There was nothing like a call from a frantic woman in the wee hours to get a person to break every traffic law known to man. Cross Donati made it from his penthouse in Manhattan to the suburb in Newport in half the time it should have taken to drive the route.
In all his twenty-six years, he couldn’t remember a time when he had driven that fast. He didn’t think he hit the brakes once, not until he parked in front of his parents’ home.
3:00 AM blinked on the dashboard of Cross’s Porsche. It wasn’t often he brought the car out to play; he preferred his new Range Rover because cars moved when a vehicle that big was coming through. However, the Porsche had the speed.
And probably a nice scuff under the bumper from coming off that bridge too fast, he thought as he stepped out of the car.
It didn’t matter.
Cross had more pressing issues to deal with at the moment. Inside his parents’ home, he found chaos and madness.
Glass shattered in the entryway. An oversized vase tipped over, and glass beads spilled throughout the hallway. An overturned coffee table. Papers scattered between the living room and kitchen.
Cross figured he could help his mother clean up that mess later. Probably in the morning once everything calmed down. This wasn’t the first time. It likely wouldn’t be the last.
He followed the shouts to the back of the house where the large library and music room sat on one side, and his step-father’s office sat on the other.
“Cal, just listen to me—”
“He took him, Emmy. He fucking took him.”
“No, you’re confused again, that’s all. Look, Cal. Look at the pictures on the walls. They’re different, aren’t they? They’re not the same. They’re our children.”
“I have to find his paperwork. Something in there …”
Calisto’s ramblings trailed off as Cross stepped into the office doorway. Instantly, his mother’s worried gaze flew to him, and wetness edged the line of her lashes as she held back tears. His step-father yanked out drawers on his desk, and dug out papers. He threw files, uncaring of the mess he was making.
Or maybe he didn’t understand at all.
“None of this makes sense,” Calisto snarled as he flipped through papers.
“Ma,” Cross said quietly, “head upstairs for a bit, okay?”
Emma shook her head. “It’s fine.”
“Ma.”
“Cross.”
“Ma.”
“He’s just mixed up again, that’s all,” she whispered.
Except … it wasn’t just being mixed up this time, Cross knew. It couldn’t be, not when Calisto was physically acting out by breaking things or whatever else in his frustrations.
Almost four years ago, Cross was living in Chicago and had been for three years by that point, when he got the first call. Something was very wrong with his step-father. He came home, no questions asked. What he found at home, and what he learned his parents had been hiding from him, damn near killed him.
Traumatic head injuries from Calisto’s younger years had left the man with an unhealed lesion on his brain, and an aneurism that occasionally leaked. That created pressure on Calisto’s brain, which started causing what the Donatis simply referred to as episodes.
Almost always, when an episode happened, Cross found his step-father was mentally thrown back into his past. His twenties, sometimes earlier, and other times, his thirties. There was never any rhyme or reason, and they couldn’t predict when the next episode would happen. It just did.
Sometimes, they would get symptoms warning that an episode was on the horizon. Vomiting, headaches, or a stiff neck. The worst came in the form of seizures.
Cross never moved back to Chicago after coming home. He couldn’t when he knew his parents were struggling.
Calisto’s episodes picked up a bit after Camilla—Cross’s younger sister—married a while back, and moved to Chicago with her husband, Tommaso Rossi.
“Ma,” Cross said, “I will only tell you one more time to go upstairs, or I will take you there myself.”
Emma glared. “But—”
“Ma, goddammit.”
She darted past him in the hallway, but not before glancing back over her shoulder at her husband. Cross was simply being careful, and nothing more. In all Calisto’s episodes, he never once hurt his wife. Calisto had thrown a fucking pan at Wolf during one episode, and even threatened to put a bullet in Cross during another one, but never Emma. He almost always recognized her, too, unless he was thrown back into years before she had been a part of his life.
Yet, even then, Calisto seemed connected to Cross’s mother. Calmed by her, relaxed, and willing to talk with her.
Others … not so much.
“Who the fuck are you?” Calisto demanded.
