. It just did.
Sometimes, they would get symptoms warning that an episode was on the horizon. Vomiting, headaches, or a stiff neck. The worst came in the form of seizures.
Cross never moved back to Chicago after coming home. He couldn’t when he knew his parents were struggling.
Calisto’s episodes picked up a bit after Camilla—Cross’s younger sister—married a while back, and moved to Chicago with her husband, Tommaso Rossi.
“Ma,” Cross said, “I will only tell you one more time to go upstairs, or I will take you there myself.”
Emma glared. “But—”
“Ma, goddammit.”
She darted past him in the hallway, but not before glancing back over her shoulder at her husband. Cross was simply being careful, and nothing more. In all Calisto’s episodes, he never once hurt his wife. Calisto had thrown a fucking pan at Wolf during one episode, and even threatened to put a bullet in Cross during another one, but never Emma. He almost always recognized her, too, unless he was thrown back into years before she had been a part of his life.
Yet, even then, Calisto seemed connected to Cross’s mother. Calmed by her, relaxed, and willing to talk with her.
Others … not so much.
“Who the fuck are you?” Calisto demanded.
Cross leaned in the doorway of the office, and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m just here to keep an eye on you, Cal. That’s what you told me to do, right? Keep an eye on my boss.”
He found it was easier—Calisto was manageable in an episode—when Cross acted as though he was just one of his step-father’s men. A Cosa Nostra solider, there to do his boss’s bidding, and not ask questions that might irritate Calisto. Especially as Calisto did not recognize him as his son.
Sometimes, Calisto would point out the similarities between them. Their brown, almost black, eyes. Their black hair, strong jaws, straight noses, and full lips always set into some form of a smirk. Even when they weren’t smiling. Cross and Calisto were technically cousins. Although he had always referred to him as his papa, or his uncle when famiglia men were near. So they did share genetics, and a lot of physical traits. Sometimes that helped to point out during Calisto’s episodes, and sometimes it only confused his step-father further.
Calisto passed him a wary look likely trying to figure out if he recognized Cross or not. “Fine, but do something.  Don’t stand there like a fucking cafone.”
“Do what, Cal?”
“Help me find where he took my son.”
Cross’s brow furrowed. “You have a daughter—Camilla.”
“I have no girl. I have a boy. He knows, though. He knows, and he’ll kill him. That’s why he took him.”
This wasn’t making sense to Cross, but he knew better than to keep trying to make Calisto see reason in his madness. The more Cross would press about the present day, and not the past Calisto was living in, the more agitated his step-father would become. Eventually, he would slip back into the present as the pressure relieved on his brain. It never failed. The doctors told them to wait it out, unless it became a dangerous situation.
Cross almost laughed at that one.
Their life was filled with criminals.
They were criminals.
Mafia.
Define dangerous.
“Took him,” Calisto rambled again.
“Who took him?” Cross asked.
“Affonso.”
Cross tried not to let how that name affected him. His biological father had fucked off when he was a baby, leaving his young mother with divorce papers. That was how Emma and Calisto had come to be married.
“And who did he take?” Cross asked.
“My son.”
Except … Calisto didn’t have a fucking son. Cross, sure. He wasn’t biological, but adopted. That had come about a couple of years after Affonso left.
Calisto looked up from the papers on his desk, and stared Cross right in his face from across the room. “Affonso knows the truth about Emma and me. Cross is my boy. He took him. I need to get him back. Do you get it now?”
Cross was sure the room tilted under his feet.
His step-father kept staring at him—knowing and so sure of his words, yet unable to recognize the man he raised or the pain he just caused.
“Cross is your son?” he asked.
Calisto gazed at the papers on his desk. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. So here we are.”
“Cross.”
He spun on his heel to find his mother standing midway down the hallway. She stared at him, wary and tired. Sadness turned her mouth into a frown, while shame made her look away from him.
His world kept tilting sideways.
“He’s confused, right?” Cross asked. “What he’s saying … It’s because he’s confused.”
Emma didn’t answer.
Cross’s feet felt like cement. “Ma, he’s confused. That’s what it is, right? He doesn’t understand what he’s saying; he’s got shit mixed up. Tell me that’s what it is.”
Otherwise, his whole life had been a lie. A man he hated for leaving, and for being the man who donated sperm, was not deserving of those feelings. Calisto—a man who allowed Cross the belief that he was his cousin, but a father-like figure his entire life—was actually his biological father. Not a man they had told him was his father, but Cal.
Cal, who he actually did love. Cal, who had taken care of him. Cal, who loved him no matter how awful he could be.
A lie was still a lie.
Especially when that lie meant …
“Tell me I’m not a product of an affair, Ma,” Cross demanded.
“Cross, please.”
“Tell me you haven’t lied to me my whole life!”
Emma still wouldn’t meet Cross’s stare.
“I’m sorry, Cross.”
 
***
 
Cross blinked at the late July sunlight coming in through the pub’s window. His neck and back cracked as he resituated his form on the barstool. It was far too early to be drinking, or for a bar to be open, but this pub was known in the Irish community. They didn’t care too much for social conventions dictating when they could or couldn’t drink. Cross was so far from being Irish that it wasn’t even funny. An Italian, like his ass, couldn’t even dress himself up as Irish, but nobody batted an eye at him when he came in and ordered a drink.
Coffee was needed after a long night like the one before. Preferably with a good dose of whiskey, but he wasn’t fucking picky. Given the shit he learned, coffee wasn’t going to do the trick.
Only whiskey it was.
