“Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you.”
“Aw, Ma,” Cross muttered, and tried to wave his mother off.
It didn’t work.
Instead, Cross ended up ducking and dodging Emma’s kisses the whole way to the table. As soon as he sat his ass down, it didn’t matter. She kissed the top of his head with a quiet, Ha.
Across the table, his step-father sat with a smirk half hidden by a cup of coffee. Calisto tried to act like he was more interested in the newspaper in his hands, but Cross wasn’t stupid. His step-dad got way too much enjoyment out of Emma’s tricks.
Especially with Cross.
“Is it your birthday?” Calisto asked.
Cross shot a look across the table. “Shouldn’t you know?”
“Well, you didn’t ask for anything. You didn’t want a party. Makes me wonder if you want to pretend you don’t have a birthday this year.”
“Too old for all that shit,” Cross said as his mother slid a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him. “Save the balloons, banners, and cake for Camilla. She still likes that stuff.”
“Yes, I do!” his sister shouted on her way through the kitchen.
Camilla was loud enough to burst eardrums in the morning. Cross glared at his sister while she only smiled back at him. Who needed an alarm clock when they had Camilla Donati in the house screeching to the heavens?
“You’re too old for a birthday party, maybe,” Calisto agreed.
Cross almost shoved a bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth, but stopped last minute. “Are you saying I can have a house party?”
Calisto barked out a laugh, and pointed a finger at Cross. “Ha, no.”
“Just asking.”
He would never know if he never asked.
He would never get it if he didn’t try.
Simple enough.
“Besides,” Calisto added, going back to his paper, “you wouldn’t even invite kids your own age, Cross. You’d invite people way older than you, and I would end up with a trashed house.”
“I can’t help it that I don’t have friends my own age. I could keep them on the bottom level.”
There were three levels to the Donati home.
“The answer is no, son.”
“Never say I didn’t try,” Cross said, grinning.
“That you do.” Calisto sighed, and tossed his newspaper down. “It’s Friday, though, and you didn’t ask for a party here.”
“So?”
Cross filled his mouth with eggs and bacon, more interested in feeding his face than having a weird conversation with his step-father.
“So,” his mother said, sitting down at the table with her own plate, “did you set up something elsewhere? That’s what Cal is asking.”
“Trying to ask,” Calisto corrected.
“Why didn’t you just ask that, then?” Cross asked.
His plate was already finished.
According to his mother, he ate like every teenage boy that didn’t think they would ever get fed again in their lifetime. Cross figured he just didn’t have time to sit and care about the food, as long as it tasted good and went in his damn mouth.
Standing from the table, Cross leaned over and gave his mother a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks, Ma.”
“You didn’t answer my question, son,” Calisto said.
Cross shrugged. “No party elsewhere. I’ve got a game tonight—last one before winter. And Wolf is taking me to Chicago this weekend, so no party then, either.”
“Well. All right.” Calisto smiled, and picked up his paper once more. “Better for me to ask, and for you to tell the truth, then for me to find out later you lied, Cross.”
“I’m not having a party. I’d give you the damn address to the place if I was.”
“Language,” Emma chided.
Calisto ignored his wife’s warning. “Yeah, I got it, son. Relax.”
Cross glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the time. “I’ve got to head over to Zeke’s, or someone else is going to need to drive me to school.”
“Get going,” Emma said with a wave of her hand, “and try to be good, Cross!”
Cross was already gone before his mother could finish her sentence. He had just sat down on his bike—soon, it would need to be put away for the winter months—when his phone buzzed in his jacket.
Ignoring the bite of the November air, Cross pulled the phone out to find a text scrolling over the screen.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want a party. He didn’t hate his birthday, really, even if he had been saying he was fifteen for a couple of months before he even actually turned that age. It was just … what fun would it be?
Not much without a green-eyed, dark-haired girl.
Not much fun at all.
Happy birthday, Catherine’s text read.
He’d thank her at school.
His way.
Cross ignored the heys and the half a dozen gazes of girls as he sat down beside Catherine in the cafeteria. She finally made friends in her own grade and some from his, although sometimes, it seemed she could do without them.
He didn’t blame her.
Cross felt the same way about people.
“Here,” Catherine said the second Cross was seated beside her, “hold this for me.”
Cross took the sketchpad. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Just … hold it there.”
