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.”
“Who?”
“Penny,” Naz said again. “A pianist prodigy Kyle wanted Roz to meet on her way home. He intended for her to maybe mentor the girl or something but, shit didn’t go down that way.”
“Fucking Kyle.”
His sister’s mentor was something else sometimes.