The bell over the pub’s entrance chimed as the door was opened. Cross didn’t bother to greet the two familiar people that strolled in. He took another sip of his whiskey when the two men sat on the barstools.
Wolf, his mentor and his step—no, his father’s consigliere.
And Zeke, his oldest friend, and a fellow made man.
Although Zeke preferred his spot as a Capo to the Donati family, while Cross sat a little higher as Calisto’s underboss.
“You had to tell him where I was,” Cross mumbled into his glass.
Zeke shrugged. “He asked.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to tell, asshole.”
“Knock the attitude down a notch,” Wolf said. “It’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
Cross took another sip and let the top shelf whiskey burn on its way down his throat before he spoke again. “Little late in my life to find out everybody has been lying to me, isn’t it?”
“Cross, now—”
“Did you know?” he asked Wolf.
Wolf had been friends with his father for longer than Cross had even been alive, as far as he knew. The older man was the first in the Donati Cosa Nostra to be promoted to one of the highest seats as Calisto’s consigliere when he took over as the boss. Zeke, Wolf’s only son, and Cross had been friends since they were in diapers.
“Well?” Cross questioned when Wolf stayed silent.
Wolf passed him a look.
Cross knew it then.
“So you did,” he said.
Wolf sighed. “There were very few men your father could have trusted with that kind of information. An affair between a Don’s wife and his nephew would have resulted in a terrible outcome for them, Cross. Not to mention, a child being a product of that affair. We all did what we had to do so that neither you, nor your mother, would ever face backlash—”
“Fuck off,” Cross barked out. “They lied because they’re ashamed of what they did. You lied because he’s your friend.”
“That’s not true.”
“Did you know?” he asked Zeke.
His friend shook his head. “Not until this morning, man.”
Cross believed Zeke.
He needed one goddamn person in his corner.
“Where is Affonso Donati?” Cross asked Wolf. “See, my whole life, I’ve been told he fucked off somewhere. So where is he really?”
“That’s something you should talk with your parents about, Cross. It’s not for me to tell.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Cross slid his empty glass across the bar, and pushed off the stool to stand. He shrugged on his suit jacket, and fished the Porsche keys from his pocket. “I won’t be talking to them for a while. I need time to figure my shit out after this. Let Calisto know that, too, the next time you see him. I’m sure you’ll be running your ass right over to his place to fill him in after this.”
“He’s your father. He worries.”
Cross scoffed. “You do realize how ironic that is, don’t you?”
“Cross—”
“I’m done. I said what I said. Let him know it.”
Wolf nodded. “Fine. I just …”
“What now?”
“Calisto needs surgery, Cross. He knows it. You know it. I know. We all fucking know it. His episodes are getting worse. They’re becoming more frequent, and last longer when they do happen. The surgeon in Scotland that specializes in the kind of surgery he needs has already said the longer Calisto waits, the longer his recovery will be. He’s not going to get it done when he knows it’ll force him to be down for a long period of time, and make him a target.”
“Say what you want to say and be done with it,” Cross forced out between clenched teeth.
“You’re still going back and forth to Chicago to run their guns every other month for weeks at a time,” Wolf said quietly. “Sure, you’ve moved back here, but your focus is in two different places. What do you want to be, Cross, your father’s underboss or a gunrunner? You can’t be both.”
“The only reason I can’t be both is because being one means giving up the other.”
“You chose to be a made man. You wanted that button, and it was handed to you with a smile because you earned it. You’ve earned Calisto’s seat, too, so take it. The only reason he’s holding off is because of you. Every man in the Donati family is waiting on you, even if they don’t know about Cal’s issues right now.”
“And yet, not a single one of you can force me into his seat. Not when he wants me to do it willingly,” Cross replied coolly.
“He needs the surgery,” Wolf murmured.
Cross knew that was true.
He still wasn’t ready to take over for his father.
Especially now.
“I need time,” Cross said.
Wolf glanced away. “All right.”
Zeke looked back at Cross. “Hell’s Kitchen for the fight tonight?”
“Of course.”
“See you there, man.”
Cross headed out of the pub feeling worse than he had when he went in. His phone rang just as he slipped into the driver’s seat of his Porsche. The unfamiliar number made him hesitate, but he picked up the call on the third ring.
“Donati here,” he said as he pulled out of the parking space.
“Long time no talk, Cross.”
It took him far too long to realize who had called him.
“Andino?”
“The one and only,” the man replied.
Andino Marcello was the son of another New York crime family’s consigliere. Cross tended to stay far the hell away from the Marcello family for many reasons. The most important being that the Marcello boss—Dante—despised Cross with every fiber of his being.
The reason for that hate?
Catherine Cecelia Marcello.
Dante’s daughter.
Cross’s … ex-girlfriend, old lover, first love, last love, his dreams and nightmares. A girl he had loved and dated on and off from the time he was fourteen until just shortly after his twentieth birthday.
His everything.
Almost seven years later, no contact, no calls, no nothing, and that girl still owned him. He let her, though. He made a promise to her once that he would love her always. No matter fucking what, his heart seemed determined to keep it.
Sometimes, he thought it was pathetic.
Other times, he tried not to think about it at all.
“Why are you calling me, Andino?” Cross asked.
“Remember that favor you owe me?”
Cross didn’t, actually. “No.”
“You were what, seventeen or so? Fucked my cousin in the backseat of my Cadillac, and I let it slide. You owed me one, that’s what you said.”
“Yeah, shit.”
He had done that.
Andino. “I’m cashing that in, Cross. When can you meet up with me?”
“How urgent is it?”
“I can wait a bit, but not too long.”
“Next week?” Cross asked.
