Page 62 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

“Chicago isn’t home for you, son.”

“It’s going to be.”

Or it would have to be, now.

“You fucking idiot!”

Cross didn’t move from his position on the edge of the pool table. He ignored the insult Zeke hurled at him, and didn’t bother to greet his friend or the man’s father as they entered his penthouse.

The sky was terribly gray.

A dreary sight.

Cross couldn’t look away.

He sipped on two fingers of whiskey, letting it burn on the way down and enjoying it. The sting reminded him that he could feel. He was still alive.

“You’ve got this whole city in an uproar,” Wolf said, coming to stand behind Cross.

“Putting it lightly,” Zeke added.

“I cannot seriously believe that you went in on Dante Marcello at a restaurant owned by one of his brothers, and threatened him with a gun, Cross.”

“I didn’t threaten him,” Cross replied, bored and restless at the same time. “I simply pulled a gun on him and then said a few things. I did not say or use threats.”

“Semantics,” Wolf barked. “You pulled a gun on a Cosa Nostra Don, and—”

“I would do it again in a second.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Are you trying to start a war between our families?” Zeke asked.

Cross shrugged. “I had shit to say.”

“Like what?”

“Things only him and I would understand,” Cross explained, offering nothing else.

“Our phones won’t stop ringing,” Wolf muttered. “In a day, you’ve managed to make the streets our families share very fucking tense, Cross. Your father … Calisto would like to see you, and soon.”

“There’s nothing to see or say between him and I.”

“Cross.”

“I did what I did,” Cross said, “so let it be done.”

“It’s not that simple!”

“Was this for her?” Zeke asked, ignoring his father. “Catherine, I mean. Was it?”

Cross still didn’t turn around. “You know, out of everything in my life, she is the thing that feels the most real to me right now. Everything else is lies—big ones and little white ones. She’s the one thing that was never colored with some kind of falsehood from people hiding secrets from me. Strange how that works, isn’t it?”

“Wasn’t she the liar between the two of you?”

He smiled. “Not to me.”

Now, he had to wait.