“He got suspended on the first day, Cal. The first day!”
Cross dumped his football gear in the corner of the hall, grabbed his leather jacket, and headed down the hallway. He was hoping to bypass the kitchen where his mother was ranting about his three-day suspension from school, but he should have known better.
Fuck all got past Emma Donati.
Especially when she was in a fit.
“Cross Nazio Donati, you get in here right now!”
“Ooooh,” his eleven year old sister, Camilla, taunted on her way past him in the hallway, “someone’s in trouble. Again.”
“Shut up, Cam.”
“You shut up.”
“Good comeback,” he muttered.
Camilla smiled sweetly over her shoulder. “I’m not the one in trouble.”
True.
Cross stood in the kitchen entryway, and refused to go in further. He folded his arms over his chest. “What, Ma?”
“Cross,” his step-father warned, “tamper down the attitude.”
Just the tone of Calisto’s voice was enough for Cross to know he was walking on some seriously thin lines. He readjusted his attitude, or tried.
“It’s not that big of a deal, Ma,” Cross said. “It’s three days—the first week is all for introductions anyway. Don’t have a fit.”
Calisto cringed, glanced up at the ceiling, and shook his head.
Like he knew what was coming next.
His mother’s gaze narrowed in on him from across the room, and Cross figured out his mistake. It was too late to fix it.
“Don’t have a fit?” Emma asked, strangely calm.
“It’s not like the asshole didn’t—”
“Language, Cross.”
“He is an asshole. That’s why I broke his stupid mouth.”
That, and because the pretty girl with the green eyes told Hugh no. Hugh should have listened. Cross only thought to go over and drag Hugh’s stupid ass back onto the field because he was wasting Cross’s valuable practice time, but then he happened to hear the last bit of the conversation. Next thing he knew, he broke Hugh’s mouth.
And the pretty girl smiled.
Cross figured that made his bloody, bruised knuckles worth it.
“This is ridiculous,” Emma said, glaring at her husband. “He behaves this way at school because you let him do too much—get away with too much—outside of it.”
“That’s not true,” Calisto argued.
Cross leaned back on his heels and glanced down the hallway while his parents continued on with their argument. He could see the light from the backdoor from his spot just beyond the large staircase that led to the upper floors, and the library and office.
Ten seconds, maybe less, and he’d be gone.
He looked back to his parents.
“Look at his hands,” Emma said, “they’re bruised up and—”
“No worse than how they look after he beats the hell out of his punching bag without wrapping them up.”
“Cal, you’re justifying it again.”
“I am not. I’m just saying.”
“And he’s got a bruise on his mouth, too. How the hell is he supposed to show up to church on Sunday with a bruised mouth?”
“With a smile,” Cross said, “makes it stand out more, Ma.”
Both Calisto and Emma shot him warning looks without saying a word.
Cross just shrugged.
He did what he did.
It was over.
He wasn’t going to actually get grounded. He never got grounded. It did little to no good when he would just scale out of his bedroom window, down to the ground level, get on his quad, and head out onto the trails before his parents knew what was happening. Calisto threatened to take the bike keys away; Cross stole and hid them himself. His step-father threatened to have one of the enforcers lock the bike up; Cross filled the garage locks with insulation foam.
Cross was pretty sure Cal was three seconds away from laying a beating down on his ass for those stunts, but …
Worth it.
He got what he wanted.
Calisto stopped using grounding as a method of punishment for Cross after that. Cross didn’t want to be caged in. He talked more. He was better, when he was allowed to do what he wanted, with boundaries and rules on those things.
“Do you want another spell like last time?” Calisto asked, bringing Cross from his thoughts. “Because the last time I had this fight with the kid, he cost me eight grand to fix my garage, Emma. The fucking bastard who came here to fix it is probably still laughing at me.”
Still arguing.
“This is boring now,” Cross said, “and I’ve got things to do, so …”
Neither of them seemed to be paying attention.
Good enough for me.
Cross backed out of the kitchen entryway, and headed for the back of the house. He was outside, sliding on his leather jacket, and tugging his quad helmet down over his head just as he heard Calisto shout out for him. His quad was already parked at the backdoor where he had left it the night before. The Yamaha YFZ450R could get him from his property, to a friend’s four acres away, in less than a minute and a half.
“One hour, Cross, and you’re to be back here! Got it?”
A wave of his hand over his shoulder was the only answer he gave back.
He’d deal with it later.
Later always came.
That was one of the only guarantees in his life.
“Where the hell were you after school?” Zeke asked. “I thought you wanted to ride home with me?”
Cross tugged his helmet off, and hung it on the handlebars of the quad. “Getting shouted at the whole way home because Cal couldn’t get out of a meeting to come pick me up earlier. I think he probably let all his anger build up over the day and let it go, but who knows.”
Zeke stood straight, and dropped the rag he was using to buff out the rims on his Camaro. Almost all of Cross’s friends were older than him by a couple of years—Zeke was no exception at seventeen.