Cross leaned in the doorway of the office, and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m just here to keep an eye on you, Cal. That’s what you told me to do, right? Keep an eye on my boss.”
He found it was easier—Calisto was manageable in an episode—when Cross acted as though he was just one of his step-father’s men. A Cosa Nostra solider, there to do his boss’s bidding, and not ask questions that might irritate Calisto. Especially as Calisto did not recognize him as his son.
Sometimes, Calisto would point out the similarities between them. Their brown, almost black, eyes. Their black hair, strong jaws, straight noses, and full lips always set into some form of a smirk. Even when they weren’t smiling. Cross and Calisto were technically cousins. Although he had always referred to him as his papa, or his uncle when famiglia men were near. So they did share genetics, and a lot of physical traits. Sometimes that helped to point out during Calisto’s episodes, and sometimes it only confused his step-father further.
Calisto passed him a wary look likely trying to figure out if he recognized Cross or not. “Fine, but do something. Don’t stand there like a fucking cafone.”
“Do what, Cal?”
“Help me find where he took my son.”
Cross’s brow furrowed. “You have a daughter—Camilla.”
“I have no girl. I have a boy. He knows, though. He knows, and he’ll kill him. That’s why he took him.”
This wasn’t making sense to Cross, but he knew better than to keep trying to make Calisto see reason in his madness. The more Cross would press about the present day, and not the past Calisto was living in, the more agitated his step-father would become. Eventually, he would slip back into the present as the pressure relieved on his brain. It never failed. The doctors told them to wait it out, unless it became a dangerous situation.
Cross almost laughed at that one.
Their life was filled with criminals.
They were criminals.
Mafia.
Define dangerous.
“Took him,” Calisto rambled again.
“Who took him?” Cross asked.
“Affonso.”
Cross tried not to let how that name affected him. His biological father had fucked off when he was a baby, leaving his young mother with divorce papers. That was how Emma and Calisto had come to be married.
“And who did he take?” Cross asked.
“My son.”
Except … Calisto didn’t have a fucking son. Cross, sure. He wasn’t biological, but adopted. That had come about a couple of years after Affonso left.
Calisto looked up from the papers on his desk, and stared Cross right in his face from across the room. “Affonso knows the truth about Emma and me. Cross is my boy. He took him. I need to get him back. Do you get it now?”
Cross was sure the room tilted under his feet.
His step-father kept staring at him—knowing and so sure of his words, yet unable to recognize the man he raised or the pain he just caused.
“Cross is your son?” he asked.
Calisto gazed at the papers on his desk. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. So here we are.”
“Cross.”
He spun on his heel to find his mother standing midway down the hallway. She stared at him, wary and tired. Sadness turned her mouth into a frown, while shame made her look away from him.
His world kept tilting sideways.
“He’s confused, right?” Cross asked. “What he’s saying … It’s because he’s confused.”
Emma didn’t answer.
Cross’s feet felt like cement. “Ma, he’s confused. That’s what it is, right? He doesn’t understand what he’s saying; he’s got shit mixed up. Tell me that’s what it is.”
Otherwise, his whole life had been a lie. A man he hated for leaving, and for being the man who donated sperm, was not deserving of those feelings. Calisto—a man who allowed Cross the belief that he was his cousin, but a father-like figure his entire life—was actually his biological father. Not a man they had told him was his father, but Cal.
Cal, who he actually did love. Cal, who had taken care of him. Cal, who loved him no matter how awful he could be.
A lie was still a lie.
Especially when that lie meant …
“Tell me I’m not a product of an affair, Ma,” Cross demanded.
“Cross, please.”
“Tell me you haven’t lied to me my whole life!”
Emma still wouldn’t meet Cross’s stare.
“I’m sorry, Cross.”
Cross blinked at the late July sunlight coming in through the pub’s window. His neck and back cracked as he resituated his form on the barstool. It was far too early to be drinking, or for a bar to be open, but this pub was known in the Irish community. They didn’t care too much for social conventions dictating when they could or couldn’t drink. Cross was so far from being Irish that it wasn’t even funny. An Italian, like his ass, couldn’t even dress himself up as Irish, but nobody batted an eye at him when he came in and ordered a drink.
