by Bethany-Kris
“Hush.” He gave her a look before continuing with, “We talked, and just to be safe, you’re going to notice your enforcer being a bit closer than normal for the next little while.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
Sure, she always had an enforcer trailing her if she was alone. Not when she was with Cross, or a man of her family, but definitely when she was alone. He never came close enough to make a scene, or be a distraction for her.
“We’ve tried to make contact with Rhys about the shit that went down.”
“The guy who wanted the guns in the first place, right?”
Cross nodded. “Yeah, and he’s not answering in any form. Just to be safe, your enforcer will stick closer until we get that all figured out. It’s nothing more than a precaution, but I wanted you to know why you might notice him.”
Catherine frowned. “More trouble, huh?”
“You did what you did, and so did I. The rest is details, and those don’t matter.”
“Sometimes they do,” she whispered.
Cross bent down and pressed one last, hard kiss to Catherine’s lips. “Details don’t matter as long as we’re still breathing, babe.”
“Mmhmm. Sometimes they matter.”
“The only detail I want you to worry about right now is what you want for Christmas.”
Catherine didn’t even have to think about it. “You. I want you.”
Catherine parked the Lexus in her parents’ driveway as she checked the caller ID on the ringing cell phone, before picking up the call. “Cross, hey.”
“Hey, babe. You busy?”
“No, I’m at my parents’ place. Ma wanted me to stop in.”
Cross whistled under his breath. “The regina has demanded your presence, Catty. Watch out.”
Catherine laughed. “She’s still my mom.”
“Mmhmm.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, you just hear things in this business, I guess.”
“Like what?”
“You know your mom is kind of a boss bitch, right?”
Catherine wished Cross was close enough to hit. “Don’t call my mom a bitch.”
“No, shit … Okay, some women are like my mother. Sweet, homemakers, never bat a lash at any-fucking-thing. And then there’s women like your mother, Catherine. A woman who made it in a man’s world, and doesn’t let anyone forget it because she’s probably ten times more dangerous than any of them on a bad day.”
“Point taken,” Catherine said quietly. “She’s still just my Ma, though.”
“That you’ve agreed to work for.”
“Yeah.”
“Regretting that, yet?”
Catherine sighed. “I haven’t even started actually working for her. I can’t regret something I haven’t tried.”
“It’s definitely not going to be like it was with Andino. He kind of let you have control over your business; when and where you supplied, to whom, and whatever else. I think Catrina has a bit of a different setup, that’s all.”
“Guess I have to find out, huh?”
“I guess so,” Cross murmured. “Regardless, if you keep it up, or decide to drop it, I don’t care either way. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know, Cross.”
“Whatever you want; that’s what’s important.”
She loved him for that.
She loved him for a lot, but especially for that.
“How was your flight yesterday?” she asked.
“Packed. I got my shit at the apartment handled, though, and I’ve got a meet with the Outfit boss today. I should be back by tomorrow if all goes well.”
“It will.”
She said it more for herself than him.
“I’ll let you go. Don’t ever keep a Queen waiting, Catty.”
“Stop trying to psyche me out, Cross.”
He hummed under his breath, saying, “Love you, babe.”
“Love you.”
Catherine hung up the phone, and glanced at her parents’ large home. Cross didn’t realize it, and she hadn’t freely offered the information, but she was nervous to have even a conversation with her mother about working together. Or rather, her working for Catrina.
The majority of her life had been spent with her mother hiding every little bit of her business that she could from Catherine. Catrina rarely answered questions about what she did, or how it all worked. She did not talk about being a Queen Pin to her children. Catherine’s continued curiosity only made her mother shut down the topic even more.
Like she was worried Catherine might follow those footsteps.
Now, here they were.
Doing exactly that.
Funny how life worked.
Before she could overthink it much more, Catherine got out of her car, and headed for the house. She found her mother where Catrina said she would be—working in the office upstairs. Catrina barely looked up from the folders she was flipping through as Catherine sat down in one of the two high-back leather chairs in front of the desk.
“You know,” Catrina said, “when you were a young teen, I knew you liked to snoop around in our office just to see what you could find.”
“Did you?” Catherine asked.
Catrina glanced up, and her amusement was clear. “Things don’t typically move themselves, Catty.”
“Fair enough. I mean, I didn’t try to hide it, either.”
“No, your interest in this business was always quite obvious.”
“Not the business,” Catherine said quickly. “You, Ma.”
Catrina froze. “Pardon?”
“The business was only a very small part of it. What I was interested in the most was you. The things you did, and why. How you did them, and why you had chosen to do it. I wondered where you came from and how you got to where you are because those were things you didn’t share. These parts of you—the Queen, her business, and all the rest—were locked up tight. The more I questioned, the harder you shut me down. I wanted to know who she was because she was still my mother.”
