The Family Cross

by Gabrielle Ash

  THE FAMILY CROSS

  By

  Gabrielle Ash

  Copyright © 2021 Gabrielle Ash

  * * *

  Edited by Tee Tate.

  Cover Design by MiblArt.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

  * * *

  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

  * * *

  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at info@cityowlpress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  To Caleb,

  for being my teammate that fateful day by the hay bales and every day since.

  Contents

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Keep Reading Paranormal Romance

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of Tides of Time

  Keep Reading Paranormal Romance

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Click here to sign up for the City Owl Press newsletter and be the first to find out about special offers, including FREE book days, contents, giveaways, cover reveals, and more!

  * * *

  Sign up now and become a City Owl Reader today! And join our City Owl Reader-Author group here for even more deals and a whole lot of community and fun!

  Want even more paranormal romance? Try TIDES OF TIME by City Owl Author, Luna Joya, and find more from Gabrielle Ash at www.gabrielleashauthor.com

  She had a very good reason for breaking the first rule of magic ... and the second one ...

  Cami Donovan has secrets. Big ones that no one can ever know.

  All she can do now is try to forget the past and focus on the future. But as it turns out, her future—her family’s future—might not be shiny and bright unless she can help her sister resolve the cold case murder that’s been plaguing her psychic visions.

  Falling for the sexy history expert who holds the keys to it all? That was never part of the plan.

  The last thing on Sam Corraza’s mind is romance. Emotional entanglements bring nothing but pain. His past certainly taught him that. But when he’s presented with an old Hollywood mystery to solve, he can’t stay away—from the case, or the enchanting witch who brought it to him.

  As they unravel the evidence—and their feelings for each other—it becomes clear that the past is coming back to haunt them in a big way.

  With danger closing in, can Cami and Sam overcome all that stands between them—or is history destined to repeat itself?

  GET IT NOW!

  One

  On my seventh birthday, my father said I was a girl worth killing for. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but my mother had because she laughed. Really laughed. My brothers knew too because they rolled their eyes at him. Ashby-brown eyes. The ones we all had.

  My father gave me my first pair of diamond earrings after the fact. Real diamonds. They were shaped into hearts and set in gold.

  “Girls worth killing for wear diamonds,” he said, “and Ashby women always wear diamonds.”

  My mother still wore them in her casket.

  A girl worth killing for.

  What did that even mean?

  As I stared at the phone that buzzed in my hand, the weight of that conversation nineteen years ago rushed back in an unforgiving swell because my father hadn’t really been talking about my worth then. Well, not the kind that fostered confidence or healthy self-esteem at any rate. After a long, slow breath, I answered the call.

  “Matilda Jane, Richard will pick you up at seven.” My father’s voice echoed in the phone the second I put it to my ear. Great. Richard wasn’t a terrible date, but he somehow managed to make dates feel like a trip to the DMV. “Edgar is speaking tonight, so dress appropriately.”

  Appropriately meant a white dress, not a black one, the one I would’ve preferred. But he didn’t care about my preferences. “Of course.”

  “Don’t be late.” He hung up, leaving the or else unsaid.

  The sun finally disappeared behind a cloud, but the heat had nothing to do with the sweat on my palms. Between my father and the irritating range of motion of my pencil skirt, I didn’t have high hopes for the rest of the morning. I stepped into a crosswalk, a sea of skyscrapers stretching ahead, and weaved through a small cluster of teens with earbuds and lattes as my father’s words bit at my ankles.

  Dress appropriately…don’t be late…

  There were a million things I needed to do. I had a meeting at ten. Another at noon. Edgar needed the preliminary report for the month at two. My hair appointment was at five. The charity event tonight required a certain level of immaculate I couldn’t achieve on my own, and my stylist could crank out a French twist in minutes, provided her kids weren’t with her. I’d already laid out the white dress my father wanted on the bed. That would save time. I’d have maybe five minutes to myself for a snack. If I didn’t eat then, I’d never get the chance. Then Richard would show up, I’d be bored out of my mind for a few hours, and the night would end with me watching Hallmark movies alone.

  Maybe not a million things to do, but things that required attention, nevertheless.

  But first—coffee.