“Next week is perfect. I have a restaurant I work out of most of the time. I’ll message you the address, and you figure out a time.”
Andino hung up the call without a goodbye. Cross didn’t really mind on that end, but he wished Andino hadn’t called at all.
Cross’s life was busy. He filled his days with noise, people, and work. He filled his nights with the same things. That way, he didn’t have to think about an eighteen-year-old girl he’d left behind. A girl he pushed away hoping she would save herself in the process.
Catherine.
Once, his mother had told him something he never forgot about love. Love is strong—like death. Cross had gotten the Italian version tattooed on his ribcage almost seven years ago.
L'amore é forte come la morte. How appropriate. How deafening. How punishing and suffocating and true those words were. How raw and beautiful and awful. It only made sense to put the words permanently on his body, and then he would be forced to see them every day, even when he didn't want to. Not forget, no. Just see. He couldn't forget her, after all. He never had.
Cross would love Catherine Marcello forever.
Even if she didn’t know.
Even if she didn’t care.
Even if she didn’t love him.
Always.
That was his promise. He didn’t know how not to keep it. He had simply chosen to love her from afar. So far, in fact, that he was pretty damn sure she didn’t even know he was there anymore.
 
***
 
A week later, Cross stepped inside Andino Marcello’s restaurant. He wasn’t sure how he knew Catherine was inside too, but he did. He just knew. All those years without being close to Catherine had not desensitized the way it made Cross react, even when he couldn’t immediately see her.
His fucking hair stood up on end. His nerves twisted. His heart raced.
Like she was a drug, and he itched for a fix.
Cross’s gaze skipped over the people eating, and sure enough, he found Catherine in a corner booth. She was older, sure, but her features hadn’t changed a bit. Long, wavy dark hair. Legs that looked best naked and wrapped around his head or waist. Slim with curves that could make any fucking dress she wanted look like it cost a million bucks. High cheekbones, a heart-shaped face, striking green eyes, full lips that naturally fell into a pout, and a delicate nose that set her pixie-like face beautifully. Collarbones peeked out from under the blouse she wore.
A face like her mother’s. Those eyes and that hair was all her father.
It was her beauty that disarmed people. It was easy to see beauty, and ignore the dangers it hid. Cross was no exception, although he figured he knew more of Catherine’s secrets than her dangers.
He swore to God, if Andino Marcello was trying to set some kind of nasty shit up on him with Catherine, Cross would kill the fucker. A war between crime families be damned.
Still, even as the wariness settled into his gut, Cross couldn’t help himself. His feet moved before he could think twice about it. He headed in Catherine’s direction.
Her head was stuck in a textbook. Given it was August, he figured she must be taking a summer class. Although if she was at Andino’s restaurant, a place Cross knew the guy used for business meetings, maybe she was still hustling drugs for her cousin, too.
Catherine just took a bite of her pasta dish when Cross spoke. “I thought I recognized that face.”
Familiar green eyes widened as Catherine’s head lifted. Like an ocean—beautiful, yet dangerous beneath the surface. She met Cross’s gaze with a shock that told him she probably wasn’t expecting to see him there, either. All that time, and he still found it difficult not to forget all the other people around them, not to mention the world, when she was looking at him.
Why was he so fucked with this girl?
Well, she wasn’t much of a girl anymore.
Very much a woman.
“Catherine,” Cross said with a smirk.
She swallowed her bite of food. “Cross. What are you doing here?”
He had business to do. A meeting with Andino that he was already five minutes late for. Apparently, none of those things mattered for the moment. Not when he had green eyes and a pretty smile just across from him.
Cross pulled out the chair at the table with a shrug, and sat down. “Business, bella. Nothing unusual.”
He swore he saw her shiver.
He pretended like he didn’t.
He still liked it, though. That was bad.
“It’s always unusual when Cosa Nostra families mingle.”
“And what do you know about that, hmm?” Cross asked.
“I know enough,” Catherine said, cocking a brow. “I was never an idiot, Cross.”
“No, that you were not.”
She quieted for a moment, and that gave him far too much time to think.
Leather jackets. Conch shells. Late nights. First times. Stick shift. Bloody smiles. High school. Fist fights. Sweet sixteens. Prom. Sex in soft sheets. Her voice in his ear. Romeo & Juliet. So much. Too much. Promises. Always.
He tried not to think about those things at all.  
“How have you been, Catherine?” Cross asked.
She couldn’t seem to answer him. He knew that feeling. It had been too long, and he shouldn’t even be sitting there. He knew better.
Cross still didn’t move.
“You’re terribly quiet,” he said.
“Thinking,” Catherine admitted.
“Dare I ask about what?”
“You know what, Cross. The same thing I always think about whenever you’re around.”
How I broke your heart? How long it’s been? How stupid we were?
Cross opted not to ask those things. “You didn’t answer me. How have you been, babe?”
“I’ve been okay,” she replied.
Cross smiled, but he thought maybe she was only saying that for his benefit. “Still running for your cousin?”
“Maybe.”
Catherine had always been good at three things: loving him, hustling drugs, and lying. Cross doubted much of that changed.
“Sure you are. Why else would you be here?”
Catherine waved at her plate. “Delicious food.”
“Mmhmm.”
 Before he could think better of it, Cross reached across the table and grabbed Catherine’s hand. The dozens of bangles on her wrist jingled against the tabletop. He found her skin was still soft, warm, and all his. He squeezed her hand and ran the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. Her fingers trembled just a second before she tugged her hand away.
“Don’t do that, Cross,” Catherine said.
