by Bethany-Kris
Renzo could only chuckle.
“I guess,” Diego said, showing off all kinds of teeth as he smiled.
Yeah, he guesses.
Already, the boy was humble.
Life taught them that shit, too. Way too early.
“All right. You hungry?”
Diego nodded. “Yeah, a little.”
The food he’d grabbed earlier was probably cold and soaked in grease by now. Although, Diego wasn’t fussy when it came to food. He’d eat anything as long as it wasn’t green, and it hadn’t spoiled. He could pop those burgers and fries in the microwave, and they’d be good to go. Diego would be happy.
Except …
Their mother was still passed out on the couch. If the crazy bitch hadn’t already woke up from her stupor, and headed out for her next fix. Or overdosed right where she slept. Either was a very real possibility, but it was more likely that she had probably woken up by now and headed out.
Still, the idea that Diego might see their mother strung out—or worse—was not something Renzo wanted after a day like today. Already, the kid’s mind was probably too heavy with all the other worries he’d picked up. There was no need to add their mother to that when she wasn’t even worthy of her four-year-old’s concerns, frankly.
Diego glanced up at Renzo again.
Big-eyed, and tired.
That much was obvious.
Renzo sighed. The kid just needed to get home, be fed, and put to bed. If he was quick about it, Diego might not even see their mother on the couch if she was still there by the time they got back. The hallway to the bedroom was in the front of the apartment, anyway.
“I’m tired, Ren,” Diego said, shifting his little backpack again so that this time, it slipped off his arms and hit the cement sidewalk. “Will you carry me home?”
It was about four blocks.
Diego was a good forty pounds.
God knew Renzo had done enough running around today, and shit. He’d been on his feet all day working. He was tired too. He needed to eat—since all he’d shoved into his mouth today had been a coffee in passing—and a bed.
Soon.
It didn’t matter.
Diego was most important.
Renzo reached out, and swept his tired brother into his embrace. Diego’s feet lifted from the ground, and he wrapped his limbs tightly around Renzo’s waist and neck.
“Thanks, Ren,” Diego mumbled against his neck.
“You got it, buddy.”
Renzo grabbed that tiny backpack, and let it dangle from his fist as he turned to give one last look at the shelter before they turned off the lights.
He had not been expecting to see her coming his way.
Renzo stiffened all over. Oh, sure, he’d seen her out of the corner of his eye while he’d been in the shelter arguing with Laurie, but he didn’t know why the hell she was there except to maybe write a fucking check, and go on her way feeling better about herself. Wasn’t that what her kind did?
More fucking money than brains.
Lucia—yeah, he knew her name; everybody who worked the streets under people like the Marcellos knew all their names—lifted a hand as if to wave, and offered a small smile. Renzo stayed like a cold statue as she came even closer, seemingly unbothered by his cool reception and unwelcoming stance.
“Is Diego okay?” Lucia asked, her gaze skipping to his little brother.
The boy popped his head up, and smiled brilliantly. Always willing to make someone else happy even when he was anything but.
“He’s fine,” Renzo replied gruffly.
What was this chick even doing out here? Or in this part of town, for that matter? It was a bit of a step down for her considering the last time he saw her, she’d been sitting in a black two-door Mercedes with her brother.
The young woman screamed money. From the Cartier watch on her wrist to the diamond studs in her ears. Even the way her wavy light brown hair had been streaked with red and blonde highlights looked like something that had been done in a proper salon. And that was before Renzo thought to figure out what brand of jeans she had decided to paint on that morning, or if that was actual silk she was wearing for her blouse.
Yet, even with the money she might as well have been draped in, Renzo wasn’t so distracted that he couldn’t see Lucia was pretty.
That was a bit rude, really.
Beautiful was a better description.
She was tiny featured. Small lips with a perfect cupid’s bow. A button nose. High cheekbones. Soft lines on her face, and an even softer smile. She was petite in height, maybe only reaching his chin, but that didn’t detract from the shape of her hips or the tight cinch in her waist.
Shit.
He needed to get laid if he was noticing how nice looking some spoiled little rich girl from the other side of the city was. And he really didn’t need to be thinking about getting laid while he was holding Diego.
“Hi, Lucia,” Diego said. “Miss Teresa said you’re gonna work here now.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Lucia nodded, and smiled back at Diego. “That’s right.”
Her gaze drifted to Renzo again.
“What?” he asked.
“I was thinking about offering you two a ride home. It’s late, and your little brother looks like he’s had a rough day. I don’t know how far you live from here, but do you really want to carry him the whole way?”
Renzo’s jaw stiffened. “Like I don’t do it every other day?”
Lucia didn’t miss the bite in his tone if the way her smile faded was any indication. Maybe he took a little bit of satisfaction in that, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Renzo wasn’t the type to be an asshole just to be an asshole. But here he was.
Something about this chick made his nerves stand up on fucking end. Like little hairs that felt something annoying or bad, and were reacting to it being too close.