  Elle’s Coffee Club was a modern take on an old idea, or at least that’s what it said on their window. They had their own house blend that smacked you right in the nostrils when you walked inside, and their pastries were popular around the office. At least ten emails in the three months I’d worked at the Ashby Corporation had been about crumbs and ants, and all the leftover bits of pastry had come from here.

  Since it was later in the morning, the line usually found in a Manhattan coffee shop had been halved. The tile, sparkling and white, shimmered in the summer sun that filtered in through the window. There were a mixture of booths and high-top tables with olive-green cushions, all featuring a tiny bonsai in the center with a plastic advertisement for the special of the month
. As much as I wanted to sit down in the air conditioning, I simply didn’t have the time.

  “Hi, Miss Ashby.” The barista smiled when I reached the counter. Her name was Tracy, and she helped me most mornings. Her hair was green, and she had a hoop between her nostrils. If I ever showed up to work with green hair and a nose ring, my father would kill me. Well, he’d kill me after he bleached my hair. I wouldn’t be allowed to have green hair at the funeral either.

  “Hey, Tracy. I’d like a caramel macchiato.”

  “Is that all, Miss Ashby?”

  “Just Matilda.” I pulled my wallet out of my purse. “And I’d like to pay for the order behind me as well.”

  It wasn’t the first time I asked to do it, and Tracy didn’t look surprised.

  “What for?” a man, presumably the one I’d be buying coffee for, asked.

  Tracy’s gaze moved over my shoulder and prompted me to turn around. Even then, it took a second before I realized whoever she was looking at hadn’t sounded happy about me buying his breakfast.

  The man was tall, over six feet, but that wasn’t the reason he looked out of place. The thick coat he had on, a canvas jacket like electricians wore in the winter, did that for him. Why did he have that on in this miserable heat?

  “You know…to pay it forward.” I turned back around and passed Tracy my credit card. A pile of scones sat on a cake dish beside the register, and I spoke before my brain could protest. “Two of those, please.”

  When I looked at him, he had both eyebrows raised. A dark-purple bruise stretched across his light skin from his eye to his nose.

  “You expect me to buy this asshole’s coffee instead?” He threw a glance over his shoulder. The man standing behind him in a gray suit and loose tie pushed his shoulders back and puffed out his chest. “I ain’t doing that.”

  “Um…” He was being ridiculous. “You can do whatever you like.”

  “What can I get you, sir?” Tracy asked with a tight smile. One of the fake ones reserved for annoying clients.

  “Just a regular coffee,” he said as I moved to the right of the counter. “None of that weird stuff in there.”

  Instead of worrying about Coat Guy anymore, I took my card from Tracy and put a few dollars in the tip jar on the counter. She glanced at Coat Guy again and pulled a disposable coffee cup from a towering stack beside the register. She’d probably never heard anyone complain about free coffee before.

  Coat Guy, shoulders relaxed and hands tucked into his jacket pockets, had his eyes narrowed in a way I didn’t like when he took his place beside me to wait. While it wasn’t mean, it was off-putting. Like he didn’t trust me or the coffee I bought him.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know.” I turned back to Tracy. She handed me a coffee cup with “pay it forward” scrawled along the side. Coat Guy continued looking me up and down even as I held out his drink.

  A certain amount of contact was expected when passing something to someone, but it didn’t make the urge to crawl in a hole go away when the rough pads of his fingers grazed the top of my thumb. I jerked my hand back a little, and my stomach flipped. It didn’t help that my first thought was to compare the roughness of his hands to the silky skin of Richard’s either.

  Coat Guy wasn’t terrible looking, but he did need a shower. His chestnut hair was slick with sweat, and I’d bet my left Louboutin he cut it himself. The ends were too uneven and blunt for any self-respecting cosmetologist to have done.

  The corner of his mouth lifted, and he pulled his hand away with his coffee, leaving my fingers empty.

  “It’s the scissors.”

  A shot of warm air hit my face as someone pushed the door to the cafe open, but the momentary distraction didn’t give me the insight I hoped for.

  “Pardon?”

  “I don’t like people with sharp objects around my neck,” he said as his eyes, a deep blue like the unseen depths of the ocean, turned up. “I cut it myself.”