She didn’t want him to see the way she hid her hands from his sight. It was too late; he couldn’t possibly miss it. Only once in their long relationship had Cross truly missed something Catherine wanted to hide from him, and it had been their ruin.
He was never going to make that mistake again.  
“Still as stubborn as ever, I see.”
“You liked it,” she retorted, unable to stop her grin.
“I might still.”
Catherine’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“What are you doing this weekend?”
No.
Stupid.
Bad.
He was going to get his ass shot.
He had been warned.
Cross didn’t drop his gaze, or move an inch.
“Uh …”
“Go out with me,” he said.
Catherine didn’t blink. “Um.”
“Come on, Catty, you always had a quick response for everything I or anyone else ever said. Don’t disappoint me now.”
“Cross—”
“Catherine, hey.” A man wearing a chef’s jacket that Cross didn’t recognize—and didn’t fucking care to—strolled up to their table. He wore a cocked eyebrow and an irritating smile. Cross considered stabbing the man with the knife on the table just because he interrupted. That shit was rude. “Andino was asking if you were still here. He wants you to head back to the office for a few.”
Catherine blinked up at the man, clearly recognizing him. Cross certainly didn’t like the way the man looked at Catherine like the two were … familiar.
Were they?
He didn’t know.
Cross would bet the man certainly wouldn’t want to know what he would do to him if he did know. 
“Who is this, Catherine?” the guy asked. “You haven’t mentioned having a friend.”
Cross didn’t miss the man’s resentment in his words. Definitely something there, he thought. He met the man’s gaze for a brief second, and then dropped it just as fast. Whoever the fuck he was, the guy wasn’t important to Cross.
At all.
“Thanks for letting me know about Andino, Jamie.” Catherine let out a sigh, and stood from the table leaving her unfinished plate and Cross behind. “Cross, it was nice seeing you.”
Cross smiled and murmured, “Likewise, Catherine.”
She stiffened a bit. Something that looked a hell of a lot like memories flashed in her eyes. Then, she was gone.
Jamie, the irritating chef, stayed behind. “Can I help you?”
“Sure,” Cross said with a flick of his wrist, “by fucking off somewhere.”
“Excuse—”
“I said what I said, so go.”
“I don’t know who the fuck you are, but—”
“Andino does, so run back and let him know I’m here.”
“And who are you exactly?”
“Cross Donati.” He looked up at Jamie and smirked. “Or you might know me as the reason you couldn’t keep Catherine interested long enough to get anywhere good.”
Jamie’s face whitened.
Cross flicked his wrist again. “Now do as I said, and fuck off somewhere.”
The man fucked off.
 
***
 
“Suggestion,” Andino said from behind his desk as Cross sat down in a waiting chair. “Never eat at my restaurant.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what you said to my chef, but he doesn’t like you. I think you might be the one fucker he would consider breaking the health code for should he have to make you a meal.”
Cross smirked. “Fair enough.”
“Whatever little disagreement you had with him wouldn’t have anything to do with my cousin, would it?”
“Catherine?” Cross shrugged. “Didn’t even see her.”
“Sure you didn’t.” Andino tossed a file across the desk and nodded for Cross to pick it up. “It’s been a hell of a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Almost seven years or so,” Cross said.
“That long? I hadn’t realized.”
Funny.
Cross couldn’t forget.
He picked up the file determined to get away from Catherine as a topic of conversation. Opening it up, he found photos of guns, and a client profile that was waiting for a drop sometime over the next three months.
“Always amuses me how the rifles on the American black market can go for four hundred a pop, yet you get past the border into Mexico, and you’re looking at an easy grand or more per gun. Mexico’s where the money is in arms dealing right now unless you’re selling in Canada, which doubles Mexico.”
“Tell me about it,” Andino agreed.
“This a big deal,” Cross said. “Close to five hundred guns. A little over a grand a gun. Half a million—half’s already been paid.”
“The other half comes in when the guns are dropped.”  
Cross nodded.
That wasn’t unusual.
“I know this buyer,” Cross said, dragging his finger over the name Rhys Crain. “He likes them dissembled and packed tight because he runs them beyond the drop. I’ve run guns to him before through the Chicago syndicate.”
“How long have you run their guns?”
“Since I was eighteen or so.”
Andino whistled. “A long time, then.”
“They do like the best when it comes to running their guns.”
“I see your arrogance hasn’t changed.”
Cross chuckled. “Earned arrogance. What do you want, Andino?”
He pointed at the file. “For you to run those guns to Rhys Crain in a couple of months’ time when the drop deadline comes up.”
“I don’t run guns for anyone but—”
“Tommas Rossi from Chicago, I know. Is that because his son married your little sister, or …?”
“It’s because the Outfit opened a door. They taught me how to do this, gave me the best men to learn from, and asked for fuck all in return. It’s called loyalty. They expect it; I give it.”
“Except not this time,” Andino said.
Cross sucked in air through his teeth. “Just say whatever you want to say.”
“You owe me. I need this run to be clean as our gunrunner got picked up a couple weeks back on a charge, and I don’t think he’s getting out. Even if he did, he’d be far too hot with the officials to be making a gun run. You’re making a name for yourself. I know, word travels. Not one run fucked up since you started.”
“And?”
“And this is how I want you to pay me back. Run these guns. That’s it. I mean, you don’t do it because you hate it, right?”
No, Cross quite enjoyed being a gunrunner.
Just not for the Marcello family, considering …
“Does Dante know I’ll be running his guns?”
Andino barked out a laugh. “Fuck no.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. He doesn’t want you within twenty miles of his daughter. Can’t blame him, after everything that happened.”
“All I did back then was make Catherine leave,” Cross said.
