Cross’s penthouse was too quiet. He tried to stay out of it as much as possible. He would sleep wherever the fuck he could just to avoid coming home. His parents’ place. Zeke’s apartment. The goddamn hotel down the street.
Anywhere but here.
It was just easier that way. Easier to pretend like he had done the right thing by making Catherine leave; easier than walking floors that were meant for both of them, and not just one.
He wasn’t even sure how long it had been now since he put her in that elevator. A week, but probably closer to two. He spent his days doing everything and anything except thinking about his place, her, and all the rest. He exhausted his mind and worked his body to the bone so that when night came, he dreamt of nothing.
He didn’t want to hurt in his dreams, too.
Cross eyed the boxes in the corner of his place. Catherine’s things. Someone should have come and picked them up by now, yet no one had.
That could have been partly his fault.
He’d changed his number because he figured if he heard her voice even once, his resolve was going to come crumbling down.
She needed help. She needed to get her life together. She needed him to make her do it because she was never going to do it on her own.
She needs you, he thought.
Cross pushed those thoughts down. They were punishing, and he was already hating himself enough. He already ached without adding more to it.
A knock on the penthouse door made Cross lift his head from his hands. His phone rested on the couch beside him, unblinking with a missed message or call. Nothing to say someone would be coming over.
He was avoiding people as much as he could. It was possible that whoever was at his door wanted to check up on him. His step-father, maybe. Or Zeke. He kept his conversations with everyone stilted, short, and never too deep.
They knew something was wrong.
Cross wouldn’t let them pry.
The second knock came stronger—persistent. He pushed up from the couch with a sigh, ignoring the tiredness weighing down his body and mind.
Later, when asked, Cross would say his exhaustion was the only reason he didn’t check the peephole. He probably still would have opened the door even if he had looked.
Cross blinked out of the memory, and tried to loosen his grip on the steering wheel. His white-knuckled grip was the only true sign of his rage. Everything else was blank and cold. That was how he learned to deal with his rage, after all.
To shut off.
To go quiet.
Silence in screams.
Calm in chaos.
Indifference in restlessness.
It had taken him years to finally settle the wild boy he had once been. All the men around him growing up who told him rage and fast violence would make him weak had been right. It made him a target because he could be easily provoked, and quick to react.
Now, he could stare a man in the face while they erupted with their weaknesses, and smile. Their loss was his gain. They never saw his violence coming.
Calmly vicious. Silently seething. Indifferently cold.
For the most part, Cross took great pride in that. Today, however, he was struggling to keep it together.
His cell phone rang, and he didn’t even look down as he hit the Bluetooth button on his Range Rover. “Yeah, speak.”
“You called me first, man,” Zeke said through the speakers.
Cross took a sharp turn, not even checking his rearview mirror or turning on his blinker. He didn’t even know where he was going. All he knew was that he was heading back to the center of the city. “I need you to find out some information for me and fast.”
“How fast? I’m not a fucking miracle worker, Cross.”
“This shouldn’t be too hard,” Cross muttered.
“What is it?”
“Make some calls.”
“All right.”
“And find the Marcello Don for me,” Cross said. “Ten minutes, Zeke. I want a location in ten fucking minutes. Don’t test my patience today. It doesn’t even exist.”
He hung up before his friend could ask questions or refuse. He wasn’t explaining shit.
Cross stroked his bottom lip with his thumb, and he swore he was thrown back to that day in a blink all over again. Like he could taste the blood in his mouth from his busted lip.
A gun to the face hurt like hell.
Cross opened the penthouse door only to find a gun at his face. No, not pointing at him. Smashing into his face like a bag of fucking rocks. The hard, cold metal busted his lip open on impact, and loosened a few teeth. Blood bloomed in his mouth.
The shock of the attack sent Cross sprawling backward with a shout. His back hit the floor hard, and knocked the air right out of his lungs.
It only took him a couple of seconds to gain his bearings and realize what was happening, but it was seconds too long. Cross found he couldn’t fight back because his attacker was already on him again.
The butt of a gun to the face.
A boot to his ribs.
Another hit to the face.
A fist.
A kick.
Another, and another.
“Fuck,” Cross grunted out.
He turned on his side, pretty goddamn sure that kick had cracked his rib. He spat the blood in his mouth to the hardwood floor. One more kick came to his face, and sent his head snapping back with enough force to make his neck strain.
