Page 8 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

Except … Calisto didn’t have a fucking son. Cross, sure. He wasn’t biological, but adopted. That had come about a couple of years after Affonso left.

Calisto looked up from the papers on his desk, and stared Cross right in his face from across the room. “Affonso knows the truth about Emma and me. Cross is my boy. He took him. I need to get him back. Do you get it now?”

Cross was sure the room tilted under his feet.

His step-father kept staring at him—knowing and so sure of his words, yet unable to recognize the man he raised or the pain he just caused.

“Cross is your son?” he asked.

Calisto gazed at the papers on his desk. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. So here we are.”

“Cross.”

He spun on his heel to find his mother standing midway down the hallway. She stared at him, wary and tired. Sadness turned her mouth into a frown, while shame made her look away from him.

His world kept tilting sideways.

“He’s confused, right?” Cross asked. “What he’s saying … It’s because he’s confused.”

Emma didn’t answer.

Cross’s feet felt like cement. “Ma, he’s confused. That’s what it is, right? He doesn’t understand what he’s saying; he’s got shit mixed up. Tell me that’s what it is.”

Otherwise, his whole life had been a lie. A man he hated for leaving, and for being the man who donated sperm, was not deserving of those feelings. Calisto—a man who allowed Cross the belief that he was his cousin, but a father-like figure his entire life—was actually his biological father. Not a man they had told him was his father, but Cal.

Cal, who he actually did love. Cal, who had taken care of him. Cal, who loved him no matter how awful he could be.

A lie was still a lie.

Especially when that lie meant …

“Tell me I’m not a product of an affair, Ma,” Cross demanded.

“Cross, please.”

“Tell me you haven’t lied to me my whole life!”

Emma still wouldn’t meet Cross’s stare.

“I’m sorry, Cross.”

Cross blinked at the late July sunlight coming in through the pub’s window. His neck and back cracked as he resituated his form on the barstool. It was far too early to be drinking, or for a bar to be open, but this pub was known in the Irish community. They didn’t care too much for social conventions dictating when they could or couldn’t drink. Cross was so far from being Irish that it wasn’t even funny. An Italian, like his ass, couldn’t even dress himself up as Irish, but nobody batted an eye at him when he came in and ordered a drink.

Coffee was needed after a long night like the one before. Preferably with a good dose of whiskey, but he wasn’t fucking picky. Given the shit he learned, coffee wasn’t going to do the trick.

Only whiskey it was.

The bell over the pub’s entrance chimed as the door was opened. Cross didn’t bother to greet the two familiar people that strolled in. He took another sip of his whiskey when the two men sat on the barstools.

Wolf, his mentor and his step—no, his father’s consigliere.

And Zeke, his oldest friend, and a fellow made man.

Although Zeke preferred his spot as a Capo to the Donati family, while Cross sat a little higher as Calisto’s underboss.

“You had to tell him where I was,” Cross mumbled into his glass.

Zeke shrugged. “He asked.”