“Right, that was all.”
“It was.”
Andino waved it off like it didn’t matter. “Whatever. You running my guns, or not?”
“I get full control over the way I do this. Routes, travel, and whatever else. It’s on my terms. You don’t get to step in except to tell me where the guns are, and the deadline for the drop.”
“Is that how you usually work?”
“That’s how I know nobody else is going to fuck it up for me,” Cross replied.
Andino’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “Good enough. I’ll give you a call when I have more details, all right?”
“Fine by me.”
Cross stood, and headed for the door. Something he’d asked Catherine lingered in his mind and made him hesitate to leave. He asked her to go out with him that weekend, and she hadn’t gotten the chance to respond. He wanted to know her answer.
“Andino?” he asked.
“Yeah, Cross?”
Cross rattled off seven digits he had never forgotten. Andino stiffened in his seat as though he recognized the phone number.
“You still know her number?”
“I know everything about her, Andino.”
Including things no one else did.
“Huh.”
“She’s never changed it, then?” Cross asked.
Andino cleared his throat. “No, Catherine just upgrades the phone.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Don’t get your ass killed by my uncle before you can even run my guns, Cross.”
He would try.
No guarantees.

 
CHAPTER TWO
 
A crime boss, a Queen Pin, a lawyer, and a resident doctor all sat down at a dinner table …
No, it wasn’t the start of some joke. It was Catherine Marcello’s life.
She tried to pay attention to the conversation happening between her parents, her brother Michel, and his wife. Something about Michel’s residency, and his wife’s next criminal defense case. It wasn’t that she usually zoned out at family dinners, but her mind was somewhere else.
On a dark-eyed, black-haired sin.
On old heartbreak and first loves.
On the past.
On Cross Donati.
She had managed to go years without thinking about Cross in any real depth. Sure, whispers of memories were there in the back of her mind, but she preferred to shove them aside.
After everything … she didn’t have a choice.
Catherine wasn’t ever going to be left broken by that man again. She understood why he left her all those years ago, but it was what came after when she was finally ready to start over with him again that damn near killed her.
She had been good back then. Months and months of therapy with Cara Rossi. Honest, hard therapy that forced her to take a real look at herself in the mirror for the first time in years. It made her see the reflection staring back, own it, be responsible for it, and like it.
Then, all it took was one single day to push Catherine back several steps all over again. Cross promised--always—and he lied.
Catherine was supposed to be the liar.
Not him.
So no, as much as she couldn’t get him out of her head long enough to have a conversation with her family, she was not risking going down that rabbit hole with Cross.
Not again.
“You’re such an eejit, Michel,” Gabbie said with a roll of her green eyes.
Michel’s wife, a third generation Irish-American, had just enough of her culture to color up her words and the inflection of her speech. It cracked Catherine up a lot of the time. Especially when the woman’s Irish came out to insult Michel.
“Don’t call me that,” Catherine brother’s said.
“I say it with love.”
“Sure, but in your eyes, I see the insult.”
“You need your eyes checked, Michel.”
The part about Catherine’s older brother that she liked the most was his wife, Gabbie. Michel was a moody, difficult asshole on his good days, but his wife was the lighter side of his personality.
It made for fun family dinners.
“Your residency will be finished in what, a few months?” Catherine’s father asked from the head of the table.
Michel nodded. “Thankfully.”
“Long hours,” Gabbie said before taking a drink of wine.
“And have you decided what you’re going to do after?” Catrina asked her son.
“Private practice,” Dante said before Michel could.
Michel smirked. “Dad knows. Better money, you know.”
Gabbie sighed. “It’s not all about the money, Michel.”
“It’s a lot about the money,” Michel argued.
“Not all,” Gabbie said in a sing-song fashion.
Catherine’s father laughed at the head of the table, the joy in his old eyes softening his features. Dante Marcello often came off as intense and severe. So much so, that he intimidated most people who came in contact with him. Catherine knew that was simply because people didn’t really know who her father was.
Sure, he was a major crime boss.
But he was also a dad.
He was a family man.
He loved.
“How’s school?” Catrina asked, her sharp gaze falling on Catherine.
“Good,” Catherine answered.
“Wonderful,” Dante said, smiling widely. “Only a couple of years left, Catty.”
Catherine forced herself to agree. Truth was, it might be more than a couple.
Dante eyed his daughter silently, like he was looking for something that didn’t exist. All too often, her father did that nonsense. He was damned good at it, too.
“I talked to Andino today,” Dante said.
Shit.
Catherine stuck her fork in a piece of cut steak and asked, “Oh?”
“Yes, he mentioned you stopped by to eat at the restaurant.”
“I did.”
“What did I miss?” Michel asked.
“Nothing,” Catherine said.
“Oh, there must be something given the way you look,” Catrina said. “Or rather, the way you’re trying not to look, Catherine.”
Dio.
This was why Catherine sometimes avoided her family. They pried too much and stuck their noses where they didn’t belong.
“Are you seeing the Donati boy again?” Dante asked out of the blue.
Catherine dropped her fork. It landed on her plate with a loud clatter. It was the only noise the table made for the entire ten seconds that she spent staring at her father with her mouth wide open.
“What?” Catherine finally managed to ask.
“Donati. Cross. Affonso Donati’s boy.” Dante scowled when Catherine stayed silent. “Why are you playing dumb, Catherine? You know who I’m talking about. You dated him for years.”
“Why would you think I was dating Cross again?”
“Andino mentioned—”
“What, that Cross showed up at Andino’s restaurant and we had a conversation, Dad?”