“Dante, relax,” came a kind of, sort of familiar voice.
“Fuck off, Lucian. You relax. Let it be your daughter, and you fucking relax.”
“You can’t kill—”
“I can do whatever the hell I want to, actually.”
“You’re not above retribution for this just because you are a boss,” Lucian snarled.
Cross rolled to his back, and every single breath hurt. It probably didn’t help that his breaths were coming out short and shuddering. Like he couldn’t catch it well enough to make any difference. The blood in his mouth kept coming, making him choke. His vision blurred, but he wasn’t sure why.
He could barely see at all.
Still, the form up above him became clearer the closer the man came. Dante Marcello leaned over Cross with his gun already aimed. Cross looked down the barrel of the nine-millimeter and found he didn’t know what to say.
For the first time in his life, he was speechless.
Dante pistol whipped him in the mouth one more time with the barrel. Cross finally learned what gun metal tasted like in those moments.
Cold.
Rusty with his blood.
Hard.
Lonely.
Unsure.
Cross exhaled another sore breath.
This was not what death should feel like.
The ringing through the speakers of the Rover brought Cross from his thoughts with a bang. He hated how his mouth tasted like blood—rusty and tangy—for no particular fucking reason except his memories.
That had been almost seven years ago.
It should be over.
Out of his head.
Yet, it still felt like yesterday.
“I made some calls,” Zeke said over the speakers.
“And?”
“Dante’s in uptown Manhattan at one of his brother’s restaurants. Cazza, or something? Supper with his wife. My contact said the brother may or may not be there, too.”
“Which brother?” Cross asked.
“What in the hell is going on, man?”
Cross kept his gaze on the road, and his hands tight to the wheel. “Just answer my damn question, Zeke.”
“Hey, at least give me a heads up if some kind of bad shit is about to happen, Cross. I could skip over there and maybe try to save your dumb ass from getting shot.”
“Nobody saved me years ago,” Cross replied.
Zeke grunted under his breath. “Shit, nobody knew that was going to happen, either.”
“Which brother?”
“Lucian, I guess. The underboss.”
Cross hung up the phone.
He was looking at familiar roads. His mind was seeing a familiar scene. He didn’t see the white Lexus following close behind in the rearview mirror.
Cross choked on blood.
Dante laughed.
“All right, Dante, you made your point,” Lucian said. “Let’s go.”
Dante was only looking at Cross. He bent down on one knee, grabbed Cross by the throat, and forced him to look in his green gaze.
Eyes that were familiar.
Eyes that matched the woman he loved.
Eyes that looked like they wanted to kill.
“This is your one and only fucking warning,” Dante said.
Cross swallowed saliva and blood. It made him want to gag.
“Stay the fuck away from my daughter from here on out,” Dante said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever even breathe in her direction again, Cross. Stay far the hell away. You come near me or mine again, and I will ruin you and yours. This city will crumble from what I will do to your family. In fact, make it easy on all of us and get the hell out of this state. Understood?”
Cross just blinked.
He was too stunned to do anything else.
What had caused this?
Cross didn’t invite this.
“Understood?” Dante spat out.
“Yeah,” Cross croaked.
The gun shifted suddenly, and the noise deafened when it fired. Cross felt pain rip through his shoulder that instantly made him grab at the wound. Something hot, wet, and sticky slipped through his fingertips.
Dante let him go. “So you’ll have something to keep from this meeting. A reminder, if you will. A gift.”
“Dante,” Lucian hissed one last time.
Cross still couldn’t move when he heard the door slam shut seconds later.
Cross shook the memory off as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. He ignored the chill in the mid-September wind as he headed across the street. He hadn’t even shut off his Rover, and actually left it running right where he parked it.
A horn blared as he walked through traffic.
Cross flipped up his middle finger.
He didn’t look at the car.
“Cross!”
The voice calling his name was familiar, and oh, so sweet. Unfortunately, stopping to answer her call or talk would mean calming down and taking time to think about what he was going to do.
Cross couldn’t afford that.
He didn’t want to think.
Or feel.
Right then, he had one fucking thing on his mind. One man to find who had shit to answer for, and that was it. Nothing, and no one, was going to stop him from getting this done.
It was a long time coming.
Almost seven long years.
Cross took the uptown Manhattan restaurant’s steps two at a time. He kept his head down, and acted like he didn’t hear the second shout of his name.
