Page 145 of Always: A Legacy Novel

When he ignored his step-father, Calisto simply took the gun right from his hands, and pushed on his shoulder to spin him around. Face to face, the two stared hard at one another.

“This has always been your choice,” Calisto repeated firmly. “You can be a made man, a gunrunner, or none of the above. You can be or do anything, Cross. I will make sure of it. I will be just as proud of you if you’re sitting in my seat in twenty years, or playing in an orchestra. It’s that simple.”

“Can I? Will you?”

“I never got a choice. You will always have one.”

“What does that mean—you never got a choice?”

Calisto shrugged. “Another story for a different day.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Papa.”

“You don’t forget, I know.” Calisto leaned against the table. “How about this, Cross? You keep doing what you want to do now—mentoring under Wolf, dipping your feet into this kind of water, and learning how you’re learning. You like it, you always have, right?”

“Sure.”

“Then keep doing it. It’s not going to hurt. And, the more you’re involved in, the more families and people you meet in this business. It’s called opening doors, son. The more friends you make, the more doors get opened.”

“Okay.”

Calisto rapped his knuckles to the metal table. “And the very second you get a chance to do what you really want to do because you’ve opened the right door, I expect you to take it.”

Cross stilled. “Really?”

“You’ll never know, if you don’t try.”

“What if I have my button by then?”

His in to the family, he meant.

Just because he was a Donati, didn’t mean he was a made man. He had a button to earn, yet. An oath to take. A promise to make.

Once a made man, always a made man.

That was their life.

It was their rules.

“You get the chance, you need to take it,” Calisto said again. “The rest is details, Cross, and you’ve still got years before you have to worry about that.”

Except … he would be eighteen in just three months.

One year left of high school.

His time to choose or figure it out was quickly coming to a fast end.

“On another note, I’m glad to see you’re more settled than you were,” Calisto said, shoving his hands deep in his slacks pockets. “Your mother’s thankful for that, too.”

“You mean, when I took off for a month and you had me dragged back home when you found me?”

“Details, Cross. Those are details.”

“That’s not what you called it when you threatened to stuff me in the car’s trunk,” Cross pointed out.

Calisto smirked. “Yeah, well, I got your ass home.”

Truth.