Coffee was needed after a long night like the one before. Preferably with a good dose of whiskey, but he wasn’t fucking picky. Given the shit he learned, coffee wasn’t going to do the trick.
Only whiskey it was.
The bell over the pub’s entrance chimed as the door was opened. Cross didn’t bother to greet the two familiar people that strolled in. He took another sip of his whiskey when the two men sat on the barstools.
Wolf, his mentor and his step—no, his father’s consigliere.
And Zeke, his oldest friend, and a fellow made man.
Although Zeke preferred his spot as a Capo to the Donati family, while Cross sat a little higher as Calisto’s underboss.
“You had to tell him where I was,” Cross mumbled into his glass.
Zeke shrugged. “He asked.”
“Doesn’t mean you had to tell, asshole.”
“Knock the attitude down a notch,” Wolf said. “It’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
Cross took another sip and let the top shelf whiskey burn on its way down his throat before he spoke again. “Little late in my life to find out everybody has been lying to me, isn’t it?”
“Cross, now—”
“Did you know?” he asked Wolf.
Wolf had been friends with his father for longer than Cross had even been alive, as far as he knew. The older man was the first in the Donati Cosa Nostra to be promoted to one of the highest seats as Calisto’s consigliere when he took over as the boss. Zeke, Wolf’s only son, and Cross had been friends since they were in diapers.
“Well?” Cross questioned when Wolf stayed silent.
Wolf passed him a look.
Cross knew it then.
“So you did,” he said.
Wolf sighed. “There were very few men your father could have trusted with that kind of information. An affair between a Don’s wife and his nephew would have resulted in a terrible outcome for them, Cross. Not to mention, a child being a product of that affair. We all did what we had to do so that neither you, nor your mother, would ever face backlash—”
“Fuck off,” Cross barked out. “They lied because they’re ashamed of what they did. You lied because he’s your friend.”
“That’s not true.”
“Did you know?” he asked Zeke.
His friend shook his head. “Not until this morning, man.”
Cross believed Zeke.
He needed one goddamn person in his corner.
“Where is Affonso Donati?” Cross asked Wolf. “See, my whole life, I’ve been told he fucked off somewhere. So where is he really?”
“That’s something you should talk with your parents about, Cross. It’s not for me to tell.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” Cross slid his empty glass across the bar, and pushed off the stool to stand. He shrugged on his suit jacket, and fished the Porsche keys from his pocket. “I won’t be talking to them for a while. I need time to figure my shit out after this. Let Calisto know that, too, the next time you see him. I’m sure you’ll be running your ass right over to his place to fill him in after this.”
“He’s your father. He worries.”
Cross scoffed. “You do realize how ironic that is, don’t you?”
“Cross—”
“I’m done. I said what I said. Let him know it.”
Wolf nodded. “Fine. I just …”
“What now?”
“Calisto needs surgery, Cross. He knows it. You know it. I know. We all fucking know it. His episodes are getting worse. They’re becoming more frequent, and last longer when they do happen. The surgeon in Scotland that specializes in the kind of surgery he needs has already said the longer Calisto waits, the longer his recovery will be. He’s not going to get it done when he knows it’ll force him to be down for a long period of time, and make him a target.”
“Say what you want to say and be done with it,” Cross forced out between clenched teeth.
“You’re still going back and forth to Chicago to run their guns every other month for weeks at a time,” Wolf said quietly. “Sure, you’ve moved back here, but your focus is in two different places. What do you want to be, Cross, your father’s underboss or a gunrunner? You can’t be both.”
“The only reason I can’t be both is because being one means giving up the other.”
“You chose to be a made man. You wanted that button, and it was handed to you with a smile because you earned it. You’ve earned Calisto’s seat, too, so take it. The only reason he’s holding off is because of you. Every man in the Donati family is waiting on you, even if they don’t know about Cal’s issues right now.”
“And yet, not a single one of you can force me into his seat. Not when he wants me to do it willingly,” Cross replied coolly.