Catherine blew out a heavy breath, more frustrated than ever. While her father had never explicitly told her she couldn’t date Cross, he’d never totally approved of the man. Catherine suspected it was just because someone was interested in her, and Dante never liked boys around his daughter all that much.
That, and the long history Catherine and Cross had together. A history that eventually ended very badly.
Dante raised a single brow high, and instantly, Catherine shut up. She knew which lines to cross with her father and which ones to never touch. Rudeness was one he wouldn’t accept. It didn’t matter how old she was.
“Sorry,” Catherine mumbled quickly.
“All right,” Catrina said, standing from the table. “Michel, let’s go … do something for a few minutes.”
“Come on, Gabbie,” Michel said, holding a hand out to his wife.
Catherine focused on her plate instead of the eyes of her father that were burning into her.
“Get it out, Daddy,” Catherine said.
Dante sighed. “I just wanted an answer, Catherine.”
“I gave you one.”
“That you had a dinner date with Cross Donati at Andino’s restaurant. Yes, I got that.”
“What dinner date?” Catherine asked. “It wasn’t a date.”
“You didn’t invite him there?”
“No.”
Dante grew silent.
Catherine didn’t like that at all.
“What?” she demanded.
“Are you dating anyone?” Dante asked instead of answering.
Catherine tampered her frustration. “Why, so you can pay whoever it is off to get away from me? I know how you feel about men in my life, Dad.”
“I haven’t paid anyone off, Catty.”
“You’ve probably thought about it.”
Dante’s cheek twitched before he nodded once. “I’ll give you that.”
Smiling, Catherine said, “I’m not seeing anyone. And certainly not Cross Donati. He said he showed up at the restaurant for business with Andino.”
Well, he’d said business. Catherine assumed that meant with Andino.
“Andino said he didn’t invite Cross, sweetheart.”
Catherine stilled in her chair, taking in her father’s words.
What did it mean?
Had Cross sought her out?
Why?
 
***
 
Catherine stroked her inner, left wrist with the thumb on her right hand. She could still feel the slightly raised scar left behind from her darkest moment, but it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. She had it covered up a year after the incident with a small tattoo.
A clean, black cross.
She wasn’t sure what made her touch the scar, but it had become a habit over the years. Like a reminder, maybe, when her stress and anxiety became too much that she had survived worse. She had fallen once, shattered to pieces, and then put herself back together.
“Catherine?”
At her mother’s voice, Catherine quickly slid the bangle bracelets on her arm back down her wrist. It covered the tattoo, and hid what she had been doing. Of course, her family knew of the tattoo, and the scar it covered, but she didn’t like to worry them. Whenever one of them caught her looking at the tattoo, or worse, touching it, they instantly became … edgy.
They looked at her carefully.
Too long, and too hard.
They hovered.
Catherine understood why, sure, but she wished they wouldn’t do that at all. She was not a fragile doll; her depression had never returned with such deafening force. Her anxiety did not cripple her.
She was fine.
She wanted to keep being fine.
“Yeah, Ma?” Catherine asked.
Catrina sat on the other end of the couch with a glass of wine in hand. “Your father wanted me to check if you were staying for the night.”
“I figured I might as well. It’s a long drive back to the city.”
Catherine lived in an apartment close to the University of Columbia.
Catrina nodded. “Of course.”
“I have a paper to hand in tomorrow morning, though, so I might skip out early.”
She didn’t bother to mention that she also needed to stop by her cousin’s—Andino—restaurant again to grab her shit for the next month. Mostly because her parents didn’t know that she hustled drugs for her cousin as one of his many dealers. Despite her family being full of criminals, and built on a criminal empire under the oath of Cosa Nostra, Catherine kept her dealings on the illegal side of life private and secret.
She did not think they would approve. After all, her parents seemed fine with pushing her toward college. They had never fed her curiosity about their business dealings and illegal activities when she was younger. She stumbled into hustling with the help of her older cousins, who now acted as Capos for her father’s famiglia.
Really, she chose not to tell her parents the truth because she did not want their disappointment. She was positive it was all that would come out of her telling them.
Catherine was a hustler of a slightly higher caliber. She wasn’t out on the streets selling drugs, or making trades in dirty alleyways. No, she was New York elite simply because of her last name and pedigree. It got her into the biggest events, the most exclusive premiers and parties, and she used that to her advantage. Her face wasn’t recognized just because she was Dante Marcello’s daughter. It was recognized because anything someone wanted—no matter their poison of choice—Catherine could supply.
And she did it with a pretty smile.
“You’re taking summer classes,” her mother said quietly.  
Catherine hid her frown by looking away. She did not want to explain that she was taking summer classes in an effort to play catch up with the courses she had dropped the year before. Her busy life, and sometimes lack of interest in college, made it difficult to actually do what she needed to do for her grades. She wasn’t stupid. She simply didn’t care most times. She had finally chosen a direction four years earlier, and mostly because of her sister-in-law.
Gabbie’s career in criminal defense had especially interested Catherine.
At the time.
Now, it just bored her.
“I picked up some extra classes to keep me busy this summer,” Catherine said, hoping her mother would drop the subject. “Maybe get ahead of my work before next year.”
She should have known better.
Catrina was not easily dissuaded by other people’s distraction tactics. “To keep busy, or because you need them?”
“Well, both.”
“School is still what you want to do, isn’t it? Becoming a lawyer, I mean. You’re twenty-five, Catty. You still have lots of time to change your mind. I always thought you would go into something with art as a focus, to be honest.”
“Art was always a hobby, but becoming a lawyer is reality.” Catherine shrugged. “Not sure what else I would do, Ma.”
