Page 7 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

Sometimes, they would get symptoms warning that an episode was on the horizon. Vomiting, headaches, or a stiff neck. The worst came in the form of seizures.

Cross never moved back to Chicago after coming home. He couldn’t when he knew his parents were struggling.

Calisto’s episodes picked up a bit after Camilla—Cross’s younger sister—married a while back, and moved to Chicago with her husband, Tommaso Rossi.

“Ma,” Cross said, “I will only tell you one more time to go upstairs, or I will take you there myself.”

Emma glared. “But—”

“Ma, goddammit.”

She darted past him in the hallway, but not before glancing back over her shoulder at her husband. Cross was simply being careful, and nothing more. In all Calisto’s episodes, he never once hurt his wife. Calisto had thrown a fucking pan at Wolf during one episode, and even threatened to put a bullet in Cross during another one, but never Emma. He almost always recognized her, too, unless he was thrown back into years before she had been a part of his life.

Yet, even then, Calisto seemed connected to Cross’s mother. Calmed by her, relaxed, and willing to talk with her.

Others … not so much.

“Who the fuck are you?” Calisto demanded.

Cross leaned in the doorway of the office, and folded his arms over his chest. “I’m just here to keep an eye on you, Cal. That’s what you told me to do, right? Keep an eye on my boss.”

He found it was easier—Calisto was manageable in an episode—when Cross acted as though he was just one of his step-father’s men. A Cosa Nostra solider, there to do his boss’s bidding, and not ask questions that might irritate Calisto. Especially as Calisto did not recognize him as his son.

Sometimes, Calisto would point out the similarities between them. Their brown, almost black, eyes. Their black hair, strong jaws, straight noses, and full lips always set into some form of a smirk. Even when they weren’t smiling. Cross and Calisto were technically cousins. Although he had always referred to him as his papa, or his uncle when famiglia men were near. So they did share genetics, and a lot of physical traits. Sometimes that helped to point out during Calisto’s episodes, and sometimes it only confused his step-father further.

Calisto passed him a wary look likely trying to figure out if he recognized Cross or not. “Fine, but do something. Don’t stand there like a fucking cafone.”

“Do what, Cal?”

“Help me find where he took my son.”

Cross’s brow furrowed. “You have a daughter—Camilla.”

“I have no girl. I have a boy. He knows, though. He knows, and he’ll kill him. That’s why he took him.”

This wasn’t making sense to Cross, but he knew better than to keep trying to make Calisto see reason in his madness. The more Cross would press about the present day, and not the past Calisto was living in, the more agitated his step-father would become. Eventually, he would slip back into the present as the pressure relieved on his brain. It never failed. The doctors told them to wait it out, unless it became a dangerous situation.

Cross almost laughed at that one.

Their life was filled with criminals.

They were criminals.

Mafia.

Define dangerous.

“Took him,” Calisto rambled again.

“Who took him?” Cross asked.

“Affonso.”

Cross tried not to let how that name affected him. His biological father had fucked off when he was a baby, leaving his young mother with divorce papers. That was how Emma and Calisto had come to be married.

“And who did he take?” Cross asked.

“My son.”