“He needs the surgery,” Wolf murmured.
Cross knew that was true.
He still wasn’t ready to take over for his father.
Especially now.
“I need time,” Cross said.
Wolf glanced away. “All right.”
Zeke looked back at Cross. “Hell’s Kitchen for the fight tonight?”
“Of course.”
“See you there, man.”
Cross headed out of the pub feeling worse than he had when he went in. His phone rang just as he slipped into the driver’s seat of his Porsche. The unfamiliar number made him hesitate, but he picked up the call on the third ring.
“Donati here,” he said as he pulled out of the parking space.
“Long time no talk, Cross.”
It took him far too long to realize who had called him.
“Andino?”
“The one and only,” the man replied.
Andino Marcello was the son of another New York crime family’s consigliere. Cross tended to stay far the hell away from the Marcello family for many reasons. The most important being that the Marcello boss—Dante—despised Cross with every fiber of his being.
The reason for that hate?
Catherine Cecelia Marcello.
Dante’s daughter.
Cross’s … ex-girlfriend, old lover, first love, last love, his dreams and nightmares. A girl he had loved and dated on and off from the time he was fourteen until just shortly after his twentieth birthday.
His everything.
Almost seven years later, no contact, no calls, no nothing, and that girl still owned him. He let her, though. He made a promise to her once that he would love her always. No matter fucking what, his heart seemed determined to keep it.
Sometimes, he thought it was pathetic.
Other times, he tried not to think about it at all.
“Why are you calling me, Andino?” Cross asked.
“Remember that favor you owe me?”
Cross didn’t, actually. “No.”
“You were what, seventeen or so? Fucked my cousin in the backseat of my Cadillac, and I let it slide. You owed me one, that’s what you said.”
“Yeah, shit.”
He had done that.
Andino. “I’m cashing that in, Cross. When can you meet up with me?”
“How urgent is it?”
“I can wait a bit, but not too long.”
“Next week?” Cross asked.
“Next week is perfect. I have a restaurant I work out of most of the time. I’ll message you the address, and you figure out a time.”
Andino hung up the call without a goodbye. Cross didn’t really mind on that end, but he wished Andino hadn’t called at all.
Cross’s life was busy. He filled his days with noise, people, and work. He filled his nights with the same things. That way, he didn’t have to think about an eighteen-year-old girl he’d left behind. A girl he pushed away hoping she would save herself in the process.
Catherine.
Once, his mother had told him something he never forgot about love. Love is strong—like death. Cross had gotten the Italian version tattooed on his ribcage almost seven years ago.
L'amore é forte come la morte. How appropriate. How deafening. How punishing and suffocating and true those words were. How raw and beautiful and awful. It only made sense to put the words permanently on his body, and then he would be forced to see them every day, even when he didn't want to. Not forget, no. Just see. He couldn't forget her, after all. He never had.
Cross would love Catherine Marcello forever.
Even if she didn’t know.
Even if she didn’t care.
Even if she didn’t love him.
Always.
That was his promise. He didn’t know how not to keep it. He had simply chosen to love her from afar. So far, in fact, that he was pretty damn sure she didn’t even know he was there anymore.
A week later, Cross stepped inside Andino Marcello’s restaurant. He wasn’t sure how he knew Catherine was inside too, but he did. He just knew. All those years without being close to Catherine had not desensitized the way it made Cross react, even when he couldn’t immediately see her.
His fucking hair stood up on end. His nerves twisted. His heart raced.
Like she was a drug, and he itched for a fix.
Cross’s gaze skipped over the people eating, and sure enough, he found Catherine in a corner booth. She was older, sure, but her features hadn’t changed a bit. Long, wavy dark hair. Legs that looked best naked and wrapped around his head or waist. Slim with curves that could make any fucking dress she wanted look like it cost a million bucks. High cheekbones, a heart-shaped face, striking green eyes, full lips that naturally fell into a pout, and a delicate nose that set her pixie-like face beautifully. Collarbones peeked out from under the blouse she wore.
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.”
“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.