Always: A Legacy Novel (Cross + Catherine Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  Those were slightly better.

  “No one is making me do anything in the family,” Cross said. “They talk a lot. They try. They like to point out who I am and where I came from, like it’s going to make a difference to what I should or shouldn’t do. Some make it sound like this is all I can do. I hear it, that’s all. It makes it hard when I hear it more often than I don’t.”

  “This has always been your choice, Cross.”

  Yeah, he knew that, too.

  He didn’t have to be in the family business. He could drop it today, or tomorrow. Anytime he wanted, he could stop. He could go to college if he wanted after he graduated high school. He could do anything.

  But this was what he wanted.

  He always wanted it.

  Cross simply preferred certain aspects of their business more than others—like guns.

  “What if I tried?” Cross asked his step-father.

  “Tried what?”

  “Gunrunning and Cosa Nostra.”

  Calisto cleared his throat. “I think you’re going to find then that you will make sacrifices to one more often than not to handle the other. Because that is the very nature of this business, Cross. You give your all to one thing, and it succeeds. You spread yourself between too many things, and you fail. That’s why there are only three major syndicate families in New York, one controlling Vegas, and the Outfit down in Chicago. It’s because each of these criminal organizations have put their focus into what they do best, while the little families around them have drowned trying to do too much.”

  “You forgot one.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The Canadians—Guzzi,” Cross pointed out. “Cosa Nostra syndicate, everything from arms, to drugs, to whatever they feel like.”

  “They’re a very special case.”

  “Why?”

  “I suppose because they’ve had control of Canada’s major cities for going on seventy years or more, Cross. They control the gangs through a pyramid of third party involvement, and that’s where a lot of their arms dealing comes from. This is something they’ve built for years. It was not an overnight thing.”

  “Obviously,” Cross said. “The point is that it’s possible.”

  “But not by one man, son. That’s many men. It’s a whole family of men. It’s generations and generations of men building that kind of control. It was not one man.”

  Cross frowned. “Who would take over for you, if I didn’t when the time came?”

  “That’s a long time away, yet.”

  “I didn’t ask when. I asked who.”

  Calisto scratched at the underside of his jaw; an action Cross knew was a nervous tic his step-father couldn’t get rid of. “Well, I haven’t ever really considered it, Cross.”

  Because the answer was obvious.

  There was no one.

  Calisto always just assumed it would be Cross, like everyone else kept telling him. Principe, that’s who he was. The proper Donati principe.

  “But I can do anything, right?” he asked, almost sarcastically.

  “Cross, now—”

  “How can I do anything when even you’ve always thought I was only going to do what you want for me?” Cross shook his head, and went back to the weapon. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. This is why I don’t talk about it. There’s no point.”

  “Cross, hey.”

  When he ignored his step-father, Calisto simply took the gun right from his hands, and pushed on his shoulder to spin him around. Face to face, the two stared hard at one another.

  “This has always been your choice,” Calisto repeated firmly. “You can be a made man, a gunrunner, or none of the above. You can be or do anything, Cross. I will make sure of it. I will be just as proud of you if you’re sitting in my seat in twenty years, or playing in an orchestra. It’s that simple.”

  “Can I? Will you?”

  “I never got a choice. You will always have one.”

  “What does that mean—you never got a choice?”

  Calisto shrugged. “Another story for a different day.”

  “I’ll hold you to that, Papa.”

  “You don’t forget, I know.” Calisto leaned against the table. “How about this, Cross? You keep doing what you want to do now—mentoring under Wolf, dipping your feet into this kind of water, and learning how you’re learning. You like it, you always have, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then keep doing it. It’s not going to hurt. And, the more you’re involved in, the more families and people you meet in this business. It’s called opening doors, son. The more friends you make, the more doors get opened.”

  “Okay.”

  Calisto rapped his knuckles to the metal table. “And the very second you get a chance to do what you really want to do because you’ve opened the right door, I expect you to take it.”

  Cross stilled. “Really?”

  “You’ll never know, if you don’t try.”

  “What if I have my button by then?”

  His in to the family, he meant.

  Just because he was a Donati, didn’t mean he was a made man. He had a button to earn, yet. An oath to take. A promise to make.

  Once a made man, always a made man.

  That was their life.

  It was their rules.

  “You get the chance, you need to take it,” Calisto said again. “The rest is details, Cross, and you’ve still got years before you have to worry about that.”

  Except … he would be eighteen in just three months.

  One year left of high school.

  His time to choose or figure it out was quickly coming to a fast end.

  “On another note, I’m glad to see you’re more settled than you were,” Calisto said, shoving his hands deep in his slacks pockets. “Your mother’s thankful for that, too.”

  “You mean, when I took off for a month and you had me dragged back home when you found me?”

  “Details, Cross. Those are details.”

  “That’s not what you called it when you threatened to stuff me in the car’s trunk,” Cross pointed out.

  Calisto smirked. “Yeah, well, I got your ass home.”

  Truth.

  “I am … better, I mean.”

  It took a while.

  He tried to be numb a lot of the time. Used just about anything that would get him to that blissed, numbed place.

  It didn’t work.

  It did distract him.

