A crime boss, a Queen Pin, a lawyer, and a resident doctor all sat down at a dinner table …
No, it wasn’t the start of some joke. It was Catherine Marcello’s life.
She tried to pay attention to the conversation happening between her parents, her brother Michel, and his wife. Something about Michel’s residency, and his wife’s next criminal defense case. It wasn’t that she usually zoned out at family dinners, but her mind was somewhere else.
On a dark-eyed, black-haired sin.
On old heartbreak and first loves.
On the past.
On Cross Donati.
She had managed to go years without thinking about Cross in any real depth. Sure, whispers of memories were there in the back of her mind, but she preferred to shove them aside.
After everything … she didn’t have a choice.
Catherine wasn’t ever going to be left broken by that man again. She understood why he left her all those years ago, but it was what came after when she was finally ready to start over with him again that damn near killed her.
She had been good back then. Months and months of therapy with Cara Rossi. Honest, hard therapy that forced her to take a real look at herself in the mirror for the first time in years. It made her see the reflection staring back, own it, be responsible for it, and like it.
Then, all it took was one single day to push Catherine back several steps all over again. Cross promised—always—and he lied.
Catherine was supposed to be the liar.
Not him.
So no, as much as she couldn’t get him out of her head long enough to have a conversation with her family, she was not risking going down that rabbit hole with Cross.
Not again.
“You’re such an eejit, Michel,” Gabbie said with a roll of her green eyes.
Michel’s wife, a third generation Irish-American, had just enough of her culture to color up her words and the inflection of her speech. It cracked Catherine up a lot of the time. Especially when the woman’s Irish came out to insult Michel.
“Don’t call me that,” Catherine brother’s said.
“I say it with love.”
“Sure, but in your eyes, I see the insult.”
“You need your eyes checked, Michel.”
The part about Catherine’s older brother that she liked the most was his wife, Gabbie. Michel was a moody, difficult asshole on his good days, but his wife was the lighter side of his personality.
It made for fun family dinners.
“Your residency will be finished in what, a few months?” Catherine’s father asked from the head of the table.
Michel nodded. “Thankfully.”
“Long hours,” Gabbie said before taking a drink of wine.
“And have you decided what you’re going to do after?” Catrina asked her son.
“Private practice,” Dante said before Michel could.
Michel smirked. “Dad knows. Better money, you know.”
Gabbie sighed. “It’s not all about the money, Michel.”
“It’s a lot about the money,” Michel argued.
“Not all,” Gabbie said in a sing-song fashion.
Catherine’s father laughed at the head of the table, the joy in his old eyes softening his features. Dante Marcello often came off as intense and severe. So much so, that he intimidated most people who came in contact with him. Catherine knew that was simply because people didn’t really know who her father was.
Sure, he was a major crime boss.
But he was also a dad.
He was a family man.
He loved.
“How’s school?” Catrina asked, her sharp gaze falling on Catherine.
“Good,” Catherine answered.
“Wonderful,” Dante said, smiling widely. “Only a couple of years left, Catty.”
Catherine forced herself to agree. Truth was, it might be more than a couple.
Dante eyed his daughter silently, like he was looking for something that didn’t exist. All too often, her father did that nonsense. He was damned good at it, too.
“I talked to Andino today,” Dante said.
Shit.
Catherine stuck her fork in a piece of cut steak and asked, “Oh?”
“Yes, he mentioned you stopped by to eat at the restaurant.”
“I did.”
“What did I miss?” Michel asked.
“Nothing,” Catherine said.
“Oh, there must be something given the way you look,” Catrina said. “Or rather, the way you’re trying not to look, Catherine.”
Dio.
This was why Catherine sometimes avoided her family. They pried too much and stuck their noses where they didn’t belong.
“Are you seeing the Donati boy again?” Dante asked out of the blue.
Catherine dropped her fork. It landed on her plate with a loud clatter. It was the only noise the table made for the entire ten seconds that she spent staring at her father with her mouth wide open.
“What?” Catherine finally managed to ask.
“Donati. Cross. Affonso Donati’s boy.” Dante scowled when Catherine stayed silent. “Why are you playing dumb, Catherine? You know who I’m talking about. You dated him for years.”
“Why would you think I was dating Cross again?”