He knew exactly where Lucia Marcello came from, and she was nothing like him. A privileged little girl who probably never knew what it was like to struggle, or walk the streets day after day because she wouldn’t eat otherwise.
He doubted she knew any of that kind of shit at all.
And for some reason, it just irked him like nothing else that she was so willing to stand there like she was and act as though there was no difference between the two of them. As if the two of them were somehow on level ground when it came to the rest of the world. Like she wasn’t wearing designer and silk while he was running around in frayed jeans and a leather jacket that he’d won from a bare fist boxing match three years ago.
Like her heels didn’t have red soles.
And his combat boots weren’t scuffed all to hell.
He was the poor kid from the Bronx.
She was the trust fund baby with mafia connections.
Oil and water.
Lucia seemed to pick up on his hesitance to take a ride from her, and she shrugged. “It’s just a ride, you know. You seemed angry inside, and I thought maybe I could make it a little better.”
Renzo arched a brow high. “Better?”
“That’s what I said.”
“A ride isn’t going to make my life better, Lucia.”
He didn’t miss the way her throat jumped when he said her name, or how her pretty mouth drifted open a little more. He was noticing too much about this chick, and at the moment, his brother was getting heavier by the second on his arm.
He figured, why not let Diego decide? His kid brother always had a better feeling about people than Renzo did. It was a talent, really.
“What do you think, Diego,” Renzo started to say, “should we ride with her?”
Lucia huffed a bit.
Diego just smiled. “Yeah, Ren.”
That was that.
“Guess we’ll take a ride,” Renzo muttered.
Lucia’s hazel gaze glittered when she smiled brilliantly all over again. She even did a little bounce on her feet that only added to her sprite-like joy.
Yeah.
• • •
Renzo did well with silence. He liked it when things were quiet because that meant no one was yelling at him or demanding something. It meant the day was over, and he could try to relax a bit. Silence was his best friend, really.
Lucia was not the same.
He wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he was quiet, or because Diego had somehow fallen asleep in the back seat in the span of two blocks, but the woman wouldn’t shut up. She just chatted on like she was having a full-on conversation with him even though he hadn’t opened his mouth to say anything at all.
Renzo didn’t even know what she was talking about because he had started to tune her out about a block back even if she did look so animated about whatever the hell she was talking about.
Finally, he got tired of being quiet and asked, “Are you even old enough to drive?”
That shut her up.
Lucia’s gaze cut to him, and narrowed. “Would we be in this car otherwise?”
Well …
“I don’t know the kinds of strings your people can pull,” he said, shrugging one leather-covered shoulder. “Fake license, maybe. A guy I used to work for got me one when I was sixteen, so I could get into places that required me to be at least eighteen.”
Lucia rolled her eyes. “I’m almost eighteen. I do have my license, but I had to have some strings pulled to let me drive at night since I’m not eighteen yet. But that won’t matter soon, anyway.”
Renzo blinked.
All he heard in that was almost eighteen.
Which meant she was seventeen.
Jesus. H. Christ.
Before he could mull that over, though, Lucia was speaking again. “And how old are you, Renzo?”
“Old enough to know I have no business sitting in this fucking car.”
Lucia frowned. “Why?”
“Many reasons.” He waved that question off. “Turn right at the next stop light.”
She followed his direction as she hummed under her breath. “I’d say you’re about eighteen, right?”
Renzo made a noise in the back of his throat. “Close. Nineteen, almost twenty.”
“Huh.”
Yeah.
Like he said … old enough to know better.
Another block passed them by in silence before Lucia was the first one to break it. Color him surprised. The girl didn’t seem to know how to sit in peace and quiet.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable by offering you a ride,” she said.
Well, he hadn’t been expecting that.
Renzo glanced over at her, but he found all he could see was her profile since she was so focused on what was ahead of them on the road. It didn’t matter, really. The lights from the dash were enough to halo her soft features, so he could linger a little too long on the shape of her lips and the length of her eyelashes.
She really was something to look at.
A part of him wondered what else made up this young woman, but the rest of him figured … not very fucking much. Money could give a person a lot of things, but it couldn’t magically turn them into a human being or tune them into the reality of the world around them. That was the thing about those who lived in the rose-tinted bubble of wealth and privilege … they never had to face life. Comfort, stability, and protection was simply paid for, and expected.
The very second he thought those things, his mind was quick to point out that he didn’t know if those things were true about Lucia. he was only assuming because of the image she presented to the world. A lot like people just assumed whatever the fuck they wanted to about him because of where he came from.
Where was the difference?
It didn’t matter. That bitterness was bred as deep as it could be into Renzo’s very fabric of being. He couldn’t even cut that shit out.
“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” he lied. “I just figured you probably had better things to do than haul my ass around.”
Lucia shrugged, and finally glanced over at him. There was honesty staring back from her when she murmured, “Not really.”
Renzo swallowed hard, and took in their surroundings. “Next parking lot on the right—that’s our apartment building.”