“Cross, wait!”
He pulled open the restaurant’s doors.
“Cross!”
“Cross. What the hell?”
He groaned, tender and sore.
He was pretty sure he was dead.
“Shit, man … can you get your eyes open at all”
Cross tried to blink, or pry his eyes open, but it only hurt more. He could taste dried blood on his lips and old blood inside his mouth. “Fuck, that hurts.”
“Holy Christ, I bet,” Zeke muttered. “No wonder you were passed out. You’re bleeding all over the damn floor.”
Something touched his burning shoulder.
Cross jerked away with a shout.
“Okay, that’s bad. That bullet graze is long and deep. It’s still bleeding, Cross.”
“Just don’t fucking touch it.”
“Someone’s going to need to get it closed.”
His friend sounded so far away, yet still close.
“I mean, I guess your nose isn’t broken. That’s a plus.”
Zeke’s attempt at humor did make Cross chuckle even though he still couldn’t open his eyes. He didn’t think that particular thing was good. The laughing made his chest hurt like hell, though, and he coughed through the ache.
“Ow, fucking hell,” Cross mumbled.
“Who came in on you like this?” his friend asked.
Easy, careful touches pressed on Cross’s face.
“How long have you been on the floor?”
More touches, and low cusses.
“Your face is fucking battered to hell,” Zeke said quietly. “What did they hit you with that your eyes are swollen shut, man?”
“Marcello.”
“What?”
“Dante.” Every word hurt. Every inch of him hurt. “Dante Marcello.”
Zeke swore heavily. “No way.”
“Just get me off this fucking floor.”
“And then what?”
Cross didn’t know. He only knew what he had been told. New York was not safe for him. It wasn’t safe for his family, either. At least, not while he was there, too.
Anything else was details.
Those didn’t help anybody.
Cross’s fingers felt as stiff as they had that night Zeke found him bloodied, beaten, and damn near dead on the floor of the penthouse. He stretched his fingers, and curled his hands into fists, cracking knuckles in the process.
“Sir, can I help you?”
He walked straight on past the girl standing at the podium, and further into the restaurant. He didn’t even look at her when she called for him a second time.
Cross knew this particular restaurant that was owned by Lucian Marcello. He had eaten in it once or twice. A quick scan of the main floor told him that Dante wasn’t eating with the regular patrons. The restaurant was fitted with a private dining area, and a man stood at the entrance of the section with his hands clasped at his front.
An enforcer.
Any made man knew what one of those looked like.
Cross headed that way.
Instantly, the enforcer caught his eye and put a hand up. “The boss is—”
Cross put his own hand into the guy’s face and shoved him aside. Quickly, he stepped inside the private dining area. Three people sat along the far windows. Two men with their backs turned to him, and a red-head staring out the window.
He didn’t need to see their faces to know who they were.
Lucian, Dante, and Catrina Marcello.
Cross was already a foot away from Dante with an enforcer shouting at his back. Catherine’s father didn’t even see him coming until it was too late. He yanked Dante from his chair by fisting the back of the man’s suit jacket with both hands.
Shouts echoed all around him.
Chairs hit the floor.
Cross pulled Dante from the chair, and then slammed him into the nearby table. Dante sprawled across the top, while Cross fisted one hand into his jacket, and pulled the gun from the holster at his back.
Instantly, he had the gun pointed at Dante’s head.
Two other guns pointed at him.
One from the enforcer.
Another, from Lucian.
“Let the boss go,” the enforcer barked.
Cross laughed at the guy. “You’re a fucking idiot. A man comes in on your boss and gets him like this. Do you really think he gives a fucking shit if he gets a bullet in him, or what?”
“Cross,” Lucian started to say, staring down his Eagle from Cross’s right, “let’s talk, huh?”
“I’ve got fuck all to say to you.” Dante opened his mouth to speak, and Cross pushed the barrel of his gun harder into the man’s head. “Shut the hell up. Don’t even speak right now. It’ll just piss me off more. I came to say a few things, and I want to fucking say them.”
Neither of the two men with guns pointed at him moved an inch, nor did they lower their weapons. Oddly, Cross didn’t care much about them.
He was more concerned with the woman on his left.
