Of mafia.
His father would do and say a lot of things—but he would never speak against la famiglia. Not even to tell his son that he was right.
That was fine.
Silence could still be respect.
“Maybe I just want to be more than this,” Luca told his father. “Or maybe I just don’t want to be told what I have to be.”
“Does being more also mean being alive, too?” Zeke returned, softer than Luca expected.
He didn’t get the chance to answer. His mother slipped into the entryway beside Zeke, the cordless phone to their home pressed against her palm where she covered the receiver end.
“It’s Naz,” she said, her gaze flicking to Zeke and then back to her son. “He said he was told to call here to find you.”
Luca didn’t hesitate to step across the room and take the phone from his mother. “Thanks, Ma.”
“You busy?”
It was the first thing Naz asked when Luca said hello. Was he busy? He thought about Penny, and how he only ever wanted to help. It was sadly ironic that in the end, helping meant doing nothing. That killed him.
Still, Luca replied to his friend, “No, man, I’m not busy.”
“I WAS AT MY FATHER’S place when she got there,” Naz said.
Although his words were clear, his gaze was distant, stuck on the little boy who sat beyond the doorway of his mother’s music room. Little Cross either didn’t know his father and uncle were watching him, or the kid just didn’t care. He tinkered with the keys as a familiar tune echoed from the brown bear perched on the edge of the piano. Soon enough, his tinkering of the keys turned into a matching melody that he played by ear.
Huh.
Luca missed that—somehow, his godson went from showing interest and taking lessons to seeking a piano out and making music. It was that moment when he realized just how much of his time and life had been wrapped up in a game he wasn’t sure he would be able to win. Or even ... a game he still wanted to play, for that matter.
He didn’t want to keep missing things.
“Luca,” Naz murmured.
He dragged a hand through his hair and tried to shrug off the distraction when his attention came back to his friend. “Sorry—she was there, you said?”
“I was already there—I had business to settle with my father. Personal and otherwise.”
Luca let out a soft damn. Then, he asked, “How was that, anyway?”
“Hard.”
Yeah, he bet. Luca wasn’t the only one dealing with issues relating to the most important man in his life. Still. Was that maybe the fate of men like them? Fathers and sons that pushed and pulled just a little too much from one another.
“She asked him to help again,” Naz said low, like he didn’t want the little boy in the music room or even the woman down the hall to hear. “Penny asked my father to help her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Luca’s gaze caught and held his best friend’s. “How the fuck do you not know when you were there?”
“He asked me to leave.”
And he did, Luca knew.
Left.
“And that’s it?” Luca asked. “Now I what ... I wait?”
Naz lifted one shoulder, his stare drifting back to his son. “We wait, and we keep people safe, we handle business ... we help. Because if we’re doing what we need to do, then they don’t have to worry about us while they do whatever it is they need to do.”
Right.
To Luca, that only meant he was still in the dark.
Still playing the game.
19.
Penny
“I was going to tell you to relax, but then I realized you look just fine sitting there and didn’t need me to tell you anything at all.”
Penny’s stare drifted away from the burry trees to the man sitting beside her in the back of a black town car that had arrived earlier at his mansion to pick them both up. “Men tend to do that a lot, don’t they?”
“Do what?” Cross asked.
“Think women constantly need your help—even in little ways.”
“It could also be a way we’ve learned to show we care.”
“Because it makes men feel better in some way to provide. Even if whatever their providing isn’t really needed.”
Cross dared to crack a smile, clearly amused by Penny’s challenging stance to what was a kind gesture. She would never say it was anything but, either. That didn’t mean she couldn’t also see the intentions of others—but especially men—for exactly what they were at the end of the day. Not that she thought this man had any bad intentions for her, but she also couldn’t change the part of her that would forever be protective of her very self.
Besides, she didn’t think it was wrong to believe women should be taught to love, serve, and care for themselves before a man ever did. After all, how could a woman be expected to know what she wanted from a man when she didn’t even know what she wanted for herself?
“If I wanted to be a real prick just because I could,” Cross told her, his amusement lifting one brow high while he regarded her, “then I would make a comment about women wanting to fetch good husbands who can and do provide, but that’s not my style. And my wife would pickle my balls.”
Even Penny smiled, then.
Cross’s grin stretched wider, as though he had gotten what he wanted from her. Maybe he did—some sign of life that she was there despite what they were driving toward. “Relax, Penny. This needed to happen. At least ... consider that you’re going to finally know how this will end. One way or the other. There’s solace in that—try to find it.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Damn. Maybe she had needed him to tell her what she didn’t want to hear.
“How much longer?” she asked.
A man in the front seat, a trusted enforcer for the Donati crime family, spoke up before his boss could answer the question.
“Ten more minutes to the meeting spot,” he said.
Cross gave her another look. Penny only turned back to the window where she could watch the trees. It was easier. She thought about things a lot less ... felt less about everything. It was the only way she could do this.
IT HAD BEEN CROSS’S idea to make contact with The League—to extend the offer of a sit down so that two organizations could come together for a peaceful discussion on the current situation. She hadn’t been agreeable ... to say the least.
At first.
But the man explained the benefits to what he had called a meeting on no man’s land. No weapons. No guards but for their drivers. Out in the open ... mostly. Because apparently a man’s word was everything in their world, and if both sides gave their promise to a non-violent meeting simply to discuss a possible alternative option to hunting Penny down like a dog, then she would be foolish not to take the opportunity.
Again, so Cross said.
As she had been the one to seek him out and ask for his help, who was she to say that he wasn’t right? She was trying to trust him.
As much as she could.
Penny was surprised to see Dare followed through on his promise to only bring as many people as the Donati side of things. They made two, and their driver made a third. Cree stood a few feet behind Dare with his hands folded at his back, as usual. The man who didn’t exit the black four-door SUV kept his window rolled down with a sharp gaze on the new arrivals.