Page 94 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

“I’ll back off,” Dante said quickly.

She didn’t turn around. “Will you?”

“If that’s what you need.”

“And you’ll keep your opinions to yourself,” she pressed.

Dante blew out a hard breath. “That’s going to be easier said than done.”

“Try.”

“I do not like that man, Catherine.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“I can’t help that, Daddy.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“Then let me be that,” Catherine said. “This isn’t hard to figure out, Daddy.”

Dante turned her around so that she faced him. “I don’t want you to be angry with me. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t want you to control my life. I don’t like that.”

He scowled. “I’m not—”

“You are.”

“Protecting you is controlling you?”

“It is when the only thing you’re protecting is some false idea you’ve created in your own head. Your fears are not mine. Maybe this is going to be nothing, or maybe it’ll be something. That’s for me to figure out. Okay?”

Dante pushed a stray wave of Catherine’s hair behind her ear. “Visit us this week, Catherine. Stop ignoring us.”

“You, not Ma.”

“Me, then. Stop ignoring me.”

“It doesn’t feel good when someone you love makes choices that hurt you, does it?”

Dante looked upward with a chuckle. “I deserved that one.”

“I’ll come over.”

“Alone,” her father added. “I mean, I will back off, but … you have to help a bit. So yes, alone.”

“Obviously.”

Catherine considered that a battle won.

“Small change of plans.”

Cross scowled. “That’s a bad choice of words the moment I step into a warehouse ready to finish up my plan for running these guns, Andino.”

Andino waved Cross’s statement off. “It’s not going to bother your plans that much. If anything, it might make things easier.”