“Andino mentioned—”
“What, that Cross showed up at Andino’s restaurant and we had a conversation, Dad?”
Catherine blew out a heavy breath, more frustrated than ever. While her father had never explicitly told her she couldn’t date Cross, he’d never totally approved of the man. Catherine suspected it was just because someone was interested in her, and Dante never liked boys around his daughter all that much.
That, and the long history Catherine and Cross had together. A history that eventually ended very badly.
Dante raised a single brow high, and instantly, Catherine shut up. She knew which lines to cross with her father and which ones to never touch. Rudeness was one he wouldn’t accept. It didn’t matter how old she was.
“Sorry,” Catherine mumbled quickly.
“All right,” Catrina said, standing from the table. “Michel, let’s go … do something for a few minutes.”
“Come on, Gabbie,” Michel said, holding a hand out to his wife.
Catherine focused on her plate instead of the eyes of her father that were burning into her.
“Get it out, Daddy,” Catherine said.
Dante sighed. “I just wanted an answer, Catherine.”
“I gave you one.”
“That you had a dinner date with Cross Donati at Andino’s restaurant. Yes, I got that.”
“What dinner date?” Catherine asked. “It wasn’t a date.”
“You didn’t invite him there?”
“No.”
Dante grew silent.
Catherine didn’t like that at all.
“What?” she demanded.
“Are you dating anyone?” Dante asked instead of answering.
Catherine tampered her frustration. “Why, so you can pay whoever it is off to get away from me? I know how you feel about men in my life, Dad.”
“I haven’t paid anyone off, Catty.”
“You’ve probably thought about it.”
Dante’s cheek twitched before he nodded once. “I’ll give you that.”
Smiling, Catherine said, “I’m not seeing anyone. And certainly not Cross Donati. He said he showed up at the restaurant for business with Andino.”
Well, he’d said business. Catherine assumed that meant with Andino.
“Andino said he didn’t invite Cross, sweetheart.”
Catherine stilled in her chair, taking in her father’s words.
What did it mean?
Had Cross sought her out?
Why?
Catherine stroked her inner, left wrist with the thumb on her right hand. She could still feel the slightly raised scar left behind from her darkest moment, but it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. She had it covered up a year after the incident with a small tattoo.
A clean, black cross.
She wasn’t sure what made her touch the scar, but it had become a habit over the years. Like a reminder, maybe, when her stress and anxiety became too much that she had survived worse. She had fallen once, shattered to pieces, and then put herself back together.
“Catherine?”
At her mother’s voice, Catherine quickly slid the bangle bracelets on her arm back down her wrist. It covered the tattoo, and hid what she had been doing. Of course, her family knew of the tattoo, and the scar it covered, but she didn’t like to worry them. Whenever one of them caught her looking at the tattoo, or worse, touching it, they instantly became … edgy.
They looked at her carefully.
Too long, and too hard.
They hovered.
Catherine understood why, sure, but she wished they wouldn’t do that at all. She was not a fragile doll; her depression had never returned with such deafening force. Her anxiety did not cripple her.
She was fine.
She wanted to keep being fine.
“Yeah, Ma?” Catherine asked.
Catrina sat on the other end of the couch with a glass of wine in hand. “Your father wanted me to check if you were staying for the night.”
“I figured I might as well. It’s a long drive back to the city.”
Catherine lived in an apartment close to the University of Columbia.
Catrina nodded. “Of course.”
“I have a paper to hand in tomorrow morning, though, so I might skip out early.”
She didn’t bother to mention that she also needed to stop by her cousin’s—Andino—restaurant again to grab her shit for the next month. Mostly because her parents didn’t know that she hustled drugs for her cousin as one of his many dealers. Despite her family being full of criminals, and built on a criminal empire under the oath of Cosa Nostra, Catherine kept her dealings on the illegal side of life private and secret.
She did not think they would approve. After all, her parents seemed fine with pushing her toward college. They had never fed her curiosity about their business dealings and illegal activities when she was younger. She stumbled into hustling with the help of her older cousins, who now acted as Capos for her father’s famiglia.
Really, she chose not to tell her parents the truth because she did not want their disappointment. She was positive it was all that would come out of her telling them.