“Okay.”
Thankfully, Lucia was soon pulling up in front of Renzo’s apartment building. He wasn’t sure what might be said next between them if he didn’t get the hell out of that car, and soon. He was also getting a little tired of having his own foolishness shoved in his face.
Lucia quieted as she put the car into park. He turned to thank her—because frankly, he might not have had a mother who raised a half-decent guy, but he still was one at the end of the day—and noticed her gaze skipping over the front of the building.
God knew the place was an eyesore. Two steps from being condemned, too. Broken bricks, and cracked cement stairs. Two apartments on the bottom had their large windows broken out, and covered with plastic garbage bags because the landlord was a lazy fuck. There were always a few dregs hanging around the outside. Selling dope—Renzo never dealt where he lived just because that could cause problems.
He could see it written all over Lucia’s face.
The harsh reality that the two of them were not anything alike. They came from two entirely different worlds.
This was his.
It was nothing like hers.
Renzo scoffed, drawing Lucia’s gaze to him as he muttered a quick, “Thanks.”
Stepping out of the car, he didn’t say another word to her even as he opened the backdoor, and unbuckled his sleeping brother. He didn’t have anything to say.
Lucia seemed to think the same.
Good fucking riddance.
• • •
“Come on, Ren, it was a mistake.”
“Fuck off, Carmen.”
That was all Renzo offered his mother before he slammed the front door of the apartment. He’d already run Diego down to the shelter daycare in just enough time before they closed the open spots. Laurie wasn’t screwing around the day before when she warned him that they wouldn’t be holding a spot for Diego anymore.
As much as that sucked, Renzo did understand. It just pissed him off, too. It wasn’t Diego’s fault that his mother was a fuck up, and Renzo made a mistake in thinking he could trust his mother to do anything. Honestly, he should have known better.
“You little asshole!”
Renzo kept his back turned to his shouting mother as she opened the apartment door just to lean out in the hallway, make a damn scene, and scream at him. This wasn’t anything new. And the whole floor knew what Carmen Zulla was like on a good day.
“Remember what I said,” Renzo warned. “I come home one more time and find you strung out, and I’ll personally drop your ass outside. I don’t give a fuck who you are to me, Carmen.”
Because mothers … they didn’t act like that. They didn’t abuse or neglect. Not a real mother, anyhow.
Renzo was done feeling guilty for treating his mother like the abusive addict she was simply because she was his mother. The woman deserved what she got—she either wanted to be good for her kids, or she could fuck off.
That’s just how it was going to be.
Carmen made a screech—a little too high, he thought. She wasn’t strung out as badly as she had been the night before. But she had definitely smoked something to keep the shakes away and make sure she was up. She hadn’t been home when he took Diego to the daycare, but she was there by the time he got back.
Someone was feeding the bitch’s need for a fix. And it was somebody close.
That was probably going to be a problem. One Renzo would eventually have to deal with, but today was not that day. Already, he was late for the daily meeting with his guys down by the corner store. He was already edgy enough considering he had a whole brick of cocaine in his messenger bag, a half a pound of weed, and a bag of opiate pills that were all too popular on the streets lately.
H
e hadn’t had time to drop that shit off individually to each guy who needed to deal it. He preferred to do that late at night when he could just skip from building to building without being seen until he had nothing left but his own shit to sell. He certainly didn’t like walking around with this much product in broad daylight.
If someone thought to jump him, and they took it?
He’d be the one who had to fix it. Come up with the money to pay it back—impossible, there was at least a hundred-thousand dollars’ worth off drugs in his bag—or something. If he thought to run from the higher ups who kept him supplied with drugs, well … that wouldn’t end well for him.
They’d hunt him down.
Like a dog.
That’s all he was to them, anyway.
Just a fucking dog.
Renzo kept his pace at a normal speed as he left his apartment building. He didn’t do any more or less glancing around than he normally would. There was no fucking need to draw unneeded attention to himself because he was acting strange.
Somehow, he made it to the corner store without any trouble. As he expected, his guys were waiting, and they looked like they weren’t pleased about it.
Renzo jerked his head to the side, and without needing to be told, Perry, Noah, and Diesel slipped into a connected alleyway. He wasted no time pulling out the packages from his bag, unwrapping the plastic wrap around the bricks of drugs, and handing each person their take for the week. They’d go home, weigh and package everything, and get to work. In a week, they’d all meet up again to hand over money and get their take of the cash, too.
There was a bit of trust involved in all of this. He had to keep up with the street price of everything. That way, when the guys came back with empty bags but hands full of money, he knew whether or not they were stealing from him.
So far, none of them dared to.
A while back, he had four guys. The other three got to learn really up close and personal what happened when someone stole from Renzo. It hadn’t been pretty, but really, it couldn’t be.
He needed that lesson to stick.
“Thanks, Ren,” Noah muttered, shoving his take into his own bag.
The other two echoed the same thing.
Then, Perry said, “Hey, guess what we heard?”