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

by Bethany-Kris

  “Sometimes she gets shit right,” Cross muttered, “even when I don’t like it.”

  “Women do tend to have that advantage over us.”

  “So it seems. And here I am.”

  “She’s been at your place for how long, now?”

  “A week,” Cross answered. “Before you ask, yes, Dante knows. No, I haven’t seen him. I don’t care if I ever do at the moment, but I am sure it is coming.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask, but thanks for letting me know. You told her, then?”

  Cross flipped a page, and admired the rose-gold tinted sniper rifle on the page. A custom gun, it seemed, and he wondered the price tag to have it made. “Told her what?”

  “About us. Our … well, shit, saying it’s a secret seems juvenile, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s what it is. A secret you kept from me for my entire fucking life. Call it what it is.” Cross didn’t bother looking up from the magazine as he spoke. “Yes, I told her. I am not the one in this family that lies, Papa.”

  “I don’t lie, Cross.”

  “You did. For years.”

  “Because I had no other choice.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Cross, give me the decency of your attention when we speak. Not even as a boss and his man, but as a father and his son. Look at me.”

  He did.

  Cross didn’t like what stared back at him.

  Pain.

  Calisto was in pain, and that hurt Cross, too.

  It was easier for him to stay mad and bitter when he didn’t have to face the reality that these years of secrets and lies had been just as hard on his father.

  Not his cousin.

  Not his uncle.

  Not his step-dad.

  No, his father.

  Made from his blood, from his heart and soul. Him and Calisto, they were the same. Cross just wished he had already known that detail.

  “I had no other choice,” Calisto repeated, “because I wanted to protect Emma first. We were such a fucking mess back then—her and I made a lot of mistakes, and we played a very dangerous game for years. I thought it wouldn’t matter, really.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t tell me that you were my real father—that I was a product of your affair?”

  “No, I didn’t. I loved you anyway; I was going to love you regardless, and I did. All your life, Cross, you’ve always been treated as though you were a child born from my blood because you were. The rest was details. I thought if I loved you enough, if you already felt like you were actually mine, then the truth wasn’t going to make that much of an impact.”

  “It did, though.” Cross sighed, and tossed the magazine aside. “So lie to everyone else, but not me. Why me, too?”

  “When was I supposed to tell you, Cross?” Calisto asked, holding his hands wide. “When you were just a child, and wouldn’t understand? Or why not when you were a teenager, and couldn’t listen long enough to hear what was actually being said? Should I have told you in your more difficult years, so that I could put a strain between you and me? When all I had to keep control of you was the trust you had in me? When should I have told you?”

  Cross stayed quiet.

  “Tell me,” his father demanded.

  “I hated a man I didn’t even know for years simply because I thought he left me and my mother,” Cross said. “I hated Affonso because you told me to.”

  “You should hate that man. He was a goddamn monster.”

  “Should I?”

  “I did,” Calisto murmured. “I still do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he made me.”

  Cross stilled on the couch. “What?”

  “He made me. He’s my father. My mother’s rapist; he made me violently. See, I grew up like you, thinking one man—although a dead one—was my father, until I learned the truth. I blamed my mother without knowing the whole truth, for lying to me. The thing was, Affonso wanted something, and so he took it from her; when she birthed the product of what he had done to her, he then took me from her, too. It took me years to figure it out, and it was already too late to apologize to my mother for what I had done. So yes, I hated him because he made me.”

  “I …”

  “But you should not hate him for that reason,” Calisto said when Cross couldn’t form words. “You should hate him because he took your mother, and made her a very young wife when she wanted anything else but to marry him. You should hate him because he hurt her, and he used her. He wanted one thing from her. When she could not give him what he wanted, he tossed her away like garbage.”

  Cross glanced away, taking in those words.

  “I am sorry that you’re hurting because of my choices, but I am not sorry that I love Emma,” Calisto said quietly.

  “I know you love Ma.”

  He had always known that.

  He never questioned it once.

  Calisto—first and foremost—had always given Emma everything that he had to give that was good, wonderful, and honest. Cross only knew what a healthy, real love looked like because of his mother and father. No one else around him growing up had showcased that kind of love and respect for their spouse.

  He simply thought it was something his parents learned over time. He assumed because of things he was told that their marriage had been for convenience because Emma had been left to fend for herself and Cross after Affonso left.

  “I am not sorry that I loved her when I was not allowed to, Cross,” Calisto added after a moment, “because had I not loved her then, you would not be here. You and your sister are everything that I am most proud of in my life. I chose to protect your mother’s image and reputation, and our family’s respect for all these years, so that we could sit here and have this fucking conversation. Had I done it differently, you would be talking to a gravestone where your mother and I were concerned, and we would not be answering back.”

  “I get that,” Cross said.

  “Good. I need that to be clear between us.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Affonso didn’t run off, Cross,” Calisto said gruffly, “and he didn’t leave you and Emma. He took you from her after he beat her one night, and I killed him. I would do that again, and lie to you again, as long as in thirty more years, you are still sitting across from me, and I am able to look at you.”