He shot a look at the table she had been using before, but shrugged it off. She had the better idea, anyway.
Catherine turned toward him, and he faced her. Her back was to the rest of the girls chatting away at the table, and he wasn’t exactly open to conversation with them to begin with. This way, it was just the two of them facing one another, in their own space, and they didn’t invite attention or conversation.
Not that people didn’t try.
They just ignored them.
It wasn’t exactly new for him and her. He was glad she made friends, but he found the girls to be high strung, too fucking nosy, and boring as hell. Catherine was none of those things, so his attention went only to her.
He wasn’t there for the rest of them.
Catherine popped the cap off a silver Sharpie marker, and went back to her doodling. Cross held the pad for her while she drew. “So …”
“Hey.”
Her head jerked up, her green eyes catching his. “Yeah?”
Cross leaned in, closed the small gap between them, and kissed her quickly on the mouth. Just as fast, he sat back the way he had been, as though he hadn’t done anything at all. Catherine smiled, though, shooting him a wink.
“Careful,” Trisha said from behind Catherine, “or you’ll get written up again.”
Cross eyed the girl over Catherine’s shoulder. “Don’t you have a new lipstick to mark on the bathroom mirrors with or something?”
Yeah, he heard about that shit.
Petty. Stupid. Nonsense.
The least the girl could have done was use something permanent—like spray paint—so it wasn’t washed off before the day was out. If someone was going to have a go at vandalism, go full on or nothing at all.
Trisha rolled her eyes. “You could try being pleasant, Cross.”
“I am,” Cross said.
To people who matter, he added silently.
“When?” the girl asked.
“Leave him alone,” Catherine piped up, never taking her attention off her doodling. “And she’s got a point, Cross.”
Catherine said her last words quieter than the rest.
“Oh?”
She frowned. “I’ve only got a couple of more write-ups before they call home.”
Cross rolled his eyes. “Who fucking cares? They call home, explain the ten write-ups, and start your score over again.”
Her laughter came out sweet and light, making him grin. “Yeah, you would see it that way. Like a competition for you to win or something. You get ten a week at least, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” Often enough. “I just mean, they don’t do anything but call.”
“But that’s what I don’t want.” Catherine flipped the pad over in Cross’s hands before saying, “I don’t want my parents pissed at me, that’s all.”
“So tell them you’ve gotten written up before the school calls and does it.”
That seemed like a simple solution to Cross.
Shit, his mother asked him regularly what he’d gotten written up for. She was a lot less angry when he told her before the principal did.
Calisto almost always laughed it off.
Catherine stared at him as though he had grown a second head.
“What?” he asked.
“Why would I tell them I was breaking rules?”
“Why would you wait until you got to ten write-ups instead of telling them at eight?” Cross tapped the pad of his pointer finger on Catherine’s small nose. “I’m just saying.”
“I have a different opinion.”
“One that only makes sense to you because you don’t want to be in trouble earlier than you’re going to be anyway,” Cross replied.
Catherine gave him a dirty look. “Stop making sense.”
It was what it was.
“I don’t sugarcoat shit, Catherine.”
“You could try for me, Cross.”
“Especially not for you.”
It wouldn’t do her any good.
It didn’t benefit anyone to lie their way through life.
Catherine shook her head and went back to doodling.
“This weekend, Natasha is having—”
Cross made a face and said, “No.”
“You could let me finish.”
“It’s not my thing.”
“Let me finish.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“She’s having a bunch of people over, like for the night, but I was thinking I’d skip out with you and Zeke for a while on Saturday since I’m supposed to be at her place anyway. If you’d be able to get over there and pick me up.”
Cross liked that idea.
Except …
“I’m going to Chicago all weekend,” he said.
Catherine’s smile faded instantly.
He didn’t like that at all.
“Sorry,” he added.
She shrugged. “It was an idea. Are you going for your birthday?”
Likely business.
Cross couldn’t tell her that, though.
No talking about the family business.
It was a rule he followed.
“No, but my game is tonight,” he said instead. Catherine was the one to make a face that time. “Yeah, I know football isn’t your thing, but would you come anyway?”
He never asked for shit from Catherine.
She gave—he took.
He liked it that way.
Catherine grinned at him. “I’ll call home and get a ride for a while after the game. Don’t you have a party or something to celebrate if you win?”
