by Bethany-Kris
In a way, Dante knew his wife was protecting Catherine from something she didn’t want her daughter involved in. Sometimes, their lifestyle just didn’t give them a choice.
“She’s been texting with a Donati boy, hmm,” Dante said, tilting his head to the side so he could gauge his wife’s reaction to his news.
Catrina’s brow lifted. “Oh?”
“They go to the same school. His family is solid, though. I’d rather a Donati than a Calabrese.”
Catrina’s lips drew thin. “Would you, now?”
“Not for business sake, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It was.”
Yeah, Dante figured.
“Have you talked to her about it?” Catrina asked quietly.
“I have.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I approve and that’s what matters most.”
“Not to me,” Catrina murmured. “How old is he?”
“Just turned fourteen last month.”
“Too soon to say, then.”
“Too soon to say what, Cat?”
“Cosa Nostra.”
Ah.
Dante blew out a heavy breath of air. “We were lucky with Michel, bella.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. Not really. We were so lucky with him, Cat. He had no interest in being even affiliated with la famiglia, never mind your end of the business, he wants to be a doctor, and he’s a damn good kid. Focused, driven, and sure.”
“Mmm.”
“Catherine isn’t Michel and you can’t force her to be.”
“I don’t want her being like me.”
“Are you sure?” Dante asked quickly. “Because you sure treated her like a reginella. That girl is you all over and you just can’t stand it.”
“It isn’t that. It scares me. I worry.”
“You’re hurting her with this distance and her behavior is showing it more and more. That bitchy attitude and nastiness isn’t the daughter we raised, Cat.”
Catrina frowned, sadness coloring her hazel eyes. “Regardless of what it may look like, there is nothing glamorous about being a Queen Pin, Dante. She’s only thirteen, and I refuse to feed into this ridiculous fascination she has with the things I do.”
“Then maybe you should have hidden it better as she grew up, Catrina. Frankly, she’s a teenager—the daughter of a mob boss and a Queen Pin, sure—and like any girl her age, the more you deny and shut down her interests, the more likely she is to seek it out on her own. That could be dangerous and you know it. Is that how you want her wading in to this kind of thing, by mistake and stupidity?”
“What am I supposed to do? What do you suggest, huh?”
Dante wasn’t sure. But what Catrina was doing in regards to Catherine sure as hell wasn’t working. “It’s hurting you, too, Cat. I don’t like it when you hurt.”
Catrina smiled, but her sadness still remained. “You’re right, bello. I hate it so very much when you’re right.”
Dante laughed, reaching over to snag his wife’s hand with his own. “I’ve been telling you for years if you would just admit that fact more often, things would be so much easier. But what am I right about this time?”
“She’s just like me, I think, but in a different way.”
“It’ll work itself out, Cat. Maybe her fascination is more about where she comes from than where she wants to go.”
“I hope so.” Catrina squeezed Dante’s fingers. “I suppose I should get a start on that red wine we brought. It’s going to be a long dinner if the car ride here and this conversation was any indication.”
“Fucking teenagers driving us to drink.”
Catrina smirked. “We made them this way, you know.”
“Stop reminding me.”
“Tomorrow is going to be—”
Dante cringed. “Let’s not talk about it right now.”
Dio save me, Dante thought as his wife glowered at him from her seat. He did not need Catrina pissed off at him right now, not considering everything. Even so, he had desperately hoped they would be able to make it through this damn day without at least one person bringing up his sentencing hearing tomorrow.
Yeah, the boss got caught.
There was absolutely nothing clean about living the way of La Cosa Nostra. There were no guarantees. Giovanni was right all those years ago when he told Dante the brothers were not like their father. They wouldn’t always come out of things unscathed.
A year earlier, Dante’s home had been raided by FBI agents under circumstances that had nothing to do with what they found in his home. A few illegal weapons, nothing serious. Misdemeanors at best. He should have been hit with a few costly fines and maybe some probation to kill time. It was just too damn bad this would be his fourth weapons charge over the span of a decade. The court system didn’t look highly upon repeat offenders, never mind a Cosa Nostra Don like Dante Marcello.
Not to mention, Dante might have knocked out an agent for rifling through his wife’s underwear drawer. That nice little assault charge sneaked right up on him.
Sick fucking bastard.
Dante was looking at four years max, and if given the highest penalty, he would spend that time in a prison, not a fucking jail. He hadn’t pleaded guilty to the charges, but he didn’t have to, either. The evidence against him was right there for the world to see. Guilty as charged.
There was a good thing about being a Marcello, though. Money. They had it in the bucketful, and for the last few months, Giovanni had been doing his job as both Dante’s defense lawyer and his consigliere. Bribes were on the line, but it wasn’t always a sure thing if a judge would take it or not.
Fuck, they were right down to the wire—literally, given tomorrow was the big day—and Dante’s judge had yet to take the bait in promise of a reduced sentence.
“No more guns in our home,” Catrina said, drawing Dante from his thoughts.
“I agree.”
He got out of the car without another word.
• • •
“Give me that back, Cella!”
