Page 19 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

“No.”

Dante grew silent.

Catherine didn’t like that at all.

“What?” she demanded.

“Are you dating anyone?” Dante asked instead of answering.

Catherine tampered her frustration. “Why, so you can pay whoever it is off to get away from me? I know how you feel about men in my life, Dad.”

“I haven’t paid anyone off, Catty.”

“You’ve probably thought about it.”

Dante’s cheek twitched before he nodded once. “I’ll give you that.”

Smiling, Catherine said, “I’m not seeing anyone. And certainly not Cross Donati. He said he showed up at the restaurant for business with Andino.”

Well, he’d said business. Catherine assumed that meant with Andino.

“Andino said he didn’t invite Cross, sweetheart.”

Catherine stilled in her chair, taking in her father’s words.

What did it mean?

Had Cross sought her out?

Why?

Catherine stroked her inner, left wrist with the thumb on her right hand. She could still feel the slightly raised scar left behind from her darkest moment, but it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. She had it covered up a year after the incident with a small tattoo.

A clean, black cross.

She wasn’t sure what made her touch the scar, but it had become a habit over the years. Like a reminder, maybe, when her stress and anxiety became too much that she had survived worse. She had fallen once, shattered to pieces, and then put herself back together.

“Catherine?”

At her mother’s voice, Catherine quickly slid the bangle bracelets on her arm back down her wrist. It covered the tattoo, and hid what she had been doing. Of course, her family knew of the tattoo, and the scar it covered, but she didn’t like to worry them. Whenever one of them caught her looking at the tattoo, or worse, touching it, they instantly became … edgy.

They looked at her carefully.

Too long, and too hard.

They hovered.

Catherine understood why, sure, but she wished they wouldn’t do that at all. She was not a fragile doll; her depression had never returned with such deafening force. Her anxiety did not cripple her.

She was fine.

She wanted to keep being fine.

“Yeah, Ma?” Catherine asked.

Catrina sat on the other end of the couch with a glass of wine in hand. “Your father wanted me to check if you were staying for the night.”

“I figured I might as well. It’s a long drive back to the city.”