by Bethany-Kris
More touches, and low cusses.
“Your face is fucking battered to hell,” Zeke said quietly. “What did they hit you with that your eyes are swollen shut, man?”
“Marcello.”
“What?”
“Dante.” Every word hurt. Every inch of him hurt. “Dante Marcello.”
Zeke swore heavily. “No way.”
“Just get me off this fucking floor.”
“And then what?”
Cross didn’t know. He only knew what he had been told. New York was not safe for him. It wasn’t safe for his family, either. At least, not while he was there, too.
Anything else was details.
Those didn’t help anybody.
Cross’s fingers felt as stiff as they had that night Zeke found him bloodied, beaten, and damn near dead on the floor of the penthouse. He stretched his fingers, and curled his hands into fists, cracking knuckles in the process.
“Sir, can I help you?”
He walked straight on past the girl standing at the podium, and further into the restaurant. He didn’t even look at her when she called for him a second time.
Cross knew this particular restaurant that was owned by Lucian Marcello. He had eaten in it once or twice. A quick scan of the main floor told him that Dante wasn’t eating with the regular patrons. The restaurant was fitted with a private dining area, and a man stood at the entrance of the section with his hands clasped at his front.
An enforcer.
Any made man knew what one of those looked like.
Cross headed that way.
Instantly, the enforcer caught his eye and put a hand up. “The boss is—”
Cross put his own hand into the guy’s face and shoved him aside. Quickly, he stepped inside the private dining area. Three people sat along the far windows. Two men with their backs turned to him, and a red-head staring out the window.
He didn’t need to see their faces to know who they were.
Lucian, Dante, and Catrina Marcello.
Cross was already a foot away from Dante with an enforcer shouting at his back. Catherine’s father didn’t even see him coming until it was too late. He yanked Dante from his chair by fisting the back of the man’s suit jacket with both hands.
Shouts echoed all around him.
Chairs hit the floor.
Cross pulled Dante from the chair, and then slammed him into the nearby table. Dante sprawled across the top, while Cross fisted one hand into his jacket, and pulled the gun from the holster at his back.
Instantly, he had the gun pointed at Dante’s head.
Two other guns pointed at him.
One from the enforcer.
Another, from Lucian.
“Let the boss go,” the enforcer barked.
Cross laughed at the guy. “You’re a fucking idiot. A man comes in on your boss and gets him like this. Do you really think he gives a fucking shit if he gets a bullet in him, or what?”
“Cross,” Lucian started to say, staring down his Eagle from Cross’s right, “let’s talk, huh?”
“I’ve got fuck all to say to you.” Dante opened his mouth to speak, and Cross pushed the barrel of his gun harder into the man’s head. “Shut the hell up. Don’t even speak right now. It’ll just piss me off more. I came to say a few things, and I want to fucking say them.”
Neither of the two men with guns pointed at him moved an inch, nor did they lower their weapons. Oddly, Cross didn’t care much about them.
He was more concerned with the woman on his left.
Catrina’s knife had been at Cross’s throat from the second he slammed her husband down on the table. She stared at him with hard, icy eyes. Her stance didn’t waver, and her hand didn’t shake. He could feel the tip of her blade slicing his skin just enough to make a trickle of blood rush to the surface.
“I liked you a great deal years ago,” Catrina said, “but do understand that should you keep holding my husband like that, I will slit your throat before you can even pull the trigger, young man. You will bleed out on this floor, and you won’t make a sound because I will cut your vocal cords.”
Women like Catrina were dangerous.
Women like Catrina were vicious.
They did not play.
They could not be trusted.
“Try me,” she said calmly. “You would not be the first man to underestimate my warnings. You will not be the first man I have put in a grave.”
Cross didn’t move.
Neither did anyone else.
He looked down at Dante, noting the man’s clenched teeth, and tense jaw. He wasn’t worried or scared at all, but he was pissed. A raging bull that was caught and ready to be let free.
“That’s why you did it, huh?” Cross asked the man.
Dante sneered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cross.”
“The night you came to my penthouse—you beat the shit out of me, nearly killed me, and told me to run. Remember that, asshole?”
Dante said nothing.
Cross saw Lucian stiffen out of the corner of his eye.
“You fucking remember, don’t you?” he asked Lucian.
The underboss glanced away, but stayed quiet.
Cross didn’t even care, as his attention went back to Dante. “Yeah, that’s right. We all know what I’m talking about. You came into my home, beat my face in with your gun, laughed at me, and threatened me. Not just me, though, no. Anyone around me, too. You shot my shoulder and told me it was a parting gift. Then you fucking left me there like it didn’t even matter.”
He pulled Dante up slightly from the table just to smash him back down onto it again. The blade of Catrina’s knife went with him, and cut the slightest slice through his skin. He could feel the warm trickle of blood staining the collar of his shirt. “Now do you fucking remember?”
Dante let out a hard breath. “You will be lucky to make it out of this place alive. I hope you under—”
“That’s why you did it,” Cross repeated, “because of Catherine.”
