Revere: A Legacy Novel (Cross + Catherine Book 2)

by Bethany-Kris

  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.”<
br />
  “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.

  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.”