Catrina’s knife had been at Cross’s throat from the second he slammed her husband down on the table. She stared at him with hard, icy eyes. Her stance didn’t waver, and her hand didn’t shake. He could feel the tip of her blade slicing his skin just enough to make a trickle of blood rush to the surface.
“I liked you a great deal years ago,” Catrina said, “but do understand that should you keep holding my husband like that, I will slit your throat before you can even pull the trigger, young man. You will bleed out on this floor, and you won’t make a sound because I will cut your vocal cords.”
Women like Catrina were dangerous.
Women like Catrina were vicious.
They did not play.
They could not be trusted.
“Try me,” she said calmly. “You would not be the first man to underestimate my warnings. You will not be the first man I have put in a grave.”
Cross didn’t move.
Neither did anyone else.
He looked down at Dante, noting the man’s clenched teeth, and tense jaw. He wasn’t worried or scared at all, but he was pissed. A raging bull that was caught and ready to be let free.
“That’s why you did it, huh?” Cross asked the man.
Dante sneered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cross.”
“The night you came to my penthouse—you beat the shit out of me, nearly killed me, and told me to run. Remember that, asshole?”
Dante said nothing.
Cross saw Lucian stiffen out of the corner of his eye.
“You fucking remember, don’t you?” he asked Lucian.
The underboss glanced away, but stayed quiet.
Cross didn’t even care, as his attention went back to Dante. “Yeah, that’s right. We all know what I’m talking about. You came into my home, beat my face in with your gun, laughed at me, and threatened me. Not just me, though, no. Anyone around me, too. You shot my shoulder and told me it was a parting gift. Then you fucking left me there like it didn’t even matter.”
He pulled Dante up slightly from the table just to smash him back down onto it again. The blade of Catrina’s knife went with him, and cut the slightest slice through his skin. He could feel the warm trickle of blood staining the collar of his shirt. “Now do you fucking remember?”
Dante let out a hard breath. “You will be lucky to make it out of this place alive. I hope you under—”
“That’s why you did it,” Cross repeated, “because of Catherine.”
The man under him stiffened.
Catrina’s knife pressed harder.
Cross swallowed against the feeling. He wasn’t fucking moving. “Because of Catherine.”
“Yeah,” Dante grunted under his breath.
“Because of what she did.”
“And I would do it again.”
Cross just wanted to hear the asshole say it. He instantly let Dante go and took two huge steps back as the man quickly righted himself and turned to face him. Catrina dropped her hand poised with the knife, and stepped to her husband’s side. Dante’s green eyes blazed with rage and swirling violence, but Cross didn’t finch away.
“You almost killed me because she tried to kill herself,” Cross said.
Dante’s hands twitched at his sides. Likely deciding whether he wanted to hit Cross, or reach for a hidden gun. Cross didn’t move either way.
“Because you fucking blamed me.”
“Who the fuck else caused it? Who else hurt her like you did?” Dante’s shouts turned quieter when he hissed, “Again and again. You were lucky I even let you live long enough to do that to her. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”
“Instead of telling me what she had done,” Cross murmured, unaffected and cold in his fingertips, “so that I knew, you beat the shit out of me, shot me when I was down, and forced me out of this city. You’re a piece of shit that turned me into a coward. You didn’t tell me—you made me run.”
“And you should have stayed gone, Cross.”
“You should have told me!”
“So you could get her to do it again?” Dante roared.
“Daddy?”
Cross’s head snapped to the side.
Catherine stood in the entryway of the private dining area with downcast eyes, and shaking hands resting limply at her sides.
“Catherine,” Dante said quietly.
Betrayal stared back from her when she looked up. She didn’t move an inch.
“Did you do that, Daddy?”
“Catty, I …”
“You did,” she whispered, accusing.
Pain echoed back.
Cross’s chest hurt from the way his heart constricted under his ribs. “Catherine, it’s—”
Her gaze darted to him, wet with tears and hurting. “Don’t. Don’t say anything at all.”
Then, she was gone. She didn’t even look over her shoulder as she left. Not even a hint of a goodbye.
It killed him.
Because he knew he just hurt her. Maybe not directly, but indirectly because he exposed her father like that. She loved the man, so hearing his misdeeds that affected her would hurt.
“Get out of my restaurant,” Lucian said.
Dante barked out a laugh. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not going anywhere. Not after this.”