  “Don’t forget to put the gun away,” Calisto said as he turned to head out the side door of the garage.

  “I won’t.”

  “And switch the license plates on your Rover tonight before you head out.”

  Cross stiffened, and then let out a laugh. “Heard about the street races, huh?”

  “Son, I hear everything. Even when you think I don’t.”

  Parked down by the dock, look for flares.

  Cross cursed as he parked his Rover, and looked over Zeke’s text. As it was, too many vehicles were blocking his path to get in further, and he was stuck walking to his friend. Probably a good block, maybe more.

  He threw the hood of his hoodie over his head, and pocketed the keys of his Rover. He wouldn’t be participating in the street races this time, but he did enjoy the show. Zeke had gotten wind of the races two months ago, but it wasn’t an easy thing to get into. The organizers made it an invite-only situation, and that invite came as a random text. Locations, times, streets, and nothing more.

  Sometimes, one text would come, and then half way through the day, a new one would come in with changed times and places. Cross suspected that was because someone got wind the cops might show up.

  Almost always, the races started in places that were abandoned, or had little activity. Cars lined up on the streets, trunks and hoods opened wide, and music blaring while engines purred. Girls perched themselves on the roofs of cars, sipping whatever drinks were in their hands, and the air usually held the distinct smell of weed every few ve
hicles or so.

  The thing about street racing was speed happened to be only one part of the equation when the race track was city streets, or sometimes, a whole damn state. Whoever was behind the wheel had to know where they were going, and where they needed to get to within a certain amount of time, and preferably, in first position. If they had the ability to use shortcuts, even better.

  There weren’t a lot of rules.

  Just a start and a finish.

  Cross wasn’t big on the racing aspect where his enjoyment came into play—his Rover wasn’t made for that kind of thing. He did like to see the vehicles and make his bet, though.

  And he had money.

  “Donati!”

  Cross nodded at the guy shouting his name, but kept making his way down the street. Dodging in and out through parked vehicles, he caught sight of the flares lighting up the docks. A few cars away, he found Zeke leaning back on the hood of his cherry red Camaro, with a joint dangling from his fingertips.

  “You’re fucking late,” Zeke said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Cross stepped up on the Camaro’s bumper and sat his ass down on the hood beside Zeke. “Cam got to me before I left.”

  “She’s spoiled as hell.”

  Cross shrugged. “Like your sister isn’t?”

  “My sister is eighteen and pregnant, so the innocent act flew out the window not too long ago, thanks. Nobody’s spoiling her now.”

  “Where’s your girl?”

  Zeke pushed up into a sitting position, and took a heavy drag off the joint, letting a heady cloud of smoke lift to the sky. “Somewhere. She wanted to get something, I think.”

  Jade—Zeke’s plaything for the month—was not Cross’s favorite person, but he dealt with the girl. He didn’t know how his friend handled girls like that to begin with; ones with expensive tastes, spoiled dispositions, and habits they couldn’t kick.

  Cross wasn’t up for that shit.

  Zeke had a habit, too. Girls like that.

  “Something she’s going to snort up her nose?” Cross asked.

  Zeke shot Cross a look. “Mind yours, man, and I’ll mind mine.”

  Sure, sure.

  “What’s the minimum tonight?”

  “Twenty grand to enter, four and up for betting. Find one of their bookies and get on that, Cross.”

  “Shit, they raised it?” Cross asked.

  Zeke nodded. “Someone got picked up last race, so anyone who wants to be in a car on the street needs to make sure they want it bad enough to pay for it, I guess.”

  “Who’s racing?”

  “The usual bunch, minus that guy who came down from Vegas from the last time. Guess his car got totaled in a rollover a month back.”

  “The Porsche?”

  Zeke flicked his joint to the ground, and let out one last exhale of weed-scented smoke. “Yep. Fuck me, that was a nice car.”

  Cross scowled up at the dark sky. “That’s who I wanted my money on tonight.”

  “Too bad. Five to one on—”

  “Don’t care. I wanted Vegas.”

  “You’ve just got a hard-on for Porsches.”

  That was also true, but it didn’t mean he would admit it.

  “There you are, girl,” Zeke said as a familiar redhead came to stand in front of the car. In a too-tight, too-short dress and six-inch heels, Jade’s attention was on something down the road instead of her man. “Did you find what you needed, or what?”

  Jade turned on Zeke and Cross. Her cocaine-blown eyes stared back at them.

  Coke was a vicious, expensive bitch. It could make a person feel invincible, but without it, that same person suddenly became useless. Cross knew how dangerous a relationship with coke could be, and that’s why he stayed way the hell away from it. But it was Jade’s best friend. Two clean lines picked her up off the floor in the morning, and four shakily made lines kept her from sleeping at night.

  Cross didn’t know how in the hell Zeke did it, considering the guy never used more than weed or liquor. Maybe it wasn’t the type of girls he dated that Zeke had a bad habit for, but his desire to fix those girls.

  “Somebody was holding,” she said, “but it wasn’t who I thought would be tonight. Doesn’t matter; they’ve got better shit anyway.”

  “Oh?” Zeke asked.