“Camilla laughed the whole time in the back seat,” Cross added. “Because she’s evil.”
“All little sisters are. Sent from fuckin’ Satan.”
“Anyway, the school kept me in the office all day. Cal picked me up ten minutes before final bell.”
“Could have sent me a text, so I wasn’t waiting for you after school. I heard you punched Hugh Donahue in the mouth on the field. They were still cleaning up the blood on the sidelines when the upper Academy’s team went on the field to practice, by the way.”
Cross shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Yeah. For Catherine Marcello, too.”
“What?”
Zeke bent back down out of sight, and went to work on his wheels again. “I’m just saying that’s what I heard. New girl—Catherine Marcello. You and Hugh. I don’t know how you haven’t gotten your ass permanently expelled from the Academy yet.”
“Because Cal donates a lot of money to them,” Cross said absently. “Or that’s what he keeps telling my mother.”
But that is beside the point.
“Catherine Marcello?”
Zeke’s head popped up just enough for Cross to see his friend’s eyes. “Uh, yeah. Her brother, Michel, is a couple months younger than me—same grade, though. Guess he heard about it, too, because that’s who I heard it from.”
“Marcello,” Cross repeated, “as in the Marcellos.”
“You’ve met Michel.”
Sure.
At parties. In the locker room off the field at the Academy, when the lower and upper grades were switching out. But he didn’t know the guy.
Cross did know that Michel supplied the school with … stuff.
Pills. Weed. Acid. Molly.
Whatever.
If someone had a poison, Michel could deliver it.
Cross wasn’t into that too much.
“So yeah, Catherine it was,” Zeke said, standing to admire his wheels. “Don’t know how you didn’t know, though.”
“Never met her. She’s new. I didn’t ask questions. I just broke Hugh’s face. She was already gone by the time it was over.”
But hey …
The pretty girl with the green eyes had a name.
Cross wondered what else he could learn about her from her.
“How did you get over here?”
Cross sometimes thought—despite Zeke’s father being Wolf—that the guy was dumb as shit. He was a good friend, sure, but dumb. “I’m on my bike, man.”
“No, I meant … do you ever get in trouble when you act like a little shit?”
“Not really.”
“Ever?” his friend pressed. “Because I breathe in the wrong direction, and Dad is on my ass.”
Wolf wasn’t like that with Cross.
Then again, Zeke wasn’t like Cross, either. He didn’t have an interest in the business their families dabbled in. Zeke wasn’t good, but he wasn’t that sort of bad, either.
Cross shrugged under the weight of his leather jacket. “Did you get my shit I asked for?”
Zeke nodded, and pulled open the passenger door of his Camaro. A beat passed before he tossed a black device across the driveway. Cross caught the phone easily enough, and flipped it over in his hands to take a look at it.
All black.
Touchscreen.
Fingerprint password capability.
“Burner, right?” Cross asked.
Zeke rolled his eyes. “I get you what you ask for, Cross. Why do you need a phone, anyway? Didn’t Cal just buy you a new one for school?”
“He spies on it. He didn’t tell me he was spying on it, and that pisses me off.”
“Oh. Well, shit.” Zeke came close enough to put his hand out, palm up. “Two for that, by the way.”
Cross stuffed the new phone into his pocket, grabbed the rolled up bills he had stuffed in there that morning, and paid his friend. “I thought it was supposed to be three-hundred?”
“I got it cheaper.” Zeke smirked. “For free, actually. It’s wiped, though, so no worries. You’re good.”
Cross didn’t care.
He had a new phone.
That’s what mattered.
“So hey,” Cross said, his thoughts drifting back to the dark-haired, green-eyed Catherine Marcello in an instant, “what else do you know about Catherine?”
Zeke passed him a look. “That she’s a lot closer to your age than mine, and that’s enough for me to know to stay the fuck away, man. I’m not into jailbait. Also, she’s Dante Marcello’s daughter. My father would skin me alive.”
Cross didn’t make much time for girls—at least not ones that went to his school. He liked females, sure, but there weren’t a lot that caught his attention enough to actually keep it. Girls his age liked boring things, and he didn’t care enough to pretend to give a shit. Older girls were good for other things, but that’s about all he kept it to.
Catherine, though …
She was kind of like him, with a family like his.
That interested him a whole lot.
Calisto was waiting on the back porch when Cross parked his quad, and dismounted from the bike. “At least you’re wearing your helmet now.”
Cross hung the helmet off the handlebars. “Yeah, well, last month I hit a tree root and went right over the front of the bike. Figured a helmet might have saved me getting knocked out for an hour and then waking up wondering where the hell I was.”
His step-father frowned. “You didn’t tell me you wrecked the bike.”
“The bike is fine. And so was I, you know, after I woke up.”
“Cross.”
“There was nothing to tell, Papa. Didn’t even have a scratch.”
Calisto’s defensive posturing softened a bit “Come sit with me for a minute. We’ll talk.”
“About how Ma wants to lock me in my room for the rest of my life?”
“Not your whole life. Just until you’re eighteen.”