  “Would you have ever told me the truth?”

  “Someday.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, Cross. This was my greatest fear—that someday you would see me the way I saw him. A monster that made me, and took from me. I hated him because he made me love him with a lie. I hated him so much, and I never wanted you to hate me, too. Not like that.”

  “I can’t hate you,” Cross admitted.

  Calisto stared him down. “No?”

  “How can I hate you when I have always loved you?” Cross smiled faintly. “And you’re not my monster. I’ve never had those. You were the man who chased them away when I was little, remember?”

  “I do.”

  Cross scratched at the underside of his jaw, and muttered, “I’m sorry I’m such a shit.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not really sorry I made you this way, son.”

  Later, Cross found Catherine kneading bread dough next to his mother in the kitchen. He leaned against the counter and watched the two work. They laughed at a joke he hadn’t been privy to, but he didn’t mind.

  His mother looked over her shoulder at him. “You better stop standing there like you’re being paid to do nothing but look cute, Cross. You don’t stand still in my kitchen; clean or cook, pick one.”

  Catherine snickered, but kept her gaze on the dough.

  Smartass.

  “Cross, I said pick one,” his mother warned.

  He decided to move his ass.

  His girl kept laughing, though.

  “Yeah, yeah. Keep laughing,” he said.

  Catherine made a whip sound under her breath.

  Cro
ss tickled her side as he passed.

  Emma rolled her eyes, but smiled when he came to stop beside her. He loved his mother simply because she had always loved him. He kissed the top of his mother’s head, and hugged her tight with one arm.

  She stilled against him. “What was that for?”

  “Nothing.”

  Catherine looked over at Cross with a soft smile, but she stayed silent.

  “Nothing?” Emma pressed.

  “I just love you, Ma. You know that, right?”

  “Of course, I do. Now clean or cook. Pick one.”

  “Seems we have a guest.”

  Cross lifted his gaze from the menu at his father’s words only to see Dante Marcello walking through the front door of the restaurant. Calisto didn’t actually seem all too surprised about Dante’s arrival, despite his words.

  “Seems so,” Cross said, going back to the menu.

  “Calisto,” Dante greeted when he came up to the table. “May I sit?”

  Calisto waved a hand at the table. “Right on time, Dante.”

  “I see why you wanted three chairs at the table,” Cross muttered low. “Thank you for asking me to breakfast, only to do this, Cal. Really.”

  Dante chuckled as he sat down. “You won’t even pretend to play nice with me, Cross?”

  “Not in my family’s territory, in my boss’s restaurant, Dante. I don’t need to. We don’t like each other.”

  “You never did like me or play nice.”

  “You never pretended to like me, either,” Cross replied with a smirk.

  Dante nodded. “That’s true. That was also my mistake.”

  Calisto cleared his throat, and stood from the table. “I’m going to ask the cook to lay off the pepper this time around.”

  “Tell the waitress to let him know,” Cross said.

  “I’d rather do it face to face.”

  Cross shook his head as his father headed for the kitchen. “Catherine is heading to your place today, isn’t she, Dante?”

  “For lunch with her mother, brother, and his wife, yes.”

  “Not you?”

  Dante waved a hand. “We’ll see how this goes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, my wife would like for you to join Catherine, and so would I. On the other hand, I won’t intrude if you would rather I not be there given … we’re not friendly. Or, we haven’t been, I suppose.”

  “It’s your house,” Cross pointed out. “I’m not inserting myself into that just to make some kind of a fight, Dante. I am an arrogant man, but not a stupid one.”

  “Can we start over?”

  Cross stilled in place. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You and I, Cross. Could we start this over?”

  “Depends on whether you mean this meeting, or—”

  “I mean everything,” Dante interjected. “I think I owe you an apology, young man.”

  “You think?”

  “I do owe you an apology, at the very least.”

  “Could we pretend like you did but actually not?” Cross asked.

  “Would that make it easier?”

  “To do what?”

  “Keep hating me from a distance,” Dante murmured. “To be fair, I understand entirely why you hate me. I earned it after the things I did.”

  “To be fair,” Cross threw back, “had it been my daughter, I may have done the same kinds of things.”

  Dante smiled faintly. “Oh?”

  “Likely. Although unlike you, I would have followed through and ended it.”

  “Isn’t it a good thing that I didn’t end it?”

  “I don’t know, Dante, you tell me.”

  “For Catherine, it is. You are … everything that is good to and for her, she says. I did not listen when she told me things like that years ago. Perhaps I should have. My hubris. My mistakes. Like I said, I do understand why you hate me, and why you wouldn’t even want to sit down and share a meal. Considering.”

  Cross eyed the man. “You gave me Catherine, in a way. I don’t hate you. I certainly don’t like you a whole lot, but to be honest, you haven’t given me very many reasons to, Dante.”

  “That’s true. You do hold grudges like a motherfucker, though.”