  Jade sniffed. “Andino Marcello’s supplying about twenty cars down. His cousin, too.”

  “John?” Cross asked, surprised at that.

  John was a little old to be dealing drugs at something like this, considering he was working on his button for his in to the Marcello family. Well, that was what Cross overheard from conversations he wasn’t supposed to hear. Plus, John was a little crazy—he was more likely to be one of the bastards behind a car racing, if he was going to be here at all.

  Jade’s paranoid-high gaze turned on Cross. “No, the girl. Everybody just calls her Catty when she’s out with him. Sometimes she deals, sometimes she doesn’t. This is the first time I’ve seen them at the races, though.”

  Cross stiffened.

  Zeke laughed beside him. “Shit, really?”

  “You’re sure that’s what they called her?” Cross asked.

  “Yep.”

  “And she’s dealing?”

  Jade rolled her eyes. “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you didn’t specify who you bought from.”

  “Well, Andino,” Jade said, like it should have been obvious.

  “So then Catherine isn’t dealing,” Cross replied.

  “No, she is. It’s just the guys like her, you know? Pretty like an angel, but smiles like a devil. She isn’t here for me to look at.”

  Huh.

  Cross wasn’t sure he believed that nonsense, or if he liked it. Not that he had any business liking anything Catherine chose to do or not do. That was all on her.

  Zeke shot him a look. “When did that happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Cross said honestly. “We split up a couple weeks before school ended. I’m more interested in why, I guess.”

  “Her brother was heading to Detroit in the summer, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was still supplying up until he left, and now he isn’t; there’s your reason why,” Zeke murmured, leaning back on the hood to get comfortable again.

  “That’s not Catherine’s thing.”

  “Wasn’t,” his friend corrected. “Anything can be anyone’s thing, Cross, as long as they find a good enough reason to do it.”

  Right.

  Curiosity killed the cat, idiot.

  Nah, curiosity was going to kill Cross because he couldn’t mind his own business.

  Music blared from the system set up in the trunk of a souped up, fifty-seven Mustang. Cross gave the car a look as he passed it by, but his gaze didn’t linger on it for long. It couldn’t, not when he caught the sight of Catherine Marcello in his peripheral vision just twenty feet away.

  The skirt of the sky-blue sundress Catherine wore spun wide around her knees, showing off a quick flash of smooth thighs, as she turned to laugh at something her cousin said. Cross wasn’t paying any mind to Andino at all, only Catherine. Wedged heels made her look taller than she actually was, and gave him a great view of her legs. Delicate collarbones peeked out from the opened jean jacket covering her shoulders, and the long rope of pearls hanging low to rest on the top swells of her tits.

  Cross wasn’t sure why, but he glanced at her hand.

  He wanted to see, to know …

  Sure enough, she wore those white-gold knuckles he had made for her sixteenth birthday.

  And that made him smile.

  Maybe it should have pissed him off, or at the very least, irked him. It didn’t. At all.

  Cross moved in between another parked car, noting the opened cases of beer in the back, and ignoring the girl reaching for him as he passed. His gaze darted back to Catherine’s position only to find she was talking to someone new. A guy.

  He understood what Jade meant in that
moment.

  Catherine looked every inch sweet and innocent and pretty. All she had to do was smile at the guy leaning in just a little too close for Cross’s liking, and the guy didn’t seem to notice anyone else was even around them.

  Just Catherine.

  She shrugged; the guy laughed.

  He reached out to touch her on the arm, but she was already moving back with a teasing smile. The guy’s wide arms and guffaw only made Catherine wink, and wave her perfectly painted red nails high. Red, like the lipstick on her sly mouth. She never let the guy get close enough to touch, but she sure seemed to let him think he could.

  Which was probably all the guy wanted.

  Cross kind of saw it then.

  A game.

  She was playing a game with him. Another smile. Another step closer. Another move played by him. Another game probably won by her.

  The guys like her …

  Jade’s words echoed.

  Then, Cross saw the exchange, although it was fast between hands held low, and when heads were turned. Palms sliding together, a flash of cash being hidden in a pocket, and then the guy was dropped from Catherine’s attention because she had got what she wanted. He had nothing more to give.

  Cross wanted to be surprised at what he was seeing, but he really wasn’t at all. How could he be shocked, when Catherine was clearly good at whatever she was doing. She had always been a little too sly for her own good, and this was just another way for her to put that to use.

  And men were dumb enough not to notice.

  He still didn’t like it, though. She was putting herself in dangerous situations just by doing what she was doing—dealing always came with obvious and hidden dangers. No matter how much control she thought she had, there was always a possibility of something bad happening.

  That was a shitty byproduct of the business.

  Even knowing all of that, Cross still felt his jealousy burning hard like a fire inside his chest. He tried to quell it, to ignore it, but nothing helped.

  Why was he so fucked when it came to her?

  Why?

  Cross came out of his thoughts as he got closer to Catherine and Andino. Both were sitting on the back of the Cadillac SUV’s bumper, and Andino saw him approach first.

  “Cross,” Andino greeted, pushing off the bumper to stand tall. At six-foot-three, Andino stood eye-level with Cross. “Didn’t know you were around tonight.”