Cross laughed.
Calisto didn’t.
That’s how he knew this was serious.
Standing in front of Calisto, he pulled out the phone that was tracked and handed it over. “I don’t need it anymore.”
Calisto stared at the device for a long while before he took it with tired eyes. “I thought you’d get your own faster than you did, actually.”
“I wanted a specific phone. It took him a while to get it.”
“Wolf’s boy, you mean. I know who you hang around with.”
Cross took a seat next to his step-father on the bench, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Talk.”
“You know, a couple of years ago when your nonsense started—”
“It’s not nonsense. I am the way I am. I like it just fine.”
Calisto let out a slow breath and glanced up to the sky like he was sending out a silent prayer.
Maybe he was.
Cross wouldn’t be surprised.
“Can you just … pipe down for five minutes, Cross?” Calisto asked. “That’s all. Listen for five minutes, don’t speak.”
“I can try.”
He was honest.
“I learned something then, son,” Calisto said quietly, “and that was the fact I could either make these next few years really easy on us both, or very hard.”
Cross side-eyed his step-father. “How is that?”
“I figured you were going to do what you were going to do, regardless of what I did to stop you. Because the truth was, I wouldn’t be able to stop you. You made that abundantly clear, Cross.”
“The foam was a good one, though. You laughed—deny it.”
Calisto shook his head. “I laughed because I was so exasperated with you, Cross. What else could I do? Nothing worked. You literally cost me eight grand to fix the locks and rewire the entire system for the garage, and do you know what you did? You shrugged. Laughing was the only thing I could do except kill you at that point.”
“So?”
“You have to learn to tamper down the attitude. The rest, whatever. Tamper down the attitude, though.” Calisto crossed his arms over his chest, and began to move the bench swing with the tip of his shoe, rocking them back and forth. “What I am saying, is that I am trying to make these years—while you’re still home with us—easier on us all, but you’re not helping. I need you to help me out a bit here, Cross. I’m goddamn serious.”
“I listen.”
Mostly.
“With one ear, and only what you want to hear.”
“I follow the rules.”
Mostly.
Calisto pursed his lips, hiding a scowl. “What scant rules you have, son.”
“I don’t know what else you want me to do,” Cross said.
“Stop worrying your mother,” Calisto replied. “That would be a great start.”
“Hugh deserved to get punched in the mouth. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“The school felt differently. So much so that you’re suspended for three days, and benched for your first two games.”
Cross made a dismissive noise. “He still deserved it.”
“Why did he deserve it, then? Tell me that.”
“He was bothering a girl. He didn’t listen when she told him to back off. She said no, and he kept on. There’s a half a dozen girls at school that got way worse than this girl got, so I did her a favor by stopping it when I did. Seriously, his surgeon father will pay to have his broken teeth fixed before the second week of school even starts. It’s not a big deal.”
Calisto chuckled under his breath. “Well, then …”
“I don’t randomly go around breaking faces just to break faces.”
“That you don’t.”
“So why is this an issue?” Cross asked.
“Because your mother and I didn’t know the rest of the story,” Calisto replied, “though to be fair, I don’t think you told the school the other bit, either.”
“Doesn’t matter. The girl didn’t do anything wrong except be a girl that Hugh noticed.”
“Make these next few years easier on us, Cross. I’m not asking for a miracle here, just that you be … more careful. I’m not prepared, nor do I have the patience, for a battle of the wills with you until you turn eighteen. I let you have your freedom. I let you do what you want to save me a headache, but you have to give me something back.”
“Like what?”
“Like being careful,” Calisto repeated. “I don’t know, but get smarter or something about your shit. Your mother frets, and you know how she gets. Stop worrying her, I can’t take the state she gets in about your nonsense.”
“Again, it’s—”
“Yeah, yeah. Not nonsense. Just do what I said. Got it?”
Cross meh’ed under his breath.
“I mean,” Calisto continued, “unless you want to have a feud with your mother. It won’t be me the next time, it’ll be her. So either clean your shit up, get smarter about it all, or deal with whatever it is she will do.”
He stiffened on the bench.
Calisto laughed. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound fun at all, does it?”
Cross didn’t reply.
His step-father didn’t need him to, apparently.
“Also, your mother is in the library. Make an effort to apologize for today and mean it, Cross.”
He could do that.
“Sure, Papa.”
Calisto sighed. “Who was the girl, anyway?”
“Catherine Marcello.” That time, it was his father’s turn to go stiff. Cross laughed as he got up from the bench, and headed for the house. “It was worth it, too.”
Calisto’s groan echoed over the silent backyard. “Cross, don’t go getting yourself mixed up in that kind of mess, I swear to God. I won’t kill you for your nonsense, but another man surely might.”
He heard the warning loud and clear.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t go making a spectacle of that girl, Cross!”
He wouldn’t.
Calisto thought Cross didn’t hear him when he spoke, but he did. More than his step-father knew.
Earn a good woman by being a good man.
Yeah, Cross listened … when it was important.