Catherine was a hustler of a slightly higher caliber. She wasn’t out on the streets selling drugs, or making trades in dirty alleyways. No, she was New York elite simply because of her last name and pedigree. It got her into the biggest events, the most exclusive premiers and parties, and she used that to her advantage. Her face wasn’t recognized just because she was Dante Marcello’s daughter. It was recognized because anything someone wanted—no matter their poison of choice—Catherine could supply.
And she did it with a pretty smile.
“You’re taking summer classes,” her mother said quietly.
Catherine hid her frown by looking away. She did not want to explain that she was taking summer classes in an effort to play catch up with the courses she had dropped the year before. Her busy life, and sometimes lack of interest in college, made it difficult to actually do what she needed to do for her grades. She wasn’t stupid. She simply didn’t care most times. She had finally chosen a direction four years earlier, and mostly because of her sister-in-law.
Gabbie’s career in criminal defense had especially interested Catherine.
At the time.
Now, it just bored her.
“I picked up some extra classes to keep me busy this summer,” Catherine said, hoping her mother would drop the subject. “Maybe get ahead of my work before next year.”
She should have known better.
Catrina was not easily dissuaded by other people’s distraction tactics. “To keep busy, or because you need them?”
“Well, both.”
“School is still what you want to do, isn’t it? Becoming a lawyer, I mean. You’re twenty-five, Catty. You still have lots of time to change your mind. I always thought you would go into something with art as a focus, to be honest.”
“Art was always a hobby, but becoming a lawyer is reality.” Catherine shrugged. “Not sure what else I would do, Ma.”
Catrina stared at her daughter for a long while, saying nothing. Catherine almost felt as though her mother was searching for something in her daughter’s eyes. Or maybe like she was silently asking Catherine to talk.
Finally, Catrina said, “You know we’ll be proud of you no matter what you choose to do, Catty. No matter what. You can succeed in anything because you’re amazing, and I’m not sure you know how to fail.”
She glanced down at the bangles covering her wrist and the tattoo. “I did fail once.”
Catrina’s gaze followed her daughter’s. “You hit a bump in the road once. It’s only a failure when you do not get back up, and keep going.”
“Cara told you to say that, didn’t she?”
“Cara was a very good influence in your life when you needed her,” Catrina replied with a small smile, “and she gave us all advice worth following. Not just you, reginella.”
Little queen.
Catherine gave her mother a look. “I’m not so little anymore.”
“Still my little queen, even if you’re fifty. I raised you. Only I can pass on that crown, Catherine.”
Her mother, the Queen Pin dealing to the rich, famous, and spoiled, was still just her mother at the end of the day.
Catrina leaned over, and flicked the bangles on Catherine’s wrist. It exposed the black cross tattoo beneath the jewelry before she fixed the bracelets. “I never asked before, but I wondered … especially after that question your father asked about Cross Donati at supper.”
“What’s that, Ma?”
“I think everyone just assumes you covered your scar with the cross because we’re Catholics, and God.” Her mother rolled her eyes upward. While her father was devout to God, her mother sometimes wavered in what she felt was worth her faith and what was simply the expectations of an organized religion. “Yet, I wonder if that’s not the case. Was it for Him, or for him, Catherine?”
She could have lied.
She was still a damn good liar.
Catherine chose to tell the truth.
“Cross was kind of like a God to me, anyway. I revered him like one. So, I guess you could say it was both.”
Catrina let out a long sigh, and sipped her wine. “I understand that, Catty. All women who have loved would understand.”
Catherine bent down to pet her cousin’s dog, Snaps. The pit bull opened a single, lazy eye, and his stubby tail flicked with happiness. According to Andino, Snaps could be one hell of a nasty dog when he needed to be, but she had never seen it happen.
“Who’s a good boy, Snaps?” she cooed to the dog. “Yes, it’s you. Yes, it is.”
His stubby tail wiggled harder, but he still stayed prone on the floor beside Andino’s desk in the restaurant office.
“Andino doesn’t love you enough. No, he doesn’t. I should steal you and—”
“You’re not taking my fucking dog, Catty, so don’t even think about it.”