  “That I do, yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, Cross, for all these years. For that night in your penthouse. I was so beyond the line in doing that. As a made man, and as a human. My brother, Lucian, he doesn’t let me forget that I crossed a line that night, as he shouldn’t. So yes, I’m sorry for the things I did know, and the things I didn’t know.”

  “I said let’s not do the apology thing at all and pretend like you did instead.”

  “And for the things I overlooked,” Dante continued, not missing a beat.

  “So you’re doing that then, huh?”

  “I didn’t realize how often you protected my daughter, and looked after her, but especially when I was not able to. I thought your reasons for chasing Catherine were wrapped up in … other things. Apparently, you are not the man I assumed you were, in quite a few ways.”

  “Apparently,” Cross replied dryly.

  “I am sorry.”

  Cross straightened a bit in his chair, and glanced out the windows of the Brooklyn restaurant. Light tufts of snow fell, making a nice sight on the city street. “I appreciate the apology, Dante.”

  “Would you look at me when you say it?”

  “Do I need to?” Cross asked back. “I would think I have stared into your face when you were steps away from killing me. I do not need to look at you now to know you feel the things you’re saying.”

  “True.” Dante chuckled. “I always thought you were such an arrogant prick as a kid. I was convinced from day one it was going to be me putting you in a grave, or you killing me.”

  Cross grinned a little. “You should know I am still every bit the arrogant prick you always thought I was. The only difference now is that I’m older, and have an even shorter fuse when it comes to bullshit. Although, I do handle it differently. I’m not as prone to exploding and reacting. I’m something else entirely.”

  “Violent peace. A dichotomy. The calm inside the storm.”

  “Like the eye inside a hurricane. Everyone sees things calming down, and they think they’re safe to venture out again.”

  “They’re far from being safe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We all were that difficult, arrogant way as principes. Even your father … and even me. Eventually, that arrogance and nature becomes something else, something more authoritative. You probably didn’t even realize it, Cross, but it changes to make you into the man who will sit in the highest seat. You’ll no longer be just a prince in waiting, but a king who has already arrived. That change will come before you know it’s happened. I guarantee it.”

  “I saw it coming, actually,” Cross admitted, “and I’m still not sure how I feel about it sometimes.”

  “They say bosses are born in our world, Cross, as though we only sit where we do because it was given to us like a birthright. That is their mistake. Far too many forget that all of us are still made.”

  Cross let out a breath. “Interesting way to see it.”

  “I’ve had decades in my seat; you’re only just coming to yours. Calisto must be quite proud of you now, after everything.”

  “You would have to ask him.”

  “I don’t think I need to, really.” Dante shrugged his suit jacket off which let Cross know the man was staying for breakfast. “You know, for a long time, I thought you couldn’t possibly love my daughter in the right ways. Not in a way she deserved to be loved by someone.”

  Cross’s gaze met Dante’s, and he held it strong. “You are wrong.”

  “I know that now.”

  “Out of everything you may have ever assumed about me, you are most wrong about that one. She is, and will always be, my life.”

  Dante’s mouth quirked into a bitter smile. “I used to call her tha
t when she was little. Vita mia. My life—precious life. I was never supposed to be able to have children, and I adopted my wife’s son after we married, you see. So when Catherine made her way into the world, my entire life was shook. Everything I was told couldn’t be, suddenly was.”

  “I do know you love her,” Cross said.

  “And so do you,” Dante replied, “differently than the way I love her, of course, but you do.”

  “So maybe just let me do that, then?”

  Dante nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do from now on, Cross.”

  “All right.” Cross noted his father heading back in their direction. “I suppose we can start over, Dante.”

  “Could we?”

  “For her, sure.”

  “For her,” Dante echoed.

  Calisto reclaimed his seat, and said, “I hope everything is settled.”

  Dante leaned forward to place his clasped hands on the table. “Almost.”

  “What’s left?” Cross wondered.

  “The guns you were running for my family, and the fact we still haven’t sat down and had a proper discussion on it all.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Andino?”

  “I plan to, but with you there, too. The point is,” Dante continued, “you cost us a lot of money by dumping those guns. At the very least, it deserves a conversation.”

  “Sure,” Cross agreed, “but I’m bringing Catherine along.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want a few things clear where Catherine and Andino are concerned, especially after everything that’s happened.”

  Dante’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not sure what exactly has happened between the two, as you say, but all right. I’m … trusting your judgement.”

  That was that.

  Catherine accepted Cross’s hand to help her step down from the passenger side of the Range Rover in her heels. “This is not where I expected a meeting to take place.”

  She surveyed the old warehouse, taking in the rusted metal roof and drab walls. Many of the windows were covered with sheets of wood, while a few others had been broken out altogether, yet still covered. It was an odd sight; all the brand new, luxury vehicles parked outside a derelict building.

  “It’s not unusual,” Cross said. “Meets happen in places like these more often than not, and more so if it’s a meeting between members of different families.”