Page 7 of Always: A Legacy Novel

As Catherine got older, she understood exactly why her parents shared an office space together. Or rather, she got nosier.

Instead of playing with her tablet or toys, she snooped through the papers on the desk, or flipped through the folders inside the drawers. She knew it wasn’t exactly right, but she figured it wasn’t all that wrong of her to do, either.

Her parents would have said so, otherwise. They had no problem telling her what she could or couldn’t do for any other thing. Plus Dante and Catrina never made any real effort to hide the things they left behind in their office for Catherine to look through.

Catherine wasn’t entirely sure when she realized the truth about her family. Maybe it was when she was five, and a bodyguard was waiting to pick her up after kindergarten in the afternoon. Or maybe it was over the years, during the many family dinners, when business between men was quietly discussed. Maybe it was when Catherine asked her father why her mother flew out to L.A. twice a month for years, only to have Dante simply say, work.

What kind of work?

What does she do?

Can I go with Ma?

Dante would laugh off his daughter’s questions and shake his head with a wink. “Someday, maybe, reginella,” he would say, although he never sounded very honest when he said it.

Perhaps Catherine really understood the darker truth about her family when people used titles like Queen or Don in reference to her mother or father. Very rarely did people use her father’s name—it was almost always Don or boss. The only people Catherine had ever heard call her mother by her name were very close friends and immediate family. To everyone else, Catrina Marcello was Queen. Or, Regina. Her mother even had that word tattooed on the inside of her pointer finger.

That was also how Catherine had gotten her pet name—reginella. Her mother’s little queen.

Those titles her parents had were always spoken with some level of respect, handed out without question, and never with hesitation. As though they earned them.

She was not dumb.

She was actually quite sly.

Or, that’s what her daddy always said.

Between the things she heard and saw over the years, the way people talked about her family, and through her own snooping, Catherine knew all there was to know about the Marcellos. Organized Crime. Mafia. Cosa Nostra.

It wasn’t really a girl thing, so she pretended like she didn’t know when she needed to. Sometimes, though, her curiosity got the better of her, and she dared to ask about things she knew she probably shouldn’t. Like why her mother was clearly in with the family business.

That was how she learned Catrina was a Queen Pin. A drug dealer of the highest caliber, dealing to the most elite clientele.

And that was damn near the end of the discussion.

At least, from her mother’s side of it.

Catherine was too curious, and too interested in what all of that meant, to let it drop.

That was why she found herself snooping through her mother and father’s office again because Catrina didn’t want to talk. Catherine wanted to know.

She figured she wasn’t asking for much.

Catrina’s trips had slowed over the last year, too. Catherine noticed. Her mother wasn’t flying out as often, and she spent more time taking phone calls in private. She didn’t know what any of that meant, but she did know how to snoop to find enough pieces to put it all together for herself.

“What are you doing in here?”

Catherine looked up at her almost seventeen-year-old brother’s voice. “Looking for something.”

Michel’s brow furrowed. “Looking for what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“In Ma and Dad’s desk?”

“So?”

“You shouldn’t snoop. They don’t look through our shit.”