by Bethany-Kris
Calisto almost always laughed it off.
Catherine stared at him as though he had grown a second head.
“What?” he asked.
“Why would I tell them I was breaking rules?”
“Why would you wait until you got to ten write-ups instead of telling them at eight?” Cross tapped the pad of his pointer finger on Catherine’s small nose. “I’m just saying.”
“I have a different opinion.”
“One that only makes sense to you because you don’t want to be in trouble earlier than you’re going to be anyway,” Cross replied.
Catherine gave him a dirty look. “Stop making sense.”
It was what it was.
“I don’t sugarcoat shit, Catherine.”
“You could try for me, Cross.”
“Especially not for you.”
It wouldn’t do her any good.
It didn’t benefit anyone to lie their way through life.
Catherine shook her head and went back to doodling.
“This weekend, Natasha is having—”
Cross made a face and said, “No.”
“You could let me finish.”
“It’s not my thing.”
“Let me finish.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“She’s having a bunch of people over, like for the night, but I was thinking I’d skip out with you and Zeke for a while on Saturday since I’m supposed to be at her place anyway. If you’d be able to get over there and pick me up.”
Cross liked that idea.
Except …
“I’m going to Chicago all weekend,” he said.
Catherine’s smile faded instantly.
He didn’t like that at all.
“Sorry,” he added.
She shrugged. “It was an idea. Are you going for your birthday?”
Likely business.
Cross couldn’t tell her that, though.
No talking about the family business.
It was a rule he followed.
“No, but my game is tonight,” he said instead. Catherine was the one to make a face that time. “Yeah, I know football isn’t your thing, but would you come anyway?”
He never asked for shit from Catherine.
She gave—he took.
He liked it that way.
Catherine grinned at him. “I’ll call home and get a ride for a while after the game. Don’t you have a party or something to celebrate if you win?”
“They might. I don’t.”
He didn’t play for that stuff.
“About my birthday …” he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder to see where the supervising teachers happened to be.
She didn’t want another write-up, after all.
Both supervising teachers’ backs were turned away from their direction.
“What?” Catherine asked.
Cross closed the gap between them the same way he had earlier, but instead of a quick kiss that was over before anyone knew what was happening, this one wasn’t the same. He took his time—kissed her hard.
He liked the way Catherine’s lips curved into a happy smile, and how her pupils blew wide when her gaze found his. Her mouth was always sweet against his, and then hot, too.
Cross waited to feel Catherine’s lips part, a small sigh beating against his mouth. Then he deepened the kiss, already finding her tongue waiting to war with his. He made himself pull away before someone did turn around and write them up.
Catherine bit her bottom lip and muttered, “You’re going to get me in shit.”
“I had to thank you, though.”
“Good excuse.”
The bell rang echoing through the cafeteria.
“Okay, Catherine, let’s go before your boyfriend gets us in trouble again,” one of the girls said. “I mean, if that’s what you’re calling him this week.”
Catherine shot him a small smile, but he could tell the comment bothered her. Maybe because it was true, but maybe because he didn’t know what they were. She probably didn’t, either. Everybody always asked them questions. People never shut up. He hated their nosiness. His friends never asked; they didn’t care.
Cross didn’t even care to know which one of Catherine’s friends said it.
It wasn’t anyone else’s business what he called Catherine, or what she called him. They were clearly something, and he liked that just fine. They had been something for two months, so he figured it was obvious without making a scene like everybody else did.
It was everyone else who seemed to have a problem.
Quickly, he grabbed one of Catherine’s Sharpies—a black one—and popped the cap off. She laughed when he grabbed her wrist and flipped it over, doodling two fast stripes of black on her soft skin. One line long, the other, crossways and shorter.
“There,” Cross said, dropping Catherine’s wrist and handing back her marker. The table cleared of the girls. He still wasn’t paying them any attention. When Catherine was there, it was just him and her. “So you know, now.”
She looked down and smiled; he’d marked a black cross on her inner wrist.
“So I know what?”
“I’m yours.”
“What does that mean?”
Cross chuckled. “Whatever you want it to mean. That’s the whole point.”
“Cross?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you said you didn’t want anything for your birthday …”
“Too old for that nonsense,” he said.
Catherine rolled her eyes. “Never too old for presents, but anyway.”
“You didn’t get me something, did you?”
“No, I made you something.”
Catherine flipped her sketchpad back over for Cross to see what was on the paper. It was a comic-style sketch of him and her, sitting at the table, ignoring the rest of the world. Like they usually did.
Cross stared at the drawing and said, “I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
She doodled a lot.
She never really showed him what was inside her sketchbooks. Sometimes she took her silver and gold Sharpies, and made complex patterns and designs on her arms, a table top, or whatever was close. He was pretty sure a teacher had written her up for that at least once.
Catherine shrugged. “Art isn’t really a good career goal, right? It’s a hobby.”