  There weren’t many instances in my twenty-six years of life I could remember standing in a stupor, unable to cobble together even the faintest semblance of logic to explain the actions of another human being. People were oftentimes pretty easy to figure out, especially if you stepped outside yourself and looked at them. I might have grown up in the Upper East Side, but I still possessed a pair of eyeballs and a brain.

  However, eyeballs and a brain couldn’t explain how the guy could have known I was thinking about his haircut, and that said nothing about his strange aversion to barbers.

  I turned my gaze to the floor. Maybe I’d been staring at him too long. Or maybe I wasn’t the first person to make a face at his obvious DIY job. What’d he use to make his hair look like that anyway? Safety scissors? Kitchen shears?

  “Well, I’m scared of driving, so I don’t drive,” I eventually said. “So I guess avoiding things you don’t like makes sense.”

  Tracy pulled my attention away again to the scones she held out, one in each hand. The scent of warm blueberry smashed against the paper bag made my mouth water. The perfect breakfast for a day spent beneath the immaculate loafer of my father.

  I sat my coffee down on the counter and took the pair of scones.

  “Here.” I held out one to Coat Guy.

  He frowned. “I can afford my own breakfast, Fancy Pants.”

  A puff of air passed my lips. It wasn’t the first time someone assumed I picked them like a charity case. When your outfit cost more than most people’s weekly take-home pay that tended to happen.

  “My intention isn’t to offend you. I just want to do something nice.” I continued to hold out the scone.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  He stared at me for a moment, right through the core of me like a bullet through flesh. It was unnerving to say the least. The only other person who could make me feel completely transparent was my father, and I’d known him my entire life.

  His gaze flickered down to the scone and back to my face again before he relaxed his shoulders. I waited for the feeling of rough skin when he reached over to grab his breakfast, but it never came.

  Coat Guy held up the scone and nodded. His way of saying thanks, I guess.

  The room got loud again, like I fell out of the cafe and into a silent dome for our interactions, only to get pulled back into the world now that they were over. People skirted around me to get to the counter filled with cream and sugar packets, and the heat that blistered under my eyes didn’t make me feel a whole lot better about being in their way. I picked my coffee up.

  “Have a good day then.”

  I turned on the tile, focused on putting one foot in front of the other to get out instead of my embarrassment. My good deed had caused too much trouble, and it would be a long time before I tried to pay it forward again.

  As I wrapped my fingers around the cool metal handle of the door, I heard his voice.

  “Fancy Pants.”

  I looked at him, hovering over the threshold with one foot on the sidewalk and the other in the cafe. He stalked over, coffee in one hand and scone in the other, and pushed the glass door open, yanking the handle out of my hand.

  “Take a cab,” he said, arm braced against the door. The sun’s rays blasting against my skin again made it all the more curious he could stand to wear a thick coat in the late summer. “Don’t walk.”

  “Maybe I need the exercise.”

  “A stiff wind could blow you across Times Square, so I doubt it.”

  The crowd bustling outside the door started to thin out, and if I pried myself away from him quick enough, I could merge right in.

  “Take a cab,” he said again, voice low. So much for being quick. “See that guy on the corner? Super douche with the popped collar?”

  I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder. There was a man perched on the street corner with his shirt collar standing on end, just as Coat Guy said. He had a phone pressed to his ear and a hand in his pocket. White, early
thirties maybe. Blond hair with too much pomade.

  “He’s following you.”

  My throat turned bone-dry.

  “I doubt that.” The weakness of my voice did an excellent job contradicting my words.

  “He is.”

  It was one of those nightmare scenarios I had been warned about growing up. Don’t go into stairwells alone. Always pay attention. My mother always said as a woman I had to be careful. I had to take care of myself because rich boys with trust funds never went to court.

  While Popped Collar wasn’t likely a rich boy with a trust fund, at least by the looks of his shoes, the warning was still applicable.

  “Take a cab,” Coat Guy repeated a third time, and then he pulled away from the door.

  As my back foot finished its journey across the threshold, I tightened my fingers around my cup. The lid popped off and fell onto the ground, and before I could pick it up, a breeze carried it into the street. The steady thump-thump of my heart, a beat that only increased as I weaved through the crowd and to the edge of the sidewalk, drowned out the chatter and peels of rubber against asphalt. At some point, my hand had shot into the air, and even as a cab slowed to a stop in front of me, I didn’t remember raising it.