Catrina stared at her daughter for a long while, saying nothing. Catherine almost felt as though her mother was searching for something in her daughter’s eyes. Or maybe like she was silently asking Catherine to talk.
Finally, Catrina said, “You know we’ll be proud of you no matter what you choose to do, Catty. No matter what. You can succeed in anything because you’re amazing, and I’m not sure you know how to fail.”
She glanced down at the bangles covering her wrist and the tattoo. “I did fail once.”
Catrina’s gaze followed her daughter’s. “You hit a bump in the road once. It’s only a failure when you do not get back up, and keep going.”
“Cara told you to say that, didn’t she?”
“Cara was a very good influence in your life when you needed her,” Catrina replied with a small smile, “and she gave us all advice worth following. Not just you, reginella.”
Little queen.
Catherine gave her mother a look. “I’m not so little anymore.”
“Still my little queen, even if you’re fifty. I raised you. Only I can pass on that crown, Catherine.”
Her mother, the Queen Pin dealing to the rich, famous, and spoiled, was still just her mother at the end of the day.
Catrina leaned over, and flicked the bangles on Catherine’s wrist. It exposed the black cross tattoo beneath the jewelry before she fixed the bracelets. “I never asked before, but I wondered … especially after that question your father asked about Cross Donati at supper.”
“What’s that, Ma?”
“I think everyone just assumes you covered your scar with the cross because we’re Catholics, and God.” Her mother rolled her eyes upward. While her father was devout to God, her mother sometimes wavered in what she felt was worth her faith and what was simply the expectations of an organized religion. “Yet, I wonder if that’s not the case. Was it for Him, or for him, Catherine?”
She could have lied.
She was still a damn good liar.
Catherine chose to tell the truth.
“Cross was kind of like a God to me, anyway. I revered him like one. So, I guess you could say it was both.”
Catrina let out a long sigh, and sipped her wine. “I understand that, Catty. All women who have loved would understand.”
 
***
 
Catherine bent down to pet her cousin’s dog, Snaps. The pit bull opened a single, lazy eye, and his stubby tail flicked with happiness. According to Andino, Snaps could be one hell of a nasty dog when he needed to be, but she had never seen it happen.
“Who’s a good boy, Snaps?” she cooed to the dog. “Yes, it’s you. Yes, it is.”
His stubby tail wiggled harder, but he still stayed prone on the floor beside Andino’s desk in the restaurant office.
“Andino doesn’t love you enough. No, he doesn’t. I should steal you and—”
“You’re not taking my fucking dog, Catty, so don’t even think about it.”
Catherine gave Snaps one last tickle behind his ear, and stood to face her cousin. Andino closed the office door, and headed for the chair behind his desk. His large form rested into the chair with more grace than a man of his size might usually have. He reminded her of a linebacker with his wide shoulders and broad chest. Many found her cousin’s green eyes to be cold, and his smile a bit condescending. Too many said he was just intimidating as hell.
She didn’t find that about Andino Marcello at all.
Then again, he was family.
“Sorry I didn’t call you back last night,” Catherine said. “I was at my parents’ place.”
Andino waved it off as he pulled out a drawer on the desk. “It’s fine. I figured that’s what it was, anyway. Since I’m heading out of town for a couple of weeks, I thought you might want to get your shit early so you have it.”
He tossed two large bubble mailers to the other side of the desk where Catherine could reach. She picked up the packages and shoved them into her oversized purse where they would stay hidden until she could deal with the contents inside.
Contents meaning, drugs.
Pills. Molly. Acid. Cocaine.
Those were Catherine’s thing.
She found it was easier to manage and deal pills, tablets, and a set amount of powder in a baggie. She simply organized product in bags by ones or twos when it came to pills and tablets. Drops of acid on dissolvable paper. Or enough cocaine in a bag to cut anywhere from two large lines to four small ones.
It was simpler and faster when she was in the midst of a party or event dealing where the less time she spent with drugs out in the open, the better. If someone wanted more than what she had separated out, then they could buy more.
“That going to be enough for you?” Andino asked.
Catherine nodded. “More than enough, likely.”
“Then go make me some money, Catty.”
She rolled her eyes, but it didn’t really bother her. Andino had been the one to teach Catherine how to hustle all those years ago, starting when she was just sixteen. He hadn’t been the one supplying the drugs at the time; that was Johnathan. Andino supplied her now, though.
A two knuckle knock on the office door took Catherine’s attention away from Andino only to see her oldest cousin poke his head in.
“Hey, John,” Andino said. “Catherine was just leaving.”
Johnathan stepped into the office with a grin. “The house was too full the other day, little cousin. I didn’t see you at my Welcome Home party.”
Catherine smirked as she passed John by to head for the door. “We’re calling your release from prison a Welcome Home thing?”
“Well, yeah.”
He tugged on her hair playfully.
“Keep it up,” Catherine warned.
“Catty, you don’t even have claws,” John teased.
“So you think. Like I told Andino, keep calling me Catty, and I’m going to start charging you.”
John scoffed. “You’re never kicking that name now.”
If only they knew who had given it to her and why … 
She had missed her cousin during his three year prison sentence, but she couldn’t deny that John looked a hell of a lot better than he had when he went in. His Bipolar Disorder, also known as Manic Depression, had put him into a bad episode. A fight with Andino in a public place sent him to prison after he discharged a weapon and assaulted several police officers.
John was better, though.
That’s what everyone said.
“Oh, Andino?” Catherine asked as she neared the door.
Andino shot her a look. “What?”
“Why did you lie to my dad about the reason Cross was here yesterday?”