Dante moved out of the way just in time to miss the stampede of his nieces running past him.
“No!” Cella flicked her middle finger up at her sister, holding the tablet away from Lily’s reaching grasp.
Lucian glowered at the ceiling. “I should have stopped at John, man.”
Dante chuckled. “You love them.”
“Sometimes,” Lucian muttered under his breath.
Cella and Lily wrestled with the tablet, each wanting to play whatever game was still flickering across the touchscreen.
“All right, give it to me right now,” Jordyn ordered her two oldest daughters. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. Cella, if I see you doing that to your sister one more time, I’m going to cut that goddamn finger off.”
At fifteen and thirteen, Lucian’s oldest girls were a handful. They were beautiful things, to be sure. All Marcello girls were, but they were still hellions all the same. It probably didn’t help a bit that Lucian turned to putty when his daughters batted their lashes. They had him wrapped around their pinkies.
“Daddy!”
Dante smiled when Lucian dropped into a squat at his youngest daughter’s beck and call. With arms out, Lucia—named for her father—climbed into his waiting embrace. Lucian stood, balancing his four-year-old on his hip as the dinner guests made their way into the dining room.
“I can’t believe you had three girls,” Dante said, shaking his head.
“Me either,” his brother replied. “I’m done trying for the second boy. So done. Clearly that fifty-fifty chance crap is all bullshit. That, or God has a sick sense of fucking humor. He knows how possessive and protective I am, and instead of giving me another son, I get three females to bust my balls on a daily basis and keep me up at night worrying about them.”
“Bad words,” Lucia whispered, patting Lucian’s mouth with her palm.
“Sorry, dolcezza. Kisses f
or Daddy?”
Lucia kissed her father’s cheek before Lucian put her back to the floor. Lucia immediately went running for her grandfather at the head of the family table. Antony let his youngest, and likely last, grandchild climb up on his lap to pick off the plate Cecelia had placed in front of her husband.
Lucian watched with a glimmer of pride in his eyes.
“You love them,” Dante repeated.
“Yeah, I do.”
Cecelia shouted for the remaining guests to come and take their seats for dinner, but Lucian and Dante didn’t move from the far wall.
Dante watched as people flooded into the large dining room, taking whatever chair was available. As usual, Johnathan and Andino were two of the final ones to saunter in. Andino took a seat beside Giovanni, stealing a piece of cheese bread off his father’s plate. Giovanni barked at his only son, taking the cheese bread back. That caused Kim to reach over her son and smack her husband’s hand in rebuttal.
Lucian’s smile faded into a frown at the sight of his seventeen-year-old’s cocky smirk as it landed on a pretty girl about his age across the table from him. She was the daughter of one of the Marcello capos who was always invited to the Sunday meal. Johnathan knew better than to mess with daughters of made men, but he didn’t follow rules very well.
“Sweet Jesus, he’s just like Giovanni,” Lucian said, more to himself than his brother. “And he came from me!”
“That isn’t a bad thing,” Dante responded. “Not if you consider how Gio settled down after finding Kim.”
“Yeah, but how long is that going to take? Already he wants to be done with school and onto things that don’t bore the fuck out of him.”
“His words?”
“They certainly weren’t mine.”
“Give him time,” Dante said.
“Your influence on him helps a great deal.”
Well, technically Johnathan was Dante’s heir to the Marcello throne. There was no way in hell he would let that kid stumble through life.
“I’m grateful he has you when he won’t come to me,” Lucian admitted. “But the things he sometimes does still scares the shit out of me. Jordyn, too.”
“I know. Ready to eat?”
“Sure. You ready for tomorrow?”
Dante felt a weight press down on his shoulders. He repeated what he told his wife in the car. “Let’s not talk about it right now.”
• • •
“I just checked, they’re both asleep.” Catrina closed the bedroom door behind her quietly. “Every light left on, all their electronics still running, and they’re snoring in bed, dead to the world. A goddamn hurricane wouldn’t wake them up.”
“Nothing new,” Dante noted.
“I like them better when they sleep. Less arguing.”
Dante had to agree. He would be so happy once these teenage years were past for his two kids. No doubt when they did pass, he would wish for them back.
“Don’t you think it’s funny how they won’t wake up for an alarm clock, but if their phone even vibrates with a text, it’s like someone poured ice water all over them?”
Dante laughed. “I was the same way.”
“I suppose I never had time to act much like a normal teenager.”
Something in the lilt of his wife’s tone caught Dante’s attention. When he turned to face her, Catrina was already inside the walk-in closet and busying herself with picking out clothes for the next day. Dante made his way to the closet and leaned against the doorjamb, crossing his arms.
Catrina went from one garment bag to the next, unzipping the items to peer inside each time. “Black suit for tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Dante answered. Catrina pulled out three suits, holding them out for Dante to inspect. “The third, I think.”
Catrina tossed the item over the top of a leather covered stool and replaced the others back in place. “Black shirt underneath, too, hmm?”
“No, let’s go with white.”