“They might. I don’t.”
He didn’t play for that stuff.
“About my birthday …” he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder to see where the supervising teachers happened to be.
She didn’t want another write-up, after all.
Both supervising teachers’ backs were turned away from their direction.
“What?” Catherine asked.
Cross closed the gap between them the same way he had earlier, but instead of a quick kiss that was over before anyone knew what was happening, this one wasn’t the same. He took his time—kissed her hard.
He liked the way Catherine’s lips curved into a happy smile, and how her pupils blew wide when her gaze found his. Her mouth was always sweet against his, and then hot, too.
Cross waited to feel Catherine’s lips part, a small sigh beating against his mouth. Then he deepened the kiss, already finding her tongue waiting to war with his. He made himself pull away before someone did turn around and write them up.
Catherine bit her bottom lip and muttered, “You’re going to get me in shit.”
“I had to thank you, though.”
“Good excuse.”
The bell rang echoing through the cafeteria.
“Okay, Catherine, let’s go before your boyfriend gets us in trouble again,” one of the girls said. “I mean, if that’s what you’re calling him this week.”
Catherine shot him a small smile, but he could tell the comment bothered her. Maybe because it was true, but maybe because he didn’t know what they were. She probably didn’t, either. Everybody always asked them questions. People never shut up. He hated their nosiness. His friends never asked; they didn’t care.
Cross didn’t even care to know which one of Catherine’s friends said it.
It wasn’t anyone else’s business what he called Catherine, or what she called him. They were clearly something, and he liked that just fine. They had been something for two months, so he figured it was obvious without making a scene like everybody else did.
It was everyone else who seemed to have a problem.
Quickly, he grabbed one of Catherine’s Sharpies—a black one—and popped the cap off. She laughed when he grabbed her wrist and flipped it over, doodling two fast stripes of black on her soft skin. One line long, the other, crossways and shorter.
“There,” Cross said, dropping Catherine’s wrist and handing back her marker. The table cleared of the girls. He still wasn’t paying them any attention. When Catherine was there, it was just him and her. “So you know, now.”
She looked down and smiled; he’d marked a black cross on her inner wrist.
“So I know what?”
“I’m yours.”
“What does that mean?”
Cross chuckled. “Whatever you want it to mean. That’s the whole point.”
“Cross?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you said you didn’t want anything for your birthday …”
“Too old for that nonsense,” he said.
Catherine rolled her eyes. “Never too old for presents, but anyway.”
“You didn’t get me something, did you?”
“No, I made you something.”
Catherine flipped her sketchpad back over for Cross to see what was on the paper. It was a comic-style sketch of him and her, sitting at the table, ignoring the rest of the world. Like they usually did.
Cross stared at the drawing and said, “I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
She doodled a lot.
She never really showed him what was inside her sketchbooks. Sometimes she took her silver and gold Sharpies, and made complex patterns and designs on her arms, a table top, or whatever was close. He was pretty sure a teacher had written her up for that at least once.
Catherine shrugged. “Art isn’t really a good career goal, right? It’s a hobby.”
“This is fucking awesome, Catherine.”
“You like it?”
He grinned wide. “I love it.”
Chicago was a lot like New York, except colder and windier.
Wolf chuckled when Cross stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, and hid his face in the flipped up collar.
“Not funny,” Cross mumbled behind the fabric, “I’m freezing my balls off here.”
“Next time you won’t be such an arrogant little shit when I tell you to bring a decent winter jacket.”
“It’s November.”
“In Chicago …” Rick said, slamming the SUV door closed behind Cross. The enforcer grinned in a way that made Cross want to put something through the guy’s head. “November is winter, kid.”
Cross flipped Rick off. “Suck my dick.”
Wolf sighed. “Now, Cross.”
“Don’t call me a kid again,” he said, ignoring Wolf’s warning.
“The flight home is going to be so much fun,” Wolf muttered under his breath. “Calisto should send Rick with me more often. Remind me to tell him that as soon as I get home.”
Rick smacked Cross in the back of the head, and moved toward the waiting restaurant. “You are a kid.”
He was going to put something through Rick’s head.
