Privilege (Renzo + Lucia Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  Maybe it was her cry of pain.

  It could have been a lot of things, but really, all Renzo saw in those moments was the color red. Tunneling into his vision and taking over his mind. Red everywhere. Like it was infecting him, and coloring through his whole body. He didn’t hear his brother, or Lucia. He barely even saw them in the corner of his eye as he turned on Carmen, ready to hurt her just for fucking existing.

  Because how dare she touch Lucia.

  How dare she.

  Renzo caught his mother around her throat, and slammed her into the wall. The bang echoed in the quiet hallway. He didn’t even give his mother the chance to speak before he was squeezing her throat tight in his palm, and leaning in close so that all the bitch could see was him coming for her.

  “Don’t you ever put your fucking dirty hands on her again,” he uttered.

  Carmen’s wild eyes met his.

  She was gone, he knew.

  So fucking high.

  Out. Of. It.

  She barely heard him at all, but the little bit she did hear made her breaths pick up like she was huffing oxygen, and just couldn’t get enough. Holy hell, what was she on? She wasn’t usually this strong, but she did her best to fight against his hold, dragging her nails over his arms keeping her locked against the wall, and baring her teeth at him like that was something to scare him.

  Really, it just made him mad.

  And so fucking sad, too.

  “Let me go,” his mother croaked.

  No, not yet.

  Renzo had a few things to say to her. He wanted this shit to be very clear so that there was never a next time when she came back around. Even better if this was clear enough that she never showed her fucking sorry ass here again. It wasn’t like they needed her. She didn’t do anything for them.

  Never had.

  “You ever touch her again,” Renzo murmured, coming close to his mother’s face again, “and I will make sure you never take another breath, Carmen. Don’t fucking look at her. Don’t think about her. If you come around here again, I will make you wish for death because it will be easier than what I will do to you. Do you understand me?”

  Carmen clenched her teeth, and then without warning, spat at him. Renzo didn’t even blink when the saliva hit his face. Oh, he wanted to wipe it off. More than anything in the world, he wanted to get her spit off his face, but he didn’t move. He just kept his hand around her throat, and had to force himself not to squeeze until the bitch was blue, and on the ground dead.

  “Should have aborted you when I had the chance,” she hissed at him.

  Renzo laughed.

  Was that supposed to hurt?

  It didn’t.

  “You’ve been telling me that for my whole life. Give me something else, Ma.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Maybe he shouldn’t have encouraged her, or provoked her. Clearly, his mother wasn’t in a good place, all things considered.

  Carmen’s gaze darted to the side—to the doorway.

  At Diego.

  “You love him so much, don’t you?” she said, almost tauntingly. “More than me. More than her. More than the world, Ren. You always have. You give him everything, and you have nothing. What if I took him away, huh? What would you do then?”

  He didn’t have a reason to fear what his mother said. How was this mess of a woman—this addict, abuser, bitch—ever going to take Diego from him? Legally, she really couldn’t unless she got clean, sober, and took care of her life and business. That was never going to happen.

  Still, even though her threat felt entirely empty, he couldn’t help but react to his greatest fear being thrown in his face. It wrapped around his heart like a fist clenching tight. It felt like ice water being dumped into his veins.

  Someone could take Diego away from him.

  And what would he be able to do?

  “You could try,” Renzo forced himself to say, “but no one will take him from me, ever.”

  Carmen smiled—bitter, cold, and rotten. Most of her teeth were gone now, and her mouth was a disgusting mixture of black and red and yellow. “But I could, Ren. I’ve got your hands on my throat. I know what you do for a living. I know where you keep your gun. I know all the things to say to make them take him from you, and give him to someone else. I’ll do it.”

  She wasn’t wrong, he realized.

  How much would it take for someone looking into Renzo to realize he wasn’t on the up and up? If Child Protective Services came for him, he’d be fucked. Not because Diego wasn’t loved and cared for. Not because he went without—he never did, not with Renzo. But simply because Renzo’s life wasn’t really better than his mother’s at the end of the day.

  No high school education.

  No job on record.

  A drug dealer.

  Shitty apartment.

  One thing after the other …

  It would pile right up.

  “Yeah, you know,” Carmen said, all too gleeful.

  In reaction to his mother, and very little else, Renzo’s grip around her throat tightened so that the bitch couldn’t speak anymore. He didn’t want to hear her tell him the truth. That he wasn’t good enough. That no matter what, he would never be good enough for Diego in the eyes of others.

  That to them, he would be just like her.

  “Hey, hey!”

  Clapping hands and the shouts brought Renzo out of his daze. He was two fucking seconds away from snapping Carmen’s neck right then and there with Lucia, Diego, and fucking God to watch him do it. But the sound of his landlord shouting at him was enough to hold him back for a second.

  “Let her go, Renzo!”

  He did, and Carmen took that chance to dart away from her son while still holding onto her throat all the while. She stumbled down the hallway, thankfully, in the opposite direction of where Diego was now clinging to Lucia’s legs against the wall. Had she gone anywhere near his little brother in those moments, he wouldn’t have been able to control himself.

  Renzo turned to the landlord, ready to apologize. The man didn’t look like he wanted any of it, and his next words only confirmed that thought.

  “I have had enough of this shit! All the disturbances, and complaints,” the man spat, shaking his beefy head. “She shows up here, makes a mess, and I tried to overlook it. I tried, Ren. I know you’re fucking young, and doing the best you can, but I just can’t be having this anymore. You’re to be out of here by the end of the month. Do you get me? The end of the month!”