Catherine gave Snaps one last tickle behind his ear, and stood to face her cousin. Andino closed the office door, and headed for the chair behind his desk. His large form rested into the chair with more grace than a man of his size might usually have. He reminded her of a linebacker with his wide shoulders and broad chest. Many found her cousin’s green eyes to be cold, and his smile a bit condescending. Too many said he was just intimidating as hell.
She didn’t find that about Andino Marcello at all.
Then again, he was family.
“Sorry I didn’t call you back last night,” Catherine said. “I was at my parents’ place.”
Andino waved it off as he pulled out a drawer on the desk. “It’s fine. I figured that’s what it was, anyway. Since I’m heading out of town for a couple of weeks, I thought you might want to get your shit early so you have it.”
He tossed two large bubble mailers to the other side of the desk where Catherine could reach. She picked up the packages and shoved them into her oversized purse where they would stay hidden until she could deal with the contents inside.
Contents meaning, drugs.
Pills. Molly. Acid. Cocaine.
Those were Catherine’s thing.
She found it was easier to manage and deal pills, tablets, and a set amount of powder in a baggie. She simply organized product in bags by ones or twos when it came to pills and tablets. Drops of acid on dissolvable paper. Or enough cocaine in a bag to cut anywhere from two large lines to four small ones.
It was simpler and faster when she was in the midst of a party or event dealing where the less time she spent with drugs out in the open, the better. If someone wanted more than what she had separated out, then they could buy more.
“That going to be enough for you?” Andino asked.
Catherine nodded. “More than enough, likely.”
“Then go make me some money, Catty.”
She rolled her eyes, but it didn’t really bother her. Andino had been the one to teach Catherine how to hustle all those years ago, starting when she was just sixteen. He hadn’t been the one supplying the drugs at the time; that was Johnathan. Andino supplied her now, though.
A two knuckle knock on the office door took Catherine’s attention away from Andino only to see her oldest cousin poke his head in.
“Hey, John,” Andino said. “Catherine was just leaving.”
Johnathan stepped into the office with a grin. “The house was too full the other day, little cousin. I didn’t see you at my Welcome Home party.”
Catherine smirked as she passed John by to head for the door. “We’re calling your release from prison a Welcome Home thing?”
“Well, yeah.”
He tugged on her hair playfully.
“Keep it up,” Catherine warned.
“Catty, you don’t even have claws,” John teased.
“So you think. Like I told Andino, keep calling me Catty, and I’m going to start charging you.”
John scoffed. “You’re never kicking that name now.”
If only they knew who had given it to her and why …
She had missed her cousin during his three year prison sentence, but she couldn’t deny that John looked a hell of a lot better than he had when he went in. His Bipolar Disorder, also known as Manic Depression, had put him into a bad episode. A fight with Andino in a public place sent him to prison after he discharged a weapon and assaulted several police officers.
John was better, though.
That’s what everyone said.
“Oh, Andino?” Catherine asked as she neared the door.
Andino shot her a look. “What?”
“Why did you lie to my dad about the reason Cross was here yesterday?”
John’s eyebrow lifted as he looked to Andino. “As in, Cross Donati?”
Andino lifted a single shoulder. “What about it?”
“Didn’t know you to break rules,” John murmured.
“I have business to handle.”
“Listen,” Catherine jumped in to have her voice heard. “I seriously don’t care about whatever you two are talking about. But, Andino, don’t have my father in a fit about me and Cross. You had him thinking I was dating him again.”
Andino laughed. “Well, I couldn’t tell him we were working together. That would not have gone over well, trust me.”
“Don’t use me for your gain,” she warned.
“Just go, Catty. Let me worry about Capo business, and you worry about yours.”
“And maybe stay away from Donati,” John added. “Wouldn’t want to irritate the boss, huh?”
“The boss is my father,” Catherine pointed out.
John nodded. “Yeah, but not to Cross.”
He had a point.
Catherine chose not to debate it further, if only because she didn’t like the way it made her feel. Heavy in her hands, tight in her chest, and weak on her feet. It wasn’t so much the conversation as it was Cross.
She was doing so well. He was supposed to be a background thought in her life. Except … apparently he wasn’t.
Catherine wasn’t interested in causing some kind of problems with her family, or worrying them, so she forced Cross out of her mind. At least, for the moment. It was the best she could do.
She couldn’t say how long it would last.