“I only wanted to be your mother, and nothing more,” Catrina admitted. “I was never supposed to be a mother, Catherine. Not that I couldn’t be one, but because women like me typically choose a different life path, and children are almost never a part of the equation.”
“I get that.”
“When I had the chance to take that path, and continue being Queen, I chose to do so in a way that kept the two separate as much as was possible. Or, I tried.”
“But you’re always her, Ma.”
Catrina smiled. “Always.”
“So now here we are,” Catherine said softly.
“It’s like a circle of sorts, isn’t it?”
“As long as it all works out.”
Catrina laughed lightly. “I have no doubt that it will. You are my daughter, after all. I really didn’t expect any different, even if I tried to convince myself otherwise. Your father used to tell me all the time that you were just like me—she’s yours all over, Cat. He liked to point it out only to poke at a fear of mine, I think. One of the few I actually had.”
“And what fear was that?”
“I suppose that you would be like me, which terrified me to death and he knew it. He simply didn’t know why. I could not protect you from the darker parts of being this person. Sure, we’re beautiful on the outside. It’s pretty to see us work, isn’t it? Still, we’re targets, and sometimes we can’t avoid being hit.”
Catherine frowned. “I never thought of it like that.”
“I regret not indulging you more, or allowing you into that part of my world, if only because I may have saved you the heartache of being hurt.”
“I’m okay now, Ma.”
Catrina nodded. “Now, yes, but you weren’t once.”
“Now is what matters.”
“Now is definitely what matters,” her mother echoed with a faint smile. “What do you plan on doing with the rest of your life?”
Catherine’s gaze widened. “Uh …”
“That is not an answer. College, what of it? You should be graduating this year, but we know it’s going to be at least one more. Where is your focus, school or hustling? Or both?”
“It was both,” Catherine said.
“Except it’s really not because clearly you focus on one much more than the other. The bigger problem is, I think you and I both know which one you enjoy the most, and the one you excel in.”
Yeah, Catherine did, too.
She’d known it when she was sixteen and hustled for the first time. She had simply done the same thing her mother had by attempting to be two people, only to realize she was doing that for others, and not for herself.
“And there’s nothing wrong being good at this, and wanting to make something of it,” Catrina added quieter, “but you give your all to one thing, Catherine, and succeed. You spread yourself thin, and—”
“I fail,” Catherine interjected.
Catrina leaned forward, and steepled her fingers together. “I control thirty women across the United States. I’ve trained them, I supply them, and they answer to only me. I would like for you to be one of them.”
“Is that all?”
“For now. You have a lot to learn, and I am the one person who is capable of teaching it to you in a way that will resonate and stick, reginella.”
“They’re all going to call me that, aren’t they?”
Catrina smirked. “Count on it. Are you interested?”
Catherine didn’t even have to think about it. “Very.”
“Grazie for seeing me today,” Cross said.
“Of course, Cross.” Tommas Rossi barely glanced up from homework he was surveying on the table. The man had one son, and two daughters. Tommaso, his son, was the only one out of school, well into the family business, and married to Cross’s sister. “This looks good, Rebeka. Now, go find your mother and tell her I will be a few minutes late for dinner, please.”
The teenage girl preened up at her father. “Yes, Daddy.”
Once she was out of sight, Tommas turned and waved a single hand to silently demand Cross follow. The old Trentini mansion—although, Cross knew the Outfit boss only allowed people to keep calling it that because of his wife, a born Trentini—was a two wing, tri-level monster. A person could get lost inside it. Cross had only been inside a handful of times, as usually his business was better done in warehouses when he was in Chicago.
Tommas, however, navigated the large mansion as though he could do it with his eyes closed. It wasn’t long before Cross found himself sitting in a large private library, while Tommas poured himself a glass of brandy.
“Drink?” Tommas asked, tipping the glass in Cross’s direction.
“Not today, but thanks.”
He scrolled through his phone, trying to check if there were any flights that had any open seats due to cancellation. He had been checking all damn day, and still, nothing. He was right when he told Catherine he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, it seemed.
Cross shoved his phone into his pocket as Tommas came to sit across from him in the library.
“I did not expect you back until next month, at least,” Tommas said. “That’s when the next run is, isn’t it?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“Why the visit, then?”
“Something came up a few months back,” Cross said, deciding to just get into the meat of the matter. “I owed a favor to a Marcello, actually.”
Tommas’ face blanked. “That family does like to collect.”
Cross nodded. “I was asked to run a boat of guns down along Cancun to a drop in the Gulf. The details of what happened aren’t important, but I ended up botching the run, and dumping the guns.”
“The worth?”
“The run was a total of a half of mil. Half was already paid. I dropped the entire load—they’re out that other quarter of a mil.”
Tommas whistled low. “I would have cut your fingers off for that, Cross.”
He laughed low. “I’m sure they considered it, too.”
“Yet, your hands are quite fine.”
“I suppose they need them to be for me to keep running their guns on an exclusive basis.”