  Renzo felt numb.

  Like he was watching himself from up above.

  Dead inside.

  The landlord shook his head one more time, gave a pitying look in the direction of Lucia and Diego, and then he disappeared into the stairwell once more. Renzo turned to tell his mother to fuck off somewhere—in a hole, preferably—but the bitch was already gone, too. She left through the other door at the end of the hallway.

  “Ren,” Lucia started to say.

  He held up a hand, hoping it would be enough to quiet her for a second. He just needed to think. Plan. Something. “Just … don’t right now, please.”

  “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out for the apartment, and—”

  He let out a hard, bitter laugh. “That’s not going to help. That won’t stop her.”

  “What?”

  Lucia didn’t get it.

  Renzo didn’t blame her.

  “Carmen,” he said harshly, turning to snatch the keys to his place that had been forgotten on the floor. He made quick work of unlocking the apartment, and slipping inside. Lucia followed him with her hand tight around Diego’s who was still oh, so quiet and scared. “That bitch … she’s fucking vindictive, Lucia. If she thinks she can hurt me, she will do it.”

  And right then, Carmen promised to hurt him through Diego. He didn’t have any reason to think his mother wouldn’t follow through on her threat. That’s just what she did. So fuck it, he wasn’t going to give her the chance to hurt
him by using Diego at all. Oh, sure, the bitch could try, but she was going to have to find him first.

  That wouldn’t be as easy as she thought it would be.

  Lucia made a quiet sound behind him, but Renzo was too busy opening up the small hallway closet. He yanked out two bags—one for him, and one for Diego. Both black duffels would fit just enough shit to do them for a while, but not much more. It was also all he could carry for the moment.

  “She’s not going to do anything. She’s high,” Lucia whispered, coming closer. “I’m sure she says a lot of things when she’s high, Ren.”

  Wrong.

  Well, partly.

  “She says a lot of things, sure, but when she’s in that kind of mood, everything she says holds weight, Lucia.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?” she asked, following him down the hallway where he slipped into Diego’s bedroom. “What are you doing with those bags?”

  “Packing shit he needs. Me, too.”

  Lucia said nothing for a long while as Renzo filled one bag full with Diego’s clothes. His little brother edged into the room, but hung out near the doorway as he watched Renzo work.

  “Ren?” Diego asked softly.

  Too soft, really.

  He dragged in a ragged breath, and turned around to face his brother. Dropping to his knees, he put his arms out for Diego to come closer. He did, thankfully.

  “They won’t take me, right?” Diego asked.

  Renzo shook his head. “Nope. And we’re gonna go on a trip, okay? Take a drive, and see what we can find. How does that sound, buddy?”

  Diego smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sounds fun. Don’t forget my dino, okay?”

  Yeah, his one stuffy he always needed to take with him. Still sitting on his bed where he’d tucked it in that morning before leaving with Renzo.

  “I won’t forget your dino,” Ren promised. “So hey, do you remember what I showed you last week—the vent?”

  Diego nodded. “You took the money from the freezer and your bag, and put it in the vent.”

  As a just in case, he showed Diego where he decided to hide his bit of cash. He figured he should move it because he had more than what he thought was safe to hide in the freezer, and he expected his crazy mother to show up again like she always did. Carmen wouldn’t have thought twice about taking his money. Not if it meant she could get more drugs.

  “Remember how to open it up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, you go get it for me.”

  Diego turned before darting out of the room, and Renzo took a moment to regain his bearings. Standing, he grabbed the stuffed dino from his brother’s bed, and shoved it into the bag, too. He grabbed the full duffle, and the empty one before heading out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom.

  Where he kept all his shit.

  It wasn’t much.

  A few pants.

  Shirts.

  Nothing important, though.

  Everything else, he kept on him.

  “Renzo, you can’t go—”

  Lucia’s quiet voice reminded him that she was still there. He could hear her hesitance, the worry. He didn’t want her to sound like that at all, but here they were.

  Spinning around to face her in the dimly lit hallway, he said, “I can’t go? I absolutely can and will go. There is one thing in this life that is mine, and that is him. He is my life. What, you want me to sit around and wait for her to report me to CPS? For them to just come around someday and take him from me? You think she won’t, and you are wrong. I have only gotten by this long taking care of him because I have kept moving. I have kept her away, so people didn’t know what it was like for us. Not that it would matter—nobody ever looks too long at people like us, anyway, right? But when they do, they just hurt us.”

  Renzo shook his head, saying, “Who is going to take him if someone comes here and removes him from my custody? His sister? Rose is seventeen, and still in school. We don’t have any other family that would be willing to take him. An uncle in San Francisco, but he doesn’t want anything to do with his sister’s mess, or her shit. Meaning us. Where does that leave Diego, Lucia?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to the punch.

  “To the system,” he spat. “That’s where he will go. And I will never get him back.”

  “Ren—”

  “This is my life, Lucia. It’s not a nice place to live, but here we are. So please don’t fucking tell me what I can and can’t do to protect my brother. Okay? Just don’t.”

  He turned around, and headed for the bathroom to grab his shit.

  Lucia’s voice followed behind him, never once fading as she kept in step with him. “I was going to say that you can’t go without me, actually.”

  Renzo almost missed a step as he came to the bathroom doorway. “What?”

  “You can’t go without me, Ren. You’re wrong—you have two things. I’m yours, too, remember? You can’t go without me.”

  There was panic in her voice.

  High, and unmistakable.

  It cut him deep. Like a knife right