Page 3 of Unruly

Rick waved a hand. “Got it.”

“Good.”

Cross swung the Rolls-Royce Phantom keys around his finger, and looked down the street. “I’m going to have a gun run coming up. A few months, but maybe less. We’ll work something out to make sure I’m not out of town more than a couple of weeks.”

“They’re used to going through me before ever getting to you,” Rick said. “Direct contact with the boss is a privilege, not a right.”

Years earlier, Cross had made a deal with the Marcello family that kept him sort of in their debt where gunrunning was concerned. Five years later, and he was still holding up his end of the bargain. He smuggled their guns when and where they needed him to, but he did it by his rules, and was paid just the same as any other gunrunner would be.

Still, it caused his attention to be split a lot of the time. Between his famiglia, and his job for another family’s boss. Cross couldn’t afford for his men to believe that his attention was being divided between their family, and another one. It could possibly cause someone to assume his devotion to Cosa Nostra, and their life was on shaky ground.

It might make him a target.

Frankly, Cross had a great deal of faith and trust in his Capos, and their associates. They respected, liked, and yet still feared their boss. And for good reason. He had no reason to assume their knowledge of his other business dealings might set one of them onto the path of betrayal where he was concerned, but he didn’t want to test the waters, either.

Rick clapped Cross on the shoulder. “Have a good trip tomorrow, huh?”

“I definitely will.”

“You heading straight home?” Zeke asked.

“No, I have to grab the principessa first.”

His friend smiled. “The little firecracker.”

That she was.

Cross barely made it through the front door of his parents’ Newport home before the stomping started.

Click, click, click, click.

Like goddamn plastic hammers hitting the floor one right after the other. All he saw was a tiny human-shaped tornado with wild brown curls coming his way before his three-year-old daughter crashed into his legs.

“Daddy!”

Cross’s hand skimmed overtop the crown of his daughter’s head as she peered up at him with a beautiful, toothy smile. Girlish, child-like features that matched her mother’s looked back. Her big soul-brown eyes were all him, though.

That, and her attitude.

Damn, though, he loved his little girl. She was everything that was bright, beautiful, and perfect in his life. That, and her mother. Cecelia “Cece” Donati made her way into the world on the second of September just two years into his and Catherine’s marriage. She had not exactly been planned, but they hadn’t prevented anything, either. Oh, he adored his child beyond measure. Nothing was more perfect than her angel face when she looked at him. The rest of the world ceased to exist.

Cece blinked up at him, smiling impossibly wider. “Hi, Daddy!”

Her little feet stomped in her excitement, making that damn clicky noise against the hard wood once more. He tried to get her to wear mini Doc Martens. His girl wanted heels like her mother.

No one would ever know how difficult and irritating it was to drive from one side of New York to the other looking for toddler girl shoes with something resembling a heel. A heel that was not too high, if barely there at all, yet visible enough to satisfy his daughter, while also sounding like heels.

She wore them all the time.

It was the end of November, and she was still wearing them.

“I see someone put the clicky shoes back on,” Cross said.

Cece beamed. “Grandpapa.”

“Mmhmm.”

Calisto rounded the kitchen entryway and came in their direction. “She wanted them on, son.”