Page 144 of Always: A Legacy Novel

“No one is making me do anything in the family,” Cross said. “They talk a lot. They try. They like to point out who I am and where I came from, like it’s going to make a difference to what I should or shouldn’t do. Some make it sound like this is all I can do. I hear it, that’s all. It makes it hard when I hear it more often than I don’t.”

“This has always been your choice, Cross.”

Yeah, he knew that, too.

He didn’t have to be in the family business. He could drop it today, or tomorrow. Anytime he wanted, he could stop. He could go to college if he wanted after he graduated high school. He could do anything.

But this was what he wanted.

He always wanted it.

Cross simply preferred certain aspects of their business more than others—like guns.

“What if I tried?” Cross asked his step-father.

“Tried what?”

“Gunrunning and Cosa Nostra.”

Calisto cleared his throat. “I think you’re going to find then that you will make sacrifices to one more often than not to handle the other. Because that is the very nature of this business, Cross. You give your all to one thing, and it succeeds. You spread yourself between too many things, and you fail. That’s why there are only three major syndicate families in New York, one controlling Vegas, and the Outfit down in Chicago. It’s because each of these criminal organizations have put their focus into what they do best, while the little families around them have drowned trying to do too much.”

“You forgot one.”

“Hmm?”

“The Canadians—Guzzi,” Cross pointed out. “Cosa Nostra syndicate, everything from arms, to drugs, to whatever they feel like.”

“They’re a very special case.”

“Why?”

“I suppose because they’ve had control of Canada’s major cities for going on seventy years or more, Cross. They control the gangs through a pyramid of third party involvement, and that’s where a lot of their arms dealing comes from. This is something they’ve built for years. It was not an overnight thing.”

“Obviously,” Cross said. “The point is that it’s possible.”

“But not by one man, son. That’s many men. It’s a whole family of men. It’s generations and generations of men building that kind of control. It was not one man.”

Cross frowned. “Who would take over for you, if I didn’t when the time came?”

“That’s a long time away, yet.”

“I didn’t ask when. I asked who.”

Calisto scratched at the underside of his jaw; an action Cross knew was a nervous tic his step-father couldn’t get rid of. “Well, I haven’t ever really considered it, Cross.”

Because the answer was obvious.

There was no one.

Calisto always just assumed it would be Cross, like everyone else kept telling him. Principe, that’s who he was. The proper Donati principe.

“But I can do anything, right?” he asked, almost sarcastically.

“Cross, now—”

“How can I do anything when even you’ve always thought I was only going to do what you want for me?” Cross shook his head, and went back to the weapon. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. This is why I don’t talk about it. There’s no point.”

“Cross, hey.”