A white dress shirt was pulled from a hanger and laid over the suit. Catrina pulled open a dresser drawer, exposing rows of silk ties inside. “White tie?”
“No, a black one.”
Dante wasn’t going for a wedding look. Apparently his wife went in the opposite direction.
“Are you trying to look like you’re going to a funeral?” Catrina asked.
Maybe tomorrow would be like a funeral; who knew? Dante sure felt an impending sense of doom about what was yet to come the next day. Dante trusted those around him, and at the same time, he worried for those closest to him like his wife and children. The past year had not been easy on them. Tomorrow was the last piece of the puzzle. It would determine the next four years of his life and theirs.
Honestly, it was the exact reason why Dante had fought against marriage and love for as long as he had. His family was suffering for his choices because of Cosa Nostra, and he didn’t like that at all.
“You’re the one who gave me the choice of a black shirt underneath,” Dante replied. “What’s the difference?”
“All black is like making a statement. When you start mixing black with white, it doesn’t.”
“Fine, a navy shirt and a black tie.”
Catrina grinned. “Much better.”
“Are you okay?” Dante asked.
His wife didn’t even turn around as she said, “Perfect, bello.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Catrina pulled a black tie from the drawer before grabbing a matching shirt off a hanger. She replaced the white shirt with the rest, grabbed Dante’s clothes, and hung it all off a hook on the wall. She did it all like it was business as usual and tomorrow was not the possible major overhaul it could be in their lives. “I know you wanted me here with the kids since we’re keeping them from school tomorrow, but I want to go with you, Dante.”
If Dante was a stupid man and he didn’t know his wife as well as he did, he would have argued with her to stay home. Catrina wasn’t the kind of woman to be told what she could or couldn’t do, so he chose to let her do what she wanted.
“No comment, always,” Dante said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“No, listen. No matter what, Cat, it’s always no comment.”
“I said I know,” she said quietly. “Have you heard anything from Giovanni about the deals he put out?”
“Not a thing.”
Dante tried to keep his tone calm and the anxiety out of it. It wasn’t like Catrina to ask about the more private accesses of Dante’s business, especially concerning this sort of thing. For him, it was a huge sign of her worry, even if she wasn’t outright voicing it.
“I’ll call him later. But you know the rules, no business on Sundays,” he added, humor coloring his words.
Catrina turned on her heel, lifting a single brow in a way that felt like she was scolding him. “I sincerely hope you’re not making a joke of this.”
Guilt ate at Dante. “I’m sorry, Cat, I was only trying to ward off whatever nonsense you’ve got going on in your head right now.”
“You’re my husband, Dante.”
“Well, for the last sixteen years, yes.”
“And for the next fifty, or so,” Catrina responded, smiling.
“I don’t know if my Italian genes are going to let me live that long.”
“Sex is good for the heart, and we have lots of that.”
Dante couldn’t have held back his laughter if he tried. It felt damn good to laugh and honestly enjoy it. Once he sobered, he eyed his wife curiously. Catrina was grinning like a kitten who had eaten the cream. “Who’s making light of this now, Amore?”
“It’s different when I do it, you know.”
“How so?”
“Because we’re always serious and you never hide things from me. I know you’re hiding how you feel, so instead of being sharp like I usually would, I did something out of character.”
“You make me laugh,” Dante argued.
“
Mostly when I’m not very nice to other people.”
Dante considered that for a moment. Catrina still hated women unless they were family. She was still his best friend with very few of her own. “All right, true enough. And yes, I’m worried, but it’s too late to do much about it. Everything that could be done has been, believe me.”
“You can’t leave me here alone, Dante,” Catrina said, pointing at him with the same attitude as she always sported. “Two or three months is one thing, but four years is something entirely different. You just … you can’t leave me here without you for that long. I said so.”
If Dante didn’t know how much his wife was hurting on the inside, even if she wasn’t showing it on the outside, he would have been amused by her indignant order. Catrina also wouldn’t want him to make a big deal out of her concerns because, like him, the image she gave off was her strongest defense next to her take-no-bullshit personality.
This was how they had always been together. Neither liked for one to see them in any state that might hurt the other. Even when they were alone in the privacy of their own home, the couple never broke those unspoken rules. Well, most times. There were moments in their life when it couldn’t be helped and really, those were the moments Dante cherished the most between him and his wife.
Because Catrina was strong—relentlessly so. But when she wasn’t, he was the only person she needed. Kind of like now.
Catrina went back to surveying the garment bags on her side of the closet in silence. She picked a navy blue silk dress that would fall just below her knees to match her husband’s shirt. The dress was hung up with the rest of the clothing for tomorrow before Catrina pressed a button on the wall and rows of shoes slid out from the wall.
“I don’t need your input for this,” Catrina said, plucking up a pair of black Italian leather shoes for Dante. She knew his tastes well. “For me, however … What do you think, heels or flats?”
“Heels, of course.”
Catrina shot him with a look. “Why?”
Because even in her forties, Catrina still sported the best goddamn legs he had ever seen. When she wore a pair of heels, she just about killed any control he had left. Just like the ones she was wearing right now.
