Page 37 of Always: A Legacy Novel

With a sigh, Catherine shut down the forty-two inch, touchscreen desktop that Dante had bought last Christmas. He got it for her because she liked to doodle, and design things. With the added stylus, the desktop acted as an art canvas that could never be destroyed and didn’t need to be replaced for every new project. She could stand and work.

“Thank you,” Dante said. “Find a seat.”

Crap.

“Am I in trouble?” Catherine asked.

Her father shrugged. “We’ll see how this conversation goes, and take it from there, reginella.”

Catherine let her father take the office chair, and she sat on the chaise near the window. “I was just doing a project for art class.”

“You can get back to it in a minute.” Dante held a hand out, his palm up. “Give me your phone, Catherine.”

She hesitated. “Why?”

“Because I pay for it, and I would like to see it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“This is not a discussion or debate. This house is not a democracy, Catherine. There is no vote for you when I or your mother speaks. I’ve told you what to do, now do it.”

Catherine, more confused than ever, dug her phone out of her pocket. She handed it over to her father without a fight. “Here.”

“What’s the four-digit key to get in it?”

She rattled the four numbers off.

Not a second later, she heard the telltale click the device made when it was unlocked. Her father said nothing as he looked through her phone. He didn’t even look at her. After what seemed like forever, he glanced up from the screen.

“Question,” Dante said, “and be honest, because I will not hesitate to have the phone checked, and I can do that.”

“Okay.”

“Have you deleted anything from this—messages, calls, photos, or whatever?”

Catherine’s brow furrowed. “Crappy pictures of me.”

Her father glanced up at the ceiling, and then his stony expression cracked with an amused smile.

“What? They were awful,” Catherine insisted.

Dante nodded. “According to you, maybe. But nothing else?”

“No.”

He handed the phone back. Catherine quickly stuffed it inside her pocket.

“Do you have anything you want to tell me? Anything at all, dolcezza. New friends, changes at school—anything.”

Catherine was starting to get an idea what her father was probing for, but she wasn’t quite sure how he would know. Cross. She hadn’t hit her ten write-ups at school, and she doubted Michel had said anything to their parents.

She picked at her new silver glittered manicure and said, “So, I have a friend—Cross.”

“Keep going.”

“And I like him.”

Dante scratched at the underside of his jaw, and rested back in the chair. “Is he just a friend, or a little bit more than a friend, Catherine?”