“If he hits me one more time, I’m going to—”
Wolf pushed on Cross’s shoulder, moving them both toward the restaurant. “He likes messing with you because it bothers you, Cross. Haven’t you figured that out yet? There are men in this business who will poke at every raw nerve you have just because they can; because you’ve been stupid enough to show them you have a weakness to exploit. Don’t blame Rick for your shortcomings. It is not his duty to curb his nature to suit your mood, principe, not unless you’re the boss.”
He really hated it when Wolf made sense.
“Get your dick wet for the first time in your life,” Rick said as he held the door open for Wolf and Cross to enter the business, “and I’ll stop calling you a kid, principe.”
Cross glared at the asshole on his way by. “I already—”
“Getting your dick sucked isn’t the same thing,” Rick interrupted.
Little did the guy know, Cross had already done all that shit and more. It took every ounce of willpower Cross had not to drive his thumbs into Rick’s eye sockets and pull out the man’s eyes in that second, though.
“Well, you would know all about sucking cock, wouldn’t you?” Cross asked. “Don’t your knees get sore from that?”
Rick’s face reddened.
Cross smirked.
Point to me, asshole.
“Okay, that’s quite enough entertainment for the day,” Wolf said. He pushed Cross ahead of him and sent Rick a look to keep him quiet at the same time. “Cross, wipe that smug smile off your face. Rick, draw your line at talking about that shit, and stay right where you are for the rest of this meeting.”
Rick stayed behind like he was told.
Wolf flicked Cross on the tip of his ear, ignoring the shout and dirty look he earned. Once they were around the corner and entering the restaurant’s main floor, he said, “Cross, you’re working my last nerve; clean up the attitude quick, fast, and in a hurry, or you will stay behind the next time.”
Cross fixed his attitude.
For now.
A man Cross recognized stood from his table when he saw them approaching. Adriano Conti was his name—a Capo for the Chicago Outfit. Wolf hadn’t explained much about the business they would be doing in Chicago, just that Cross was to come, sit down, and shut his mouth so he could learn. He’d seen Adriano at another meeting, although his father had been the one to bring him along at that time.
“Wolf,” Adriano greeted, holding out his hand.
Wolf took the handshake. “Adriano.”
The man nodded to Cross. “I wondered if you would bring the principe.”
“I’m starting to regret the decision.”
Cross opened his mouth to respond, but wisely chose to shut up when Wolf looked down at him with a cocked brow.
Adriano’s gaze lit up with amusement as he looked over Cross. “Oh?”
“It’s like sitting between two teenage girls barking at one another in the car between him and the other man I brought along,” Wolf said. “Although to be frank, it seems I have a man who forgets that Cross will not always be fifteen, a head shorter than him, and fifty pounds lighter. Soon, he won’t be any of those things at all, and I’m not sure the man is ready for what happens when that day comes. He’s poking at a sleeping bear with a very short stick.”
“I will have to tell my nephew he is not the only principe to be ribbed on a regular basis,” Adriano said, smiling, “although if you asked Tommaso, he certainly thinks he’s the only one. It’s a rite of passage for young men like you, Cross. Who else will thicken your skin if not the men you grow up under? That’s how you learn not to kill everyone who pisses you off.”
Cross scowled. “Killing them seems like the easier way to deal with it.”
Wolf lifted a hand in Cross’s direction, as if to ask, See?
Adriano laughed. “You’ll learn, Cross. We all did.”
“Sit,” Wolf said, pointing at an open chair at the table.
Cross slid into the seat and shrugged his jacket off to hang over the back. Once the other two men were also seated, he noticed the enforcer Adriano had brought along, as the man came to hand over a file for his Capo to take.
“Thank you,” Adriano said, waving the enforcer off.
“What do you have for me?” Wolf asked. “It better be good for me to make the trip to Chicago, Adriano.”
“It is, no worries.”
The file was flipped open, exposing photos of what looked to be … a shipment of some kind. Adriano turned over more photographs, showcasing what was inside the shipment. Drugs. A lot of it. Cocaine, by the looks of it.
“I certainly like what I’m looking at, but why exactly am I looking at it?”
Adriano closed the file back up. “Better to have this conversation face to face, given the circumstances and all. Our ports are hot as shit right now—three cargos were picked up by officials in as many months. We need access to a safe port until things calm down. I don’t know how long that’s going to be; a year, maybe less, but maybe more.”
Wolf rested back in his chair, nodding. “A New York port, then?”
