Page 136 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

Cross was going to wait for her.

“What am I supposed to do, huh? Tell me.”

“Well, relaxing would be a great way to start, Dante.”

“Tell me how I’m supposed to do that, then!”

“Yelling isn’t helping anyone,” Catherine’s grandfather said.

“Certainly not you,” Catrina added.

Catherine’s father cursed lowly, and then something crashed and shattered into a wall. Hidden in her spot inside the darkened hallway, Catherine jumped at the sudden noise, but she still didn’t move. Antony, her grandfather, grumbled something she couldn’t hear under his breath.

“I liked that vase,” her mother muttered.

“I will buy you a new—”

“It was one of a kind, Dante, you cannot replace it.”

A harsh sigh echoed. “Mi dispiace, Catrina.”

A squeak of leather filled the air and then Catrina said, “I don’t want your apologies. I want you to calm down, Dante.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re really not, son,” Antony said, his aged voice hoarse. “And while I understand, in some ways, I don’t think you should be as surprised or … upset, we’ll say, as you currently are.”

“And why the hell not, Papa?”

“Because you’ve done this where Catherine is concerned. You, and your wife, of course.”

Catrina scoffed. “I have no idea—”

“Less you,” Antony interrupted, “and more him.”

“I did not ask you to come over tonight to give me a lecture,” Dante said with venom. “I asked you here, so I had someone to talk to that I trusted.”

“You had your wife.”

“We’re all talked out.”

“Putting it mildly,” Catrina said.

“You called me because I am your father,” Antony said, “and because I, too, had a difficult child to raise. Although by her age, Giovanni was finally starting to settle. You do want advice. You want me to tell you something that will finally work. I can’t do that, Dante, they’re not the same, and you have raised her this way.”

“What way?”

“To be like she is. Sneaky and sly. She hides things from you all, even when she doesn’t need to be hiding things. She hides her unhappiness or disappointments, which has led her into spiral after spiral of bad behavior and even worse moments.”

“I think that a great deal of that was caused by a certain someone in her life, too.”

“Cross, you mean. The Donati man,” Antony said. “You’re wrong. Stop blaming an easy target because you don’t want to blame her, or even, look in the mirror some days.”

“I didn’t make my daughter do—”

“No, not do. Allow, Dante. You’ve allowed her to continue on with things that someone else would have either stepped in on, or put their foot down altogether.”

“I want her to be happy, Papa.”