The man under him stiffened.
Catrina’s knife pressed harder.
Cross swallowed against the feeling. He wasn’t fucking moving. “Because of Catherine.”
“Yeah,” Dante grunted under his breath.
“Because of what she did.”
“And I would do it again.”
Cross just wanted to hear the asshole say it. He instantly let Dante go and took two huge steps back as the man quickly righted himself and turned to face him. Catrina dropped her hand poised with the knife, and stepped to her husband’s side. Dante’s green eyes blazed with rage and swirling violence, but Cross didn’t finch away.
“You almost killed me because she tried to kill herself,” Cross said.
Dante’s hands twitched at his sides. Likely deciding whether he wanted to hit Cross, or reach for a hidden gun. Cross didn’t move either way.
“Because you fucking blamed me.”
“Who the fuck else caused it? Who else hurt her like you did?” Dante’s shouts turned quieter when he hissed, “Again and again. You were lucky I even let you live long enough to do that to her. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”
“Instead of telling me what she had done,” Cross murmured, unaffected and cold in his fingertips, “so that I knew, you beat the shit out of me, shot me when I was down, and forced me out of this city. You’re a piece of shit that turned me into a coward. You didn’t tell me—you made me run.”
“And you should have stayed gone, Cross.”
“You should have told me!”
“So you could get her to do it again?” Dante roared.
“Daddy?”
Cross’s head snapped to the side.
Catherine stood in the entryway of the private dining area with downcast eyes, and shaking hands resting limply at her sides.
“Catherine,” Dante said quietly.
Betrayal stared back from her when she looked up. She didn’t move an inch.
“Did you do that, Daddy?”
“Catty, I …”
“You did,” she whispered, accusing.
Pain echoed back.
Cross’s chest hurt from the way his heart constricted under his ribs. “Catherine, it’s—”
Her gaze darted to him, wet with tears and hurting. “Don’t. Don’t say anything at all.”
Then, she was gone. She didn’t even look over her shoulder as she left. Not even a hint of a goodbye.
It killed him.
Because he knew he just hurt her. Maybe not directly, but indirectly because he exposed her father like that. She loved the man, so hearing his misdeeds that affected her would hurt.
“Get out of my restaurant,” Lucian said.
Dante barked out a laugh. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not going anywhere. Not after this.”
Lucian turned dark eyes on his brother. “Dante, he gets this one pass because of the one I gave you for what you did to him. You crossed a line, and so has he. I think he’s earned it, considering. If as a made man you expect me to allow you to bend the rules, then you will allow me to extend the same hand to him. This is his pass. You will let him have it.”
Catrina put a hand to her husband’s chest as she turned her back to Cross. Her blood red, stiletto fingernails tapped against Dante. She said nothing, but her silent action spoke far louder. It was as though her hand on his body kept him from moving forward. The smallest, yet strongest, wall keeping him in place.
Dante’s gaze blackened with hate. Cross felt it burning his back as he left with one last memory filling his mind, and taking control of his emotions all over again.
Black eyes. Bruised, busted mouth. Cracked rib. Hairline fracture on his jaw. Concussion.
At least your eyes aren’t swollen shut anymore, he thought.
Still, his reflection looked like hell in the mirror. Cross pushed back the longer bit of hair that had fallen down in front of his bruised eyes. Behind him, Calisto stood silent and stewing.
Who, his step-father kept asking. Tell me, he kept saying.
Cross said nothing. He knew exactly what would happen should he tell Calisto who had nearly beaten him to death. His step-father would raise hell. He would not care that it would mean going against the largest organized crime family in New York. It wouldn’t matter that their family would be severely outnumbered and at a disadvantage where the Marcellos were concerned.
Calisto would not care.
Because someone hurt Cross.
Nothing else mattered.
It would cause a war.
No one would be safe.
Cross couldn’t do that. Not when it meant his mother and sister would be put in the line of fire. Not when it meant Catherine would be put in danger, too.
Cross fully suspected his step-father had a good enough idea about who had done this to him, but Calisto wouldn’t act unless his son confirmed it.
“You’re going to have to tell your mother,” Calisto said. “Please don’t make me tell her, Cross. I don’t want to break her heart.”
Cross nodded. “All right.”
“You know, we could fix this, if you would just tell—”
“Nothing to tell,” he said gruffly.
Calisto sighed, but didn’t push. “When are you leaving, then?”
“Soon. Tomorrow, probably. I might as well drive since I’ll need my vehicle while I’m there.”
“When do you expect to be back?”
Never.
“I don’t know,” Cross lied.
“Chicago isn’t home for you, son.”
“It’s going to be.”
Or it would have to be, now.
“You fucking idiot!”
Cross didn’t move from his position on the edge of the pool table. He ignored the insult Zeke hurled at him, and didn’t bother to greet his friend or the man’s father as they entered his penthouse.
The sky was terribly gray.
A dreary sight.
Cross couldn’t look away.
