The Run
Naz POV
“Naz, do you have a minute?”
Seventeen-year-old Naz glanced up from the pieces of his laptop he had scattered across the metal table. He regularly put the computer through so much abuse that he liked to take it apart, clean what he could, and replace what he needed to.
“What’s up?”
His father leaned further inside the garage’s doorway, and looked over the mess on the table. “Is that … what is that?”
“Pieces of my laptop,” Naz said.
Cross nodded, but still looked entirely unsurprised at the admission. “You should run that cleanup program on your mother’s computer—make sure there’s no backdoors or open windows somewhere again.”
Naz got what his father said … or rather, what he didn’t say. Pretty regularly, Naz ran a program he created on his family’s computers to make sure the securities and encryptions for their illegal businesses were not in any way compromised. It also made sure to keep their backdoors or unseen windows of opportunities on the computers—so to speak—firmly closed when business was done on the dark web.
One could not be too safe.
Not in their business.
“I was going to run it later,” Naz said.
Cross nodded. “Good.”
“So, what’s up?”
His father brought out a folder from behind his back, and grinned. He waved the folder in the air like it was some kind of prize.
Naz stood up straighter instead of leaning against the table like he had been. “What’s in that, now?”
“Something you have been asking about for a while.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, principe.”
Naz lifted a brow, and then reached out to snatch the folder from his father. Cross quickly pulled the folder out of Naz’s reach with a chuckle. He didn’t even blink a lash at the sight of Naz’s glare.
“Patience, son.”
Naz scoffed. “Donati men have no patience.”
Cross tipped his head to the side. “True, so here.”
Naz took the folder when his father passed it over. Quickly, he opened the folder to scan the contents. All the while, his father kept grinning like he was the cat who had caught the goddamn canary or something.
It didn’t even matter how smug his father looked because Naz was too caught up in the information he found in the folder.
“Holy shit,” Naz said.
“It’s only small,” Cross was quick to point out.
“Really, though?”
Naz looked up.
His father only shrugged.
“Yeah, really. Are you up for it?”
Naz didn’t even have to think about it, really. He had spent years thinking about it leading up to this moment. “Fuck yes, I am up for a gun run.”
His first run.
“Like I said,” Cross told him, putting his hands up, “it’s a small run, and the buyer is a regular.”
Naz nodded as he scanned the details for the buyer, and the fifty firearms he specifically requested.
“He likes them flown in, huh?” Naz asked.
“Well, he likes them flown into the first spot. Beyond that, though, they have to be driven a ways. Far safer once they’ve been flown in first.”
“Okay.”
Cross pushed away from the wall to stand straight. “So, look everything over. Sketch out all the details for your plan on this run—I will then look it all over, and decide to sign off on it or not. I’ll give you about a week to get that back to me.”
Naz laughed. “I’ll have it back to you by tomorrow night, Dad.”
Cross smirked. “Yeah, I figured.”
As Naz promised, he was ready by the next night to bring his run plans back to his father.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
Cross peered up from the laptop screen, and Naz stepped further into his father’s office. His ma sat on the window bench seat with a paperback novel in her hands.
It never failed to amaze Naz how even when his parents weren’t working together, they were still together.
Always together.
Never apart for long.
The two could be entirely silent, yet Naz could tell they enjoyed that, too. Simply being together even in their quiet moments.
He wondered if he would ever find love like that.
A love that strong.
That fulfilling.
That amazing.
“Let me guess,” his father said, “you’ve already got the plans for the run ready for me?”
Naz grinned. “I told you I would.”
Cross put a hand out, and gestured with his fingers. “Give me what you’ve got, son.”
Coming further inside the office, Naz passed over the folder detailing the plans for the gun run. He didn’t feel particularly nervous as his father silently scanned through the details.
Naz wouldn’t be offended either should his father find something wrong—unlikely—or a plan that needed changing for whatever reason. That one was far more likely only because Cross might find something that he thought could work better, or safer, in another way.
This—being a damn good gunrunner—was what his father did.
Cross Donati was the best of the best.
“Well?” Naz asked.
His father finished his perusal, and closed the folder.
“What do you think?” Naz asked.
Cross smiled. “It all looks good. I would be willing to go ahead with this as soon as I can get the guns moved.”
“Yeah?”
“There was just one little issue,” Cross added.
“What’s that?”
“You planned for a partner, but didn’t discuss who that would be with me ahead of time. I can set you up with—”
“Well, that’s because I thought it would be you.”
“Oh,” Cross said.
A look passed between Naz’s mother and father. An unspoken conversation Naz couldn’t begin to understand. They did that far too often, honestly. Sometimes, his parents could have entire conversations in silence, and never broke a stride.
He added that into the pile of strange things about their relationship, and love. Like maybe being together for so long, and knowing each other so well was the reason why they were afforded this kind of privilege.
Finally, his mother nodded.
Cross looked back at Naz. “I guess you’ve got yourself a partner, son.”
Naz took the folder back. “Who the fuck else would it be?”