Page 24 of Naz & Roz

“But now that you mention it …”

“He was in the next room when you called Roz yesterday morning. He also has cameras on his house … like every other made man in this state, Naz. And nobody missed how close you and she were at Cece’s engagement party, son.”

“So, my Godfather is trying to keep me away from his daughter. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Cross grinned when Naz looked to him. “I think … well, I think he’s trying to figure out what you’re doing with his daughter. Or rather, what you plan on doing. Look at it like that, son.”

Naz sucked air through his teeth. It was better than telling his father to let Zeke know he could go fuck himself straight up the closest wall he could find.

Damn.

That urge was strong, though. It kind of fucking shocked Naz how much he wanted to say it, too. Like the very idea of someone keeping Rosalynn away from him was going to make him do some kind of brilliant violence just because he could.

His father didn’t miss it, either.

Cross knew him too well.

I was you once, his father liked to say every time he stepped in on one of Naz’s plans to thwart them. His father always knew what he was going to do before he ever even did it. Most of the time, anyhow.

“Ah,” his father murmured. “So, that’s how it is, then.”

“How what is?” Naz asked.

He focused his attention on buttoning up his shirt, and not looking at his father. It was easier, really.

“Roz,” Cross said. “That’s how it is with her, hmm?”

“Again, like—”

“You think you love her.”

Naz’s cheek twitched. An involuntary reaction at the word think coming out of his father’s mouth in conjunction with his feelings for Roz. Like Naz didn’t know what in the hell was going on inside his own mind.

“Not think,” Naz muttered under his breath.

He didn’t miss the way his father’s brow lifted out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t turn to face him fully. Cross didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re sure?”

“Don’t ask that,” Naz countered, strolling into his walk-in closer to grab a pair of socks and shoes. “Don’t question my mind. Don’t ask me to explain what happens in my brain. I don’t do that. I know what it knows, and this is what it knows.”

That’s just how his brain worked.

Fucking genius thing again.

And it knew from the second he looked at Roz who she was, and what he wanted with her. He wasn’t going to apologize for that, or try to explain it.

“Must be confusing, that,” Cross said, leaning against the door jamb with his arms crossed over his chest. “To just … turn around, and bam, there it is.”

Naz slipped on the socks and shoes, before standing straight, facing his father, and giving him a smirk. Walking past Cross in the doorway, Naz said, “Must fucking be, huh?”

“Sometimes, you make me want to bust your mouth with that attitude.”

Yet, his father never did. Never once even raised a hand to him. If anything, his father encouraged Naz to have a loud and opinionated voice. Demanded it of him, really. He made sure his son knew to never allow someone else’s voice to overpower his just because he was younger, or anything of the sort.

Cross made a noise under his breath. “Just … be the man I raised, Naz.”

“I don’t know how to be anything different, Dad.”