“This is fucking awesome, Catherine.”
“You like it?”
He grinned wide. “I love it.”
Chicago was a lot like New York, except colder and windier.
Wolf chuckled when Cross stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, and hid his face in the flipped up collar.
“Not funny,” Cross mumbled behind the fabric, “I’m freezing my balls off here.”
“Next time you won’t be such an arrogant little shit when I tell you to bring a decent winter jacket.”
“It’s November.”
“In Chicago …” Rick said, slamming the SUV door closed behind Cross. The enforcer grinned in a way that made Cross want to put something through the guy’s head. “November is winter, kid.”
Cross flipped Rick off. “Suck my dick.”
Wolf sighed. “Now, Cross.”
“Don’t call me a kid again,” he said, ignoring Wolf’s warning.
“The flight home is going to be so much fun,” Wolf muttered under his breath. “Calisto should send Rick with me more often. Remind me to tell him that as soon as I get home.”
Rick smacked Cross in the back of the head, and moved toward the waiting restaurant. “You are a kid.”
He was going to put something through Rick’s head.
“If he hits me one more time, I’m going to—”
Wolf pushed on Cross’s shoulder, moving them both toward the restaurant. “He likes messing with you because it bothers you, Cross. Haven’t you figured that out yet? There are men in this business who will poke at every raw nerve you have just because they can; be
cause you’ve been stupid enough to show them you have a weakness to exploit. Don’t blame Rick for your shortcomings. It is not his duty to curb his nature to suit your mood, principe, not unless you’re the boss.”
He really hated it when Wolf made sense.
“Get your dick wet for the first time in your life,” Rick said as he held the door open for Wolf and Cross to enter the business, “and I’ll stop calling you a kid, principe.”
Cross glared at the asshole on his way by. “I already—”
“Getting your dick sucked isn’t the same thing,” Rick interrupted.
Little did the guy know, Cross had already done all that shit and more. It took every ounce of willpower Cross had not to drive his thumbs into Rick’s eye sockets and pull out the man’s eyes in that second, though.
“Well, you would know all about sucking cock, wouldn’t you?” Cross asked. “Don’t your knees get sore from that?”
Rick’s face reddened.
Cross smirked.
Point to me, asshole.
“Okay, that’s quite enough entertainment for the day,” Wolf said. He pushed Cross ahead of him and sent Rick a look to keep him quiet at the same time. “Cross, wipe that smug smile off your face. Rick, draw your line at talking about that shit, and stay right where you are for the rest of this meeting.”
Rick stayed behind like he was told.
Wolf flicked Cross on the tip of his ear, ignoring the shout and dirty look he earned. Once they were around the corner and entering the restaurant’s main floor, he said, “Cross, you’re working my last nerve; clean up the attitude quick, fast, and in a hurry, or you will stay behind the next time.”
Cross fixed his attitude.
For now.
A man Cross recognized stood from his table when he saw them approaching. Adriano Conti was his name—a Capo for the Chicago Outfit. Wolf hadn’t explained much about the business they would be doing in Chicago, just that Cross was to come, sit down, and shut his mouth so he could learn. He’d seen Adriano at another meeting, although his father had been the one to bring him along at that time.
“Wolf,” Adriano greeted, holding out his hand.
Wolf took the handshake. “Adriano.”
The man nodded to Cross. “I wondered if you would bring the principe.”
“I’m starting to regret the decision.”
Cross opened his mouth to respond, but wisely chose to shut up when Wolf looked down at him with a cocked brow.
Adriano’s gaze lit up with amusement as he looked over Cross. “Oh?”
“It’s like sitting between two teenage girls barking at one another in the car between him and the other man I brought along,” Wolf said. “Although to be frank, it seems I have a man who forgets that Cross will not always be fifteen, a head shorter than him, and fifty pounds lighter. Soon, he won’t be any of those things at all, and I’m not sure the man is ready for what happens when that day comes. He’s poking at a sleeping bear with a very short stick.”
“I will have to tell my nephew he is not the only principe to be ribbed on a regular basis,” Adriano said, smiling, “although if you asked Tommaso, he certainly thinks he’s the only one. It’s a rite of passage for young men like you, Cross. Who else will thicken your skin if not the men you grow up under? That’s how you learn not to kill everyone who pisses you off.”
Cross scowled. “Killing them seems like the easier way to deal with it.”
Wolf lifted a hand in Cross’s direction, as if to ask, See?
Adriano laughed. “You’ll learn, Cross. We all did.”
“Sit,” Wolf said, pointing at an open chair at the table.
Cross slid into the seat and shrugged his jacket off to hang over the back. Once the other two men were also seated, he noticed the enforcer Adriano had brought along, as the man came to hand over a file for his Capo to take.
“Thank you,” Adriano said, waving the enforcer off.
“What do you have for me?” Wolf asked. “It better be good for me to make the trip to Chicago, Adriano.”