“You have access to one, don’t you?”
“Two, actually, but the fee is going to kill you.”
Adriano laughed. “Yeah, I figured it would.”
“Why not go to the Marcellos? They’ve got far more ports than us, and could probably afford to drop one for a cheaper fee.”
“The Marcellos may have forgiven us for the incident way back when, but they still won’t work with us, especially at the ports.”
“Ah,” Wolf murmured, “I see.”
Cross took a drink of soda the waitress brought over without even taking his attention from the table. He wondered in that moment, how strange his life would probably seem to someone watching from the outside. How many fifteen-year-olds spent their weekends like this? How many people could look at a photograph of drugs, and just know what kind they were?
Not very many.
Cross had known from a very young age what he wanted to be—a made man. His whole life was going to be this very thing; the mafia was their thing, after all.
He didn’t know anything different.
He didn’t care to.
“Cross, come back to my office, please.”
Cross didn’t know what exactly it was, but something in the tone of his step-father’s voice said Calisto wasn’t pleased as it echoed from the back of the house. He dropped his school bag at the door, and headed down the hallway to the office. The whole way, he ran through shit he might have done over the last week that would warrant his step-father getting pissed at him. He’d come home from Chicago, and went to school every day without skipping. He didn’t torture the shit out of Camilla, and he’d made an effort to not get suspended since that first day.
For the most part, Cross had been … good.
As good as he could be.
It was a fine line.
Cross leaned in the office doorway, only to find Calisto sitting behind his large desk. “Yeah?”
Calisto glanced up from whatever he was typing on his laptop. “How was school?”
“Boring.”
“Anything happen today?”
“Football practice and a test I probably failed.”
Calisto rubbed at his temples with two fingers on either side. “You hit your ten write-ups today, and I got a call about it.”
“Okay.”
That wasn’t new.
“When were you going to tell me you’ve been dating Catherine Marcello?”
Cross stiffened. “What?”
“Three of your write-ups are for public displays of affection—cute way of saying you like to kiss the girl when you’re not supposed to be. I mean, Jesus Christ, I hope that’s all you’re doing with her right now. Two others were for lingering on the property after the bell with her instead of heading to class,” Calisto said. “So again, when were you going to tell me—”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
His step-father stared hard at him. “Really, Cross?”
“Is that what we’re doing—dating?”
Calisto’s brow furrowed. “Are you fucking with me right now? I can’t take your smartass self very much more today, Cross. It’s been a long damn day.”
“When people date, they do things. Go places. Whatever. I don’t know. We’re just … us,” he finished lamely. “I haven’t brought her over or anything, so why would I bring it up?”
“I told you not to make a spectacle of that girl, son.”
“I’m not.”
“Getting written up at school because you can’t leave her the hell alone sure sounds like making a spectacle to me,” his step-father muttered heavily. “So you … like her?”
Cross frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He didn’t talk to people he didn’t like, let alone be with them as much as he was with Catherine. He wouldn’t say he liked Catherine. He liked his friends. He liked his bike. He liked football, sometimes. She was different than those things. It was more than that. It wasn’t as simple or easy as that. Not at all.
“You know I have to call her father now,” Calisto said, “because of who he is and who I am, to give him a heads up. It’s the respect of the matter.”
Cross shrugged. “Okay, so do that.”
“I should make you call.”
“Why?”
Calisto, again, stared at him as though he was the stupidest thing to have graced his presence. “You really don’t see what you did wrong, do you?”
“Because I like Catherine Marcello?”
“My God, Cross. Get out, I have to make a phone call.”
“Yeah, about that. I mean, since you’re already calling anyway. I want to take Catherine to the Winter Formal the Academy has coming up, so mention that for me.”
Calisto’s eyes darted back to Cross in a heartbeat. “I beg your pardon?”
“Winter Formal. They do it every year in January after Christmas break. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, but do you? Because you’ve gone to that school since sixth grade, and you’ve never gone to a dance or anything they throw, for that matter. Last year, the football team won regionals, they threw the team a huge party, and you wouldn’t even go to that.”
Cross still didn’t understand why those things mattered.
“Catherine likes to dance. So yeah, mention that for me.”
His step-father looked like someone had cracked him in the back of the head with a frying pan. “Get out of my office, Cross. Now.”