Lucian turned dark eyes on his brother. “Dante, he gets this one pass because of the one I gave you for what you did to him. You crossed a line, and so has he. I think he’s earned it, considering. If as a made man you expect me to allow you to bend the rules, then you will allow me to extend the same hand to him. This is his pass. You will let him have it.”
Catrina put a hand to her husband’s chest as she turned her back to Cross. Her blood red, stiletto fingernails tapped against Dante. She said nothing, but her silent action spoke far louder. It was as though her hand on his body kept him from moving forward. The smallest, yet strongest, wall keeping him in place.
Dante’s gaze blackened with hate. Cross felt it burning his back as he left with one last memory filling his mind, and taking control of his emotions all over again.
Black eyes. Bruised, busted mouth. Cracked rib. Hairline fracture on his jaw. Concussion.
At least your eyes aren’t swollen shut anymore, he thought.
Still, his reflection looked like hell in the mirror. Cross pushed back the longer bit of hair that had fallen down in front of his bruised eyes. Behind him, Calisto stood silent and stewing.
Who, his step-father kept asking. Tell me, he kept saying.
Cross said nothing. He knew exactly what would happen should he tell Calisto who had nearly beaten him to death. His step-father would raise hell. He would not care that it would mean going against the largest organized crime family in New York. It wouldn’t matter that their family would be severely outnumbered and at a disadvantage where the Marcellos were concerned.
Calisto would not care.
Because someone hurt Cross.
Nothing else mattered.
It would cause a war.
No one would be safe.
Cross couldn’t do that. Not when it meant his mother and sister would be put in the line of fire. Not when it meant Catherine would be put in danger, too.
Cross fully suspected his step-father had a good enough idea about who had done this to him, but Calisto wouldn’t act unless his son confirmed it.
“You’re going to have to tell your mother,” Calisto said. “Please don’t make me tell her, Cross. I don’t want to break her heart.”
Cross nodded. “All right.”
“You know, we could fix this, if you would just tell—”
“Nothing to tell,” he said gruffly.
Calisto sighed, but didn’t push. “When are you leaving, then?”
“Soon. Tomorrow, probably. I might as well drive since I’ll need my vehicle while I’m there.”
“When do you expect to be back?”
Never.
“I don’t know,” Cross lied.
“Chicago isn’t home for you, son.”
“It’s going to be.”
Or it would have to be, now.
“You fucking idiot!”
Cross didn’t move from his position on the edge of the pool table. He ignored the insult Zeke hurled at him, and didn’t bother to greet his friend or the man’s father as they entered his penthouse.
The sky was terribly gray.
A dreary sight.
Cross couldn’t look away.
He sipped on two fingers of whiskey, letting it burn on the way down and enjoying it. The sting reminded him that he could feel. He was still alive.
“You’ve got this whole city in an uproar,” Wolf said, coming to stand behind Cross.
“Putting it lightly,” Zeke added.
“I cannot seriously believe that you went in on Dante Marcello at a restaurant owned by one of his brothers, and threatened him with a gun, Cross.”
“I didn’t threaten him,” Cross replied, bored and restless at the same time. “I simply pulled a gun on him and then said a few things. I did not say or use threats.”
“Semantics,” Wolf barked. “You pulled a gun on a Cosa Nostra Don, and—”
“I would do it again in a second.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Are you trying to start a war between our families?” Zeke asked.
Cross shrugged. “I had shit to say.”
“Like what?”
“Things only him and I would understand,” Cross explained, offering nothing else.
“Our phones won’t stop ringing,” Wolf muttered. “In a day, you’ve managed to make the streets our families share very fucking tense, Cross. Your father … Calisto would like to see you, and soon.”
“There’s nothing to see or say between him and I.”
“Cross.”
“I did what I did,” Cross said, “so let it be done.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“Was this for her?” Zeke asked, ignoring his father. “Catherine, I mean. Was it?”
Cross still didn’t turn around. “You know, out of everything in my life, she is the thing that feels the most real to me right now. Everything else is lies—big ones and little white ones. She’s the one thing that was never colored with some kind of falsehood from people hiding secrets from me. Strange how that works, isn’t it?”
“Wasn’t she the liar between the two of you?”
He smiled. “Not to me.”
Now, he had to wait.
Catherine would come to him. She was like him, after all. Living in a world that moved around her and did things she could not see. A world of people who lied and hid things from her; people who loved her.
It made everything feel … false.
He was real to her.
So, she would come.
Cross knew it.