“It is, no worries.”
The file was flipped open, exposing photos of what looked to be … a shipment of some kind. Adriano turned over more photographs, showcasing what was inside the shipment. Drugs. A lot of it. Cocaine, by the looks of it.
“I certainly like what I’m looking at, but why exactly am I looking at it?”
Adriano closed the file back up. “Better to have this conversation face to face, given the circumstances and all. Our ports are hot as shit right now—three cargos were picked up by officials in as many months. We need access to a safe port until things calm down. I don’t know how long that’s going to be; a year, maybe less, but maybe more.”
Wolf rested back in his chair, nodding. “A New York port, then?”
“You have access to one, don’t you?”
“Two, actually, but the fee is going to kill you.”
Adriano laughed. “Yeah, I figured it would.”
“Why not go to the Marcellos? They’ve got far more ports than us, and could probably afford to drop one for a cheaper fee.”
“The Marcellos may have forgiven us for the incident way back when, but they still won’t work with us, especially at the ports.”
“Ah,” Wolf murmured, “I see.”
Cross took a drink of soda the waitress brought over without even taking his attention from the table. He wondered in that moment, how strange his life would probably seem to someone watching from the outside. How many fifteen-year-olds spent their weekends like this? How many people could look at a photograph of drugs, and just know what kind they were?
Not very many.
Cross had known from a very young age what he wanted to be—a made man. His whole life was going to be this very thing; the mafia was their thing, after all.
He didn’t know anything different.
He didn’t care to.
“Cross, come back to my office, please.”
Cross didn’t know what exactly it was, but something in the tone of his step-father’s voice said Calisto wasn’t pleased as it echoed from the back of the house. He dropped his school bag at the door, and headed down the hallway to the office. The whole way, he ran through shit he might have done over the last week that would warrant his step-father getting pissed at him. He’d come home from Chicago, and went to school every day without skipping. He didn’t torture the shit out of Camilla, and he’d made an effort to not get suspended since that first day.
For the most part, Cross had been … good.
As good as he could be.
It was a fine line.
Cross leaned in the office doorway, only to find Calisto sitting behind his large desk. “Yeah?”
Calisto glanced up from whatever he was typing on his laptop. “How was school?”
“Boring.”
“Anything happen today?”
“Football practice and a test I probably failed.”
Calisto rubbed at his temples with two fingers on either side. “You hit your ten write-ups today, and I got a call about it.”
“Okay.”
That wasn’t new.
“When were you going to tell me you’ve been dating Catherine Marcello?”
Cross stiffened. “What?”
“Three of your write-ups are for public displays of affection—cute way of saying you like to kiss the girl when you’re not supposed to be. I mean, Jesus Christ, I hope that’s all you’re doing with her right now. Two others were for lingering on the property after the bell with her instead of heading to class,” Calisto said. “So again, when were you going to tell me—”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
His step-father stared hard at him. “Really, Cross?”
“Is that what we’re doing—dating?”
Calisto’s brow furrowed. “Are you fucking with me right now? I can’t take your smartass self very much more today, Cross. It’s been a long damn day.”
“When pe
ople date, they do things. Go places. Whatever. I don’t know. We’re just … us,” he finished lamely. “I haven’t brought her over or anything, so why would I bring it up?”
“I told you not to make a spectacle of that girl, son.”
“I’m not.”
“Getting written up at school because you can’t leave her the hell alone sure sounds like making a spectacle to me,” his step-father muttered heavily. “So you … like her?”
Cross frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He didn’t talk to people he didn’t like, let alone be with them as much as he was with Catherine. He wouldn’t say he liked Catherine. He liked his friends. He liked his bike. He liked football, sometimes. She was different than those things. It was more than that. It wasn’t as simple or easy as that. Not at all.
“You know I have to call her father now,” Calisto said, “because of who he is and who I am, to give him a heads up. It’s the respect of the matter.”
Cross shrugged. “Okay, so do that.”
“I should make you call.”
“Why?”
Calisto, again, stared at him as though he was the stupidest thing to have graced his presence. “You really don’t see what you did wrong, do you?”
“Because I like Catherine Marcello?”
“My God, Cross. Get out, I have to make a phone call.”
“Yeah, about that. I mean, since you’re already calling anyway. I want to take Catherine to the Winter Formal the Academy has coming up, so mention that for me.”
Calisto’s eyes darted back to Cross in a heartbeat. “I beg your pardon?”
“Winter Formal. They do it every year in January after Christmas break. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, but do you? Because you’ve gone to that school since sixth grade, and you’ve never gone to a dance or anything they throw, for that matter. Last year, the football team won regionals, they threw the team a huge party, and you wouldn’t even go to that.”
Cross still didn’t understand why those things mattered.
“Catherine likes to dance. So yeah, mention that for me.”
His step-father looked like someone had cracked him in the back of the head with a frying pan. “Get out of my office, Cross. Now.”