He sipped on two fingers of whiskey, letting it burn on the way down and enjoying it. The sting reminded him that he could feel. He was still alive.
“You’ve got this whole city in an uproar,” Wolf said, coming to stand behind Cross.
“Putting it lightly,” Zeke added.
“I cannot seriously believe that you went in on Dante Marcello at a restaurant owned by one of his brothers, and threatened him with a gun, Cross.”
“I didn’t threaten him,” Cross replied, bored and restless at the same time. “I simply pulled a gun on him and then said a few things. I did not say or use threats.”
“Semantics,” Wolf barked. “You pulled a gun on a Cosa Nostra Don, and—”
“I would do it again in a second.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Are you trying to start a war between our families?” Zeke asked.
Cross shrugged. “I had shit to say.”
“Like what?”
“Things only him and I would understand,” Cross explained, offering nothing else.
“Our phones won’t stop ringing,” Wolf muttered. “In a day, you’ve managed to make the streets our families share very fucking tense, Cross. Your father … Calisto would like to see you, and soon.”
“There’s nothing to see or say between him and I.”
“Cross.”
“I did what I did,” Cross said, “so let it be done.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“Was this for her?” Zeke asked, ignoring his father. “Catherine, I mean. Was it?”
Cross still didn’t turn around. “You know, out of everything in my life, she is the thing that feels the most real to me right now. Everything else is lies—big ones and little white ones. She’s the one thing that was never colored with some kind of falsehood from people hiding secrets from me. Strange how that works, isn’t it?”
“Wasn’t she the liar between the two of you?”
He smiled. “Not to me.”
Now, he had to wait.
Catherine would come to him. She was like him, after all. Living in a world that moved around her and did things she could not see. A world of people who lied and hid things from her; people who loved her.
It made everything feel … false.
He was real to her.
So, she would come.
Cross knew it.
A knock on Catherine’s apartment door instantly made her irritated. If the constant calls and messages she had been getting for two straight days were any indication, she knew exactly who had come over. She didn’t move from her spot on the couch.
The knock became louder.
Catherine kept reading her book.
“Catherine,” she heard her father’s muffled voice call, “you will open this door, or I will break it down.”
“And get me evicted?” she called back.
“I would pay to fix it, too.”
“Catherine, let us in,” her mother said.
Catrina sounded just as frustrated as Catherine did.
Wonderful.
“It’s not even locked,” Catherine said.
She kept her eyes on her book as her parents entered the apartment. She wasn’t reading it anymore, but she didn’t want to look at them.
Or rather, her father.
Catrina headed for the kitchen and turned on the electric kettle. Dante moved to sit beside Catherine on the couch. The moment he sat down she tossed her book aside and stood.
Dante sighed. “Catherine—”
“I’m not interested in talking right now,” she told him.
Catrina focused on pulling coffee cups from the cabinets, and not her husband and daughter. Catherine leaned against the island separating the kitchen and living room.
“We’ve been calling you for two days,” her father murmured.
“And I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
“School,” she lied.
Catherine hadn’t gone to school since that day in the restaurant. She couldn’t focus enough to pretend to care. There were far too many other things on her mind.
Dante pursed his lips, clearly displeased. “You couldn’t pick up your phone at all? Call us back? Nothing?”
“Why should I?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Catherine stressed. “That’s not hard to figure out, Daddy.”
“Catherine!”
She did not care that she was being rude. After everything she learned, and what it meant to her, a bit of attitude was needed.
“I said what I said, and I meant it,” she said with a shrug. “You could at least respect it and not push me, Daddy.”
Catrina frowned as her gaze darted between Catherine and Dante. “How much time do you need, Catty?”
“I don’t know.” Catherine crossed her arms, and gave her mother a look. “Did you know?”
“About what?” her mother asked.
“What he did to Cross.”
Catrina let out a hard breath and admitted, “No, I did not. Apparently that happened when I was asleep in a hospital waiting room. I wasn’t filled in on the details until recently.”
“Huh.”
Catherine wasn’t sure if that made a difference to how she felt, or not. At the very least, she couldn’t be angry with her mother. That was a good thing, right?
“I was overwhelmed with everything that happened,” Dante said from the couch.
“I said I don’t want to talk—”
“Catherine, you don’t understand. I had just pulled you out of a tub the day before with your wrist flayed open like a fucking piece of meat. We had admitted you to the hospital for a seventy-two hour hold on a suicide watch. I was overwhelmed. I was enraged. I needed an outlet, and went to the person I felt deserved it.”
Catherine scoffed as she turned on her father. “That is the shittiest justification I have ever heard for beating someone nearly to death and shooting them.”
“Let’s not forget telling the young man to get out of state and stay gone,” Catrina added.
She waved at her mother. “And that!”
Dante glowered at his wife. “Not helping, Cat.”
“Own what you did,” she replied quietly.
“I am trying.”
“No, Dante, you’re not. You’re attempting to make her forgive you by explaining how you felt. As if that makes it okay. It doesn’t.”
