Which was some kind of shit, that.
No one ever said as much.
Luca was just ... fucked that way, maybe. In his head or because he read too much into the way his parents voiced their love and worries. Who knew?
Not him.
“You’re looking ... in a mood,” came a dark, familiar voice from Luca’s left as he stepped beyond the entrance of the club.
He did his best not to show his surprise at hearing Naz’s father greet him. He found Cross sitting in the first booth in a line of many, a lit cigar dancing between his lips as he muttered to the man sitting across from him to say, “Give me fifteen, Marty, yeah?”
“Sure, boss.”
The man stood from the booth and didn’t look back at the stacks of cash he left behind on the table.
Cross offered Luca a smile as he pulled the cigar from his mouth and said, “What—cat got your tongue?”
“Nah, I just—”
“Lighten up, Luca. I was kidding. Sit for a minute. Indulge my arrogant company, hmm?”
Cross waved at the seat across from his, but Luca took in the bar around them, still wondering why the Donati crime boss was there in the first place. He did business in a lot of places—not here. The place didn’t look the same in the daylight. One could actually see how large the stained, glossy wood floor was and the sixty feet it spanned from one side to the wall-to-wall bar on the other side.
It wasn’t the best club. A bit shoddy in appearance, it certainly wasn’t the usual, upscale place where one would find made men doing business.
They still liked it.
“Well, sit,” Cross told him, sharper the second time with a pointed look at the booth and then Luca, directly.
He did.
Even though he grew up calling this man his uncle—and Cross was also his godfather—the older Luca became, the better he understood that Cross was also more. And he demanded respect because of it, too. His relationship changed with the man accordingly. He was still the guy who took Luca and Naz sledding on winter break when they were kids.
But he was also the same man that Luca watched beat an enforcer to death with his fists because he slighted Cross’s wife, Catherine, and her family—another major crime family based in New York.
Luca never forgot it, either.
Cross grabbed a stack of the money, licking his thumb before he started swiping through the bills, asking Luca at the same time, “You here for Naz?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
A shrug answered him, along with Cross’s chuckled, “Why do you think I’m here? My son took off like a bat out of hell overseas, and then suddenly he’s showing back up much the same way he left. I would like a reason why, but also ... his mother is worried.”
Luca fought a smile. “Yeah, they do that. Mothers, I mean.”
“Hmm. And don’t think I forgot about that mood, either.”
“What?”
Cross grinned. “You know what.”
He did.
Luca had also hoped the man would drop it. He couldn’t be so lucky. “Nothing, really. Just shit in my head that shouldn’t be there in the first place. Since when do you do business in Dizzy’s, anyway?”
“Since I felt like picking up someone’s tab today while I was here and had the time,” Cross replied. “And whenever else I feel like it. We’re busy men, Luca, I don’t expect you to know what a boss does with his days or time.”
He heard the warning.
An unspoken: Don’t question me.
It wasn’t malicious, he knew. Just ... a part of who they were. Or rather, who Cross was. The boss answered nothing and no one.
“Sorry,” he was quick to mutter at Cross’s stare. “Even Dad still has to tell me to watch my mouth every once and a while.”
“That’s what fathers are for. Well, that and driving their sons up the wall like their fathers used to do to them. Tradition, or some shit. We pass all of that on to our boys hoping they push the lines even more than we did when we had the chance with our own way back. Not that we would ever tell you that, mind.”
Luca’s brow dipped. “Were you talking to my father?”
“What?”
He shook his head, replying, “Never mind.”
“I don’t need to speak with Zeke about you to see when you’re struggling, Luca,” Cross murmured, drawing his gaze back to the man watching him from the other side of the booth. “I know things are different between us from when you were a boy, but there is still a part of me that sees and remembers that boy very well.”
Right.
Of course, his godfather would see shit was up.
“I am dealing with it,” he told Cross.
“And what is it, exactly?”
“I don’t really know.”
It was the truth.
Because it was everything.
And nothing at all.
“You know,” Cross said, slapping the stack of now-counted bills to the table and plucking up another, “it is okay to not know things, or even, need time to figure it out. Or if you’re anything like I was as a young man on the cusp of making big decisions in my adulthood ... take a hatchet in swinging and build your own fucking path. No one option is right for every person.”
Luca laughed hard, not expecting that. “I’ll keep it in mind. Do you know what the emergency is? Naz, I mean. Because there’s no way he took off and came back like he did without—”
“Something being wrong,” Cross finished for him. “You’re right. And yes, I know. He at least had enough sense to fill me in.”
But clearly, the man wasn’t going to tell Luca about what.
Well ...
He could wait.
NAZ SHOWED UP AN HOUR late.
Luca didn’t mind. He waited for his friend even after Cross said he had to leave—another commitment he couldn’t put off, apparently.
“Where’s my dad?” Naz asked. The first question out of his mouth when he stepped inside the club. “I thought he was going to stick around to talk.”
“Business never stops.”
Well, that was what Cross told Luca. He was just repeating the sentiment.
“And he said you could catch him up,” Luca added. “What’s up?”
Naz joined Luca in the booth with a heavy sigh. He scrubbed his palms over his face, and rolled his shoulders as he settled in. It was probably the most disheveled his friend had ever looked—his clothes were pristine, of course, but Luca found the truth in Naz’s face. Dark circles under his eyes and stress lines deep between his eyes like he’d been scowling for days.
“Have you even slept?”
“Not in three days,” Naz admitted. “It’s been ...”
“Roz is okay, right?” Luca asked.
He figured she was okay if only because his friend wouldn’t hide that from Rosalynn’s family. If something was wrong with his sister, he would have known about it when Nazio first took off overseas without warning.
“She’s ... great,” Naz settled on saying. “We both are. It’s not her.”
“Then, what’s going on?”
Naz glanced away, eyeing the booth across from theirs while he rubbed his hands together and shook his head. “A girl. Penny.”