John’s eyebrow lifted as he looked to Andino. “As in, Cross Donati?”
Andino lifted a single shoulder. “What about it?”
“Didn’t know you to break rules,” John murmured.
“I have business to handle.”
“Listen,” Catherine jumped in to have her voice heard. “I seriously don’t care about whatever you two are talking about. But, Andino, don’t have my father in a fit about me and Cross. You had him thinking I was dating him again.”
Andino laughed. “Well, I couldn’t tell him we were working together. That would not have gone over well, trust me.”
“Don’t use me for your gain,” she warned.
“Just go, Catty. Let me worry about Capo business, and you worry about yours.”
“And maybe stay away from Donati,” John added. “Wouldn’t want to irritate the boss, huh?”
“The boss is my father,” Catherine pointed out.
John nodded. “Yeah, but not to Cross.”
He had a point.
Catherine chose not to debate it further, if only because she didn’t like the way it made her feel. Heavy in her hands, tight in her chest, and weak on her feet. It wasn’t so much the conversation as it was Cross.
She was doing so well. He was supposed to be a background thought in her life. Except … apparently he wasn’t.
Catherine wasn’t interested in causing some kind of problems with her family, or worrying them, so she forced Cross out of her mind. At least, for the moment. It was the best she could do.
She couldn’t say how long it would last.
 
***
 
Catherine sliced the side of the cellophane wrapped brick open, and tipped it sideways to let the white powder collect on the digital scale. She slipped the medical mask over her mouth as she watched the number on the scale rise to where she wanted it to be. Quickly, she set the brick of cocaine aside, and used a knife to slide the powder off the scale and neatly into a waiting bag.
When she had first started dealing, Andino or John would take care of handling this part of her business. She rarely actually touched drugs with her own hands, except when she was doing a trade between herself and the person buying. Even then, she only touched a bag with drugs inside.
Then one day, Andino handed her over a brick of cocaine and bags of pills and told her to figure it out. He no longer had time to cut her product properly. She had to do it herself.
So, she did.
Unfortunately, handling drugs was supposed to be a hard line for someone like her with the kind of history she had. She was the kind of person who preferred to self-medicate her depression and anxiety away, and had done so more than once using prescription drugs.
Cara—her old therapist—had been one of the few people who knew about Catherine’s drug abuse, and her past time dealing for her cousin. She was quick to point out the dangers, and the likelihood of relapse when substance was so readily available, not to mention a part of her everyday life.
Yet, Catherine never touched the drugs.
She didn’t even drink.
The ringing of her cell phone brought her out of her thoughts, and Catherine pulled the medical mask down as she reached for the device. Turning her back to her work, she answered the call without checking the ID first.
“Hello?”
“Catherine.”
She turned to stone on the spot, unsure she had heard the caller’s voice correctly. Except she knew that she did because his voice was unmistakable. She could never quite forget the way he sounded murmuring into her ear.
“Cross,” Catherine said. “How did you get my number?”
“You’ve never changed it, babe.”
She wet her lips, and tried to ignore how damn good he sounded. Like crushed velvet and liquid gold. Silky, hot, and expensive. A cost she didn’t know if she could afford.
A cost like her heart.
“You just remembered it?” Catherine forced herself to ask.
How she kept the lingering emotion out of her tone, she didn’t know.
“I remember a lot of things,” Cross replied.
“Why are you calling me?”
“You didn’t answer my question at the restaurant yesterday.”
“What question was that?”
“I wanted you to go out with me this weekend,” he said like it was nothing at all.
“You didn’t actually ask that, Cross. You simply said it.”
“Don’t you remember what I told you years ago?”
“You said a lot of things,” Catherine muttered.
Broke her damn heart with his words, too.
“I told you that where you and I were concerned, I would tell you what I wanted, and you would either agree or not. That’s all there is to it. No games. That still stands, Catty. I’m telling you what I want.”
She let out a slow, long stream of air. She despised how a part of her was absolutely ready to agree, and meet up with Cross. If nothing else than to catch up, and see if things still felt the same when he was close. Problem was, she knew it would feel the same. How could it not, when this was the only man she had ever loved?
Catherine wasn’t ready to let something silly like old feelings and dusty memories rip her heart out again. She was not falling, crashing, and burning with Cross Donati one more time.
“Catty?” he asked.
“You know, you’re the only person I don’t mind calling me Catty.”
“I started that nickname.”
“No one knows why.”
She swore she could feel Cross’s smirk in his words when he murmured, “No one needs to.”
Catherine forced herself to get out of the dirty thoughts and memories filling up her mind. She didn’t need a daydream to remind her how and why she earned that nickname from Cross.
“It’s been years, Cross,” Catherine said quietly. “Years. So, what? You see me by chance in a restaurant and suddenly decide to insert yourself into my life again? Not once in nearly seven years have you approached me, and I was liking it just fine that way.”
“It has been years,” he agreed.
“Exactly.”
“But I bet it feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, babe?”
Catherine bit her lower lip to keep from agreeing.
Because he was right.
She didn’t know if she liked it or not.
“Let me take you out,” Cross said when she stayed quiet. “It doesn’t even have to be this weekend. I’ll let you call me next time. You’ve got my number now.”
“Cross—”
“Does it feel like yesterday, Catty?”
“That doesn’t mean I want it to, Cross.”
“You’re still a liar, I see.”
“I’ll let you know,” Catherine said quickly, wanting to get him away from the topic of her lies. “About going out somewhere, or meeting up. Okay?”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
She didn’t doubt him.
Catherine hung up the phone without a goodbye.