Tommas stiffened.
Cross cleared his throat, and added, “See, that was the deal made for my choice. I agreed. I wanted to let you know, so that you understand why I’ll be stepping back here in Chicago.”
“I’m pretty sure Theo made it very clear you were not to be offering your skill to any family but ours.”
“I wasn’t making money on this run—it was to repay a favor.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“I’m not, but I am a man of my word. I did what needed to be done, Tommas.”
The older boss scrubbed a hand down his jaw. “You understand that this feels like … a betrayal, to me?”
Cross lifted a single shoulder. “I’m sure it would.”
“I had hoped with you working for our side of things, and Tommaso marrying Camilla, we would not have issues between our families. New York always seems to find a way to fuck that up proper.”
Cross didn’t quite know what to say, so he chose not to say anything at all.
“And what should I do for the gun situation now?” Tommas asked with a sharpness edging his tone. “On my side of things here. What do I do?”
“I would think you could finally allow Tommaso the chance to run guns like he’s been trying to do for years,” Cross offered.
Tommas’ brow dipped in his anger. “Pardon?”
“Your son—he wants to run guns. He’s good at it. You keep him very busy as to distract him in his current position. I understand why. You want him to focus on being a proper underboss for the Outfit. Maybe stop doing that, and let him figure out what he can or cannot handle. You’ve got a great gunrunner right here in Chicago, and I bet he would never do to you what I have done.”
“I think this meeting is over,” Tommas said gruffly.
Fine by Cross.
“Again, thanks for seeing me,” he murmured as he stood.
Tommas scowled. “Keep in mind, Cross, I will not want to see you step foot in Chicago for a long time.”
“Understood.”
This was just how these things worked.
Unfortunately.
Cross tossed the keys to the rental car onto the coffee table, and fell to his back on the couch in one fell swoop. His small Melrose apartment was nothing particularly nice to look at. He hadn’t bothered to decorate it over the years, but it had done the job when he needed a place to crash. He used his arm to cover this eyes, and considered calling Catherine, only to close his eyes one second, and drift off to sleep the next.
He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping before his phone starting ringing. He almost ignored the damn thing, but subconsciously reached for it out of habit. Before he knew what happened, he was shoving the phone to his ear and mumbling, “Yeah, what?”
“Cross?”
Catherine’s panicked voice had him flying up into a sitting position on the couch. “Catty?”
“Something’s wrong,” Catherine whispered.
Cross was already up and grabbing his keys off the table. “What’s wrong, babe?”
“I don’t think I have a lot of time.”
“Catherine, I need you to speak to me.”
He was out of the apartment and jogging down the hallway before he even finished his sentence.
Catherine let out a shaky breath that crackled over the line. “I went into the underground parking at the penthouse when I got home, like I do, but my enforcer didn’t follow.”
“Cath—”
“Three black cars, nine men, and I don’t recognize any of them.”
What followed her statement sent Cross to his knees.
Glass shattering.
Piercing screams.
Grunts.
Catherine’s shouts echoed far loude
r than any of the other noise, but he still heard the threats of the men she told him about, too.
Don’t fight, and go easy, girl.
The sounds suddenly got quieter when thumps came through the phone’s speaker. Muffled, even. Then, air whistled through.
“Let Dante Marcello know he owes Rhys Crain guns. Not money, guns. We expect to have them before the week is out, or he’ll receive his daughter back in pieces.”
The phone went dead.
So did Cross’s heart.
Cross barely registered the many vehicles parked in the Marcello drive. He simply parked the rental car behind someone’s red Hummer, and left the engine running as he exited the vehicle. Inside the Marcello home, he found everyone gathered between the dining room and the kitchen.
Even people he didn’t expect to be there.
His father.
Wolf.
Zeke.
His people.
There were far more of Catherine’s family, though. Far more.
“What the fuck took you so long?” Dante barked from across the room.
Cross looked at Dante, and found chaos staring back at him. Sure, Dante was good at hiding it, a lot like any made man was, but it was still there. Cross thought he could probably see it hidden in the man better than most because he understood Dante’s pain.
They loved Catherine differently, but they still loved her.
That was the very same.
“I would have just been getting on a flight out of Chicago now had I waited,” Cross said. “I chose to drive.”
Calisto glanced at his son. “All night?”
Cross shrugged.
He hadn’t slept.
He wouldn’t until he had Catherine.
Zeke, always his best friend no matter the situation, stepped up beside him. His hand landed hard to Cross’s shoulder, and gave him a nod. It was enough. It didn’t help, but it resounded. That was fine, too.
“You good?” Zeke asked.
“No,” Cross admitted.
“We’ll figure this shit out, man.”
“Listen to this garbage,” Dante said.
The Marcello boss reached over and hit a button on a phone. Instantly, a message started to play. No one else seemed surprised at what was being said on the message, and Cross suspected they had all already heard it a dozen times over.
