by Bethany-Kris
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 actual
ly 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 had 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.