Sometimes life was better when it was slowed down. Most times that was impossible for Cross Donati. There was no such thing as slowing down life for a person like himself. He was always going from one thing to the next, bouncing back and forth from one responsibility to another like a ping pong ball on speed.

It could be too much if he let it.

At thirty-three, he had learned how to slow down the things around him, but it was nothing more than an illusion. He could hand off jobs to others, and rearrange responsibilities as needed. Eventually, it still caught up with him.

That was life.

Unpredictable.

Uncontrollable.

Unruly.

Usually, he didn’t mind.

Lately, he wished for peace.

Cross knew that was impossible, at least for now.

“What about Arnold Callaghan?” Cross asked.

His gathered Capos quieted at his question.

Tribute was one of his favorite times of the month. Money, good food, and business was always had at the meetings. As the boss of the Donati Cosa Nostra, tribute was meant to be only his day. His made men gathered to see their boss and pay their dues from the dirty money earned since the last tribute. He liked to hold the meetings in one of his many restaurants because he had the best chiefs in New York State working his kitchens.

And the conversation?

Business?

It was good, too.

Damn good.

“Well, what about the Senator?” Cross asked again. “Was progress made, or not?”

Zeke, his long-time friend and consigliere, waved a fork at Cross’s question. “Bobby’s on that, boss.”

Cross turned to the Capo in question. “Bobby?”

“We got him three weeks ago at the Four Seasons restaurant. Our girl got his attention, so contact was made on that end.”

Nodding, Cross grinned. “Good.”

“It’ll take a bit to work his angles, but no worries,” Rick, his underboss, assured. “We’ll have that asshole in our back pocket by the spring, boss.”

Rick had a point, and Cross settled himself on knowing these things took time. Patience was a crime boss’s best virtue in most situations where money and connections were concerned. Not all things could be done overnight, after all.

It took work.

Good extortion took time.

Republican Senator Arnold Callaghan was one of Cross’s many ventures. The senator had a hand with the police in the state, given his family’s long history with three separate, major departments. He also had a massive stake in his family’s contracting company that mainly focused on construction jobs. From appearances, the senator seemed to use his connections to line his family’s pockets using his own company.

The Republican also had a pretty wife. A woman sixteen years his junior, and four kids from two previous marriages. He put on a good show when it came to politics, making sure his beautiful family was front row and center, and so were the cameras every time he attended yet another Evangelical sermon on Sundays.

It was the perfect storm.

Cross smelled construction rackets, bribes, blackmail, and good old extortion rolled into one coming his way very soon.

Familiar. Dirty. Illegal. Textbook.

Kind of smelled like home, really.

“Danny,” Cross said, tilting his head to the side, so he could peer at the Capo sitting at one of the far tables facing the windows. “What’s happening with that shipment from last week that was late?”

“Got it in yesterday, boss,” the thirty-year-old Capo replied through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Twenty-thousand cartons of illegal cigarettes. I haven’t cracked open every case, but the ones I did looked fine.”

“You’ve got this all locked down with Guzzi again, right?”

“Money’s coming in from Marcus tomorrow.”

“Perfetto,” Cross said, pleased.

Canada’s tobacco market was a fucking shit-show controlled by their government. In an effort to force their citizens to quit smoking, or make it impossible for them to afford, a pack of cigarettes was already tipping nearly fifteen Canadian dollars. A pack in the States was a third of the cost. Illegal cigarettes were even cheaper to produce, and the black market in Canada gobbled the shipments up like crazy. Cross got in on that deal as fast as he possibly could, and with a damn smile.

Now, they were up to several shipments of illegal cigarettes a month, and working on liquor, too.

The Donati Cosa Nostra wasn’t the biggest organized crime family in New York with their eight Capos, an underboss, consigliere, and a boss, but they were successful. They made money—a hell of a lot of it—and that’s what mattered.

Cross had little interest in growing his famiglia to bigger proportions. Not when as it was, the schemes, deals, rackets, and other illegal activities his men partook in cleared them a good five to seven hundred grand a month.

He finally understood what his father, Calisto, had been trying to tell him all those years ago when Cross struggled to balance being a made man and a gunrunner. He allowed his men to focus on many things separately. Each man had a particular focus that took up most of their time. They gave their all to that one thing, and thrived because of it.

He was not about to upset the delicate balance of his control, success, and bottom line with his men simply to change the direction of their business.

Rick finished stuffing the last stack of bills into a black duffle bag at his feet. As Cross’s underboss, it was Rick’s job to collect the men’s tributes, count it up, and stash it away until the boss was ready to leave.

“A little over three hundred,” Rick told him.

Three hundred thousand wasn’t a bad month, but it certainly wasn’t their best, either. Given it was the end of November, and the holidays were coming up, Cross expected a lower bottom line. There were always certain times of the year when money dipped, and the upcoming Christmas and New Year was one of them.

“Walk it to the Rolls with me,” Cross said. “Zeke, you too.”

“Yep.”

Zeke stood from his seat without a look back at his half-finished meal. Cross stood as well, and shrugged on a leather jacket over his dress shirt. All these years, and he still preferred a good leather jacket to a blazer or suit jacket. Some shit never changed.

At the same time, the rest of his men stood, too. His part at the meeting was finished. His plate was empty, his hands proverbially full with cash, and his questions about upcoming business were satisfied. His men no longer needed him there, and he had better places to be.

Someone was waiting on him in Newport.

Someone precious.

“Boss,” the men collectively said as he headed out of the restaurant.

Cross waved a single hand over his shoulder in goodbye. Zeke and Rick followed him out to his waiting Rolls-Royce parked at the curb. The engine of the car had been kept running while he was inside the restaurant. The enforcer guarding the car stepped to the side to open up the back passenger door for Rick, and allowed the man to shove the duffle bag of cash inside.

“Corbin, go grab some grub,” Cross told the man.

“Grazie, boss.”

Instantly, the barrel-chested enforcer darted for the restaurant. It left Cross alone with his underboss and consigliere for the moment. Which he needed.

“You’ve got everything handled for the next week?” Cross asked Zeke.

His old friend nodded. “Absolutely, no worries.”

Cross looked to Rick. “And you, make sure you deflect any direct requests for my presence or conversation.”

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.