Catherine sliced the side of the cellophane wrapped brick open, and tipped it sideways to let the white powder collect on the digital scale. She slipped the medical mask over her mouth as she watched the number on the scale rise to where she wanted it to be. Quickly, she set the brick of cocaine aside, and used a knife to slide the powder off the scale and neatly into a waiting bag.
When she had first started dealing, Andino or John would take care of handling this part of her business. She rarely actually touched drugs with her own hands, except when she was doing a trade between herself and the person buying. Even then, she only touched a bag with drugs inside.
Then one day, Andino handed her over a brick of cocaine and bags of pills and told her to figure it out. He no longer had time to cut her product properly. She had to do it herself.
So, she did.
Unfortunately, handling drugs was supposed to be a hard line for someone like her with the kind of history she had. She was the kind of person who preferred to self-medicate her depression and anxiety away, and had done so more than once using prescription drugs.
Cara—her old therapist—had been one of the few people who knew about Catherine’s drug abuse, and her past time dealing for her cousin. She was quick to point out the dangers, and the likelihood of relapse when substance was so readily available, not to mention a part of her everyday life.
Yet, Catherine never touched the drugs.
She didn’t even drink.
The ringing of her cell phone brought her out of her thoughts, and Catherine pulled the medical mask down as she reached for the device. Turning her back to her work, she answered the call without checking the ID first.
“Hello?”
“Catherine.”
She turned to stone on the spot, unsure she had heard the caller’s voice correctly. Except she knew that she did because his voice was unmistakable. She could never quite forget the way he sounded murmuring into her ear.
“Cross,” Catherine said. “How did you get my number?”
“You’ve never changed it, babe.”
She wet her lips, and tried to ignore how damn good he sounded. Like crushed velvet and liquid gold. Silky, hot, and expensive. A cost she didn’t know if she could afford.
A cost like her heart.
“You just remembered it?” Catherine forced herself to ask.
How she kept the lingering emotion out of her tone, she didn’t know.
“I remember a lot of things,” Cross replied.
“Why are you calling me?”
“You didn’t answer my question at the restaurant yesterday.”
“What question was that?”
“I wanted you to go out with me this weekend,” he said like it was nothing at all.
“You didn’t actually ask that, Cross. You simply said it.”
“Don’t you remember what I told you years ago?”
“You said a lot of things,” Catherine muttered.
Broke her damn heart with his words, too.
“I told you that where you and I were concerned, I would tell you what I wanted, and you would either agree or not. That’s all there is to it. No games. That still stands, Catty. I’m telling you what I want.”
She let out a slow, long stream of air. She despised how a part of her was absolutely ready to agree, and meet up with Cross. If nothing else than to catch up, and see if things still felt the same when he was close. Problem was, she knew it would feel the same. How could it not, when this was the only man she had ever loved?
Catherine wasn’t ready to let something silly like old feelings and dusty memories rip her heart out again. She was not falling, crashing, and burning with Cross Donati one more time.
“Catty?” he asked.
“You know, you’re the only person I don’t mind calling me Catty.”
“I started that nickname.”
“No one knows why.”
She swore she could feel Cross’s smirk in his words when he murmured, “No one needs to.”
Catherine forced herself to get out of the dirty thoughts and memories filling up her mind. She didn’t need a daydream to remind her how and why she earned that nickname from Cross.
“It’s been years, Cross,” Catherine said quietly. “Years. So, what? You see me by chance in a restaurant and suddenly decide to insert yourself into my life again? Not once in nearly seven years have you approached me, and I was liking it just fine that way.”
“It has been years,” he agreed.
“Exactly.”
“But I bet it feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, babe?”
Catherine bit her lower lip to keep from agreeing.
Because he was right.
She didn’t know if she liked it or not.
“Let me take you out,” Cross said when she stayed quiet. “It doesn’t even have to be this weekend. I’ll let you call me next time. You’ve got my number now.”
“Cross—”
“Does it feel like yesterday, Catty?”
“That doesn’t mean I want it to, Cross.”
“You’re still a liar, I see.”
“I’ll let you know,” Catherine said quickly, wanting to get him away from the topic of her lies. “About going out somewhere, or meeting up. Okay?”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
She didn’t doubt him.
Catherine hung up the phone without a goodbye.