Chapter 17 Catherine
Chapter seventeen
Catherine
The night was so quiet it sounded rigged. I sat in the driver’s seat, my father next to me, heading to the airport, headlights pointed at the darkness. Hands locked on the wheel, I could feel the pulse in every tendon. The phone lay on the dashboard, dark and heavy.
I’d told myself I wouldn’t answer. I’d told myself, just this once, to be the kind of person who let the universe chase its own tail. But the way I kept checking the rearview, watching for headlights that weren’t there, made a liar out of me before the first ring.
When it did ring, the screen flashed a number with no name attached, just the blunt, digital certainty of someone who knew how to leave traces but hoped you’d answer anyway.
I let it ring twice more, then picked up. “Hello?” It was supposed to sound brisk and in control. It came out as a dare.
There was a breath on the other end, thick with old cigarettes and, God help me, longing. “Catherine. I—”
“Jenna.”
The line went silent. Then, so softly I had to strain, “I’m sorry.”
I waited. She’d always been the one to fill silences. I wanted her to have to sweat for it.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she said. “I was jealous. I was stupid. I wanted to hurt you, and I did.” Each sentence sounded like it was coming out through glass. “I never thought I’d lose you and him in the same week.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my eyebrow, felt the tension arc from jaw to temple. “You’re not calling to apologize. You’re calling to negotiate.”
A snort. “You always did know how to see past the opening statement.” There was a shuffle, like she was pacing or maybe just trying not to throw up. “Catherine, I need to see you. I need us to talk. All three of us.”
My mouth went dry. “Is that some kind of joke?”
“No.” The word was thin, but solid. “I’m with Seneca, in the safe house. I think you’re the only person who can fix this. You’re the only one I ever trusted to be honest, even when it hurt.”
She was laying it on thick, but it was working. I’d seen Jenna cry exactly twice. Both times, she’d gone on the offensive within hours. She hated being vulnerable. If she was pulling this card, something in her had broken. I hated how that made me want to go to her.
“You want a conference call? That it?” I tried for sarcasm, but it came out shaky.
A sigh, then, “Not a call. I want you here with us. I want to try… I want to try something else. Something none of us has ever had before. I want to try being a real family. Even if it’s fucked up. Even if it’s not what you wanted.”
My judge brain rejected the idea immediately. My body, traitorous, shifted in the seat, heat pooling somewhere low in my belly. I remembered the taste of her, the smell of her hair, the way she’d pressed her whole life into a single, desperate night.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “You and me and him, it’s a triangle made out of razor blades. We’ll all end up bleeding out on the floor.”
Jenna’s voice softened, went molten around the edges. “Then let’s bleed together. It’s better than doing it alone.”
I closed my eyes and let the silence stretch. “You’re really with him? Now?”
She hesitated, but not long enough to be a lie. “Yes. He’s here. He knows I’m calling.”
I could picture it. Seneca, perched on some battered couch, arms crossed, face half in shadow, letting her make the first move. That was always his way. Make the opponent come to you. Conserve energy until the critical moment.
“He wants this, too?” I didn’t want to sound hopeful, but there it was.
She laughed, rough and bitter. “He wants you. I want you. The only question is whether you want either of us enough to try.”
I opened my mouth to fire back, but nothing came. In that blank space, Jenna spoke again, softer, the way she used to sound in the middle of the night when we were both too tired to keep up the fight. “Just come, Catherine. If it doesn’t work, you can walk away, and I’ll never bother you again.”
“You’re really serious.” I wasn’t interested in being a third wheel or being stuck with someone who was.
“We can make it work, Catherine.”
"No, Jenna. And tell Seneca no."
I ended the call and turned in my seat. My father stared back. “The Bellini family is calling you back home, Catherine. You need to let go of this childish behavior.”
“You never wanted me to become a judge,” I said. “You never supported my dreams.”
“It’s time for the matriarch to step up and guide this family.” He looked straight ahead as he spoke to me.
I glanced in the mirror at the black Escalade following us, my car an eyesore to my father’s luxury.
“Mother never wanted me to stay in the family,” I said.
“She said escape the lifestyle, so I did. You took away every choice I had.” I jerked my chin toward the Escalade, at the rigid silhouettes visible through the tinted glass. “Except for this one.”
He sighed. It was the resigned sigh of a man who’d already buried the best parts of himself. “I protected you,” he said. “I kept the family from pulling you under. But now you’re wandering right into the undertow. Why? For a biker?” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
“They’re not the undertow,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. “They’re the current. I want to see where it goes.” I must’ve sounded sixteen years old, but he didn’t call me out. He just pointed at the phone, the screen now black and smudged.
“It’s just going to go the same way it always does. Blood, disappointment. Shame.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. He’d taught me that sometimes the worst thing you could do to a man was leave his questions unanswered longer than he expected.He cleared his throat, wanting to have the last word. “Don’t embarrass the family, Cat.”
“Don’t embarrass me, Dad.”
The airport came into view, and moments later, we passed through a private entrance. My father knew everyone, but not everyone knew him. I did.
“What happens when we get back to New York?” I asked.
He let the question hover, like a bad smell that wouldn’t dissipate.
“You’ll be safe,” he said eventually. “You’ll bide your time.
Your name will open the right doors, close the mouths that matter.
Maybe you’ll sit the bench there, maybe you’ll be mayor of fucking Yonkers, I don’t care.
” His hands tightened on the door. He never drove.
Never had to. “But you’ll be alive. And you’ll be Bellini. ”
I looked past him, out the window at the hangars and the waiting Gulfstream with its expensive blue stripes, the tarmac shining under airport lights.
There was a kind of peace in this world, the ruthless symmetry of a family crest stitched into every briefcase and knowing you’d never truly belong anywhere else. It should have been enough. It wasn’t.
I squeezed my phone hard enough for the edges to bite. “What if I said I wanted to settle it first? The thing with Jenna and the biker.” I made it sound small, a temporary madness, which is how you survived a conversation with Anthony Bellini.
He flicked ash off the dashboard with a thumb. “You want to see them. Why?” He was genuinely curious, a man who’d long since outlived jealousy but still couldn’t comprehend defiance.
“Because it’s unfinished,” I said. “Because I need to know I can walk away on my terms.”
I pulled the car to a stop by the jet’s steps.
For a moment, it was just us, no bodyguards, no perimeter, just the heavy press of family history settling in like a migraine.
He watched my face, searching for the weakness he’d missed when I was a child.
Finally, he said, “You ever wonder why your mother didn’t fight harder to pull you out of this life?
” He turned, and his face was a cracked mask.
Lines from too much sun, eyes sharp as razors.
“It’s because she knew what you really were.
Family. Even when you ran, you never left. ”
He reached over, put a hand on my knee, and squeezed—not gently. I realized, for the first time in eighteen years, he was scared of losing me again. Maybe even more than he was scared of losing the Bellini name.
I popped the door, feeling the wind knife through my suit, and walked to the waiting jet, phone jabbing my palm with every step. Men in Bellini-black watched from the hangar, but none dared follow. Not right now.
Inside, the cabin was too warm, too silent. The steward poured me a drink before asking what I wanted. She wore her hair in a severe braid, and her Italian accent was familiar in a way I didn’t want it to be.
I watched the tarmac and sipped the whiskey until the burn replaced what was left of my hunger for anything else. I buried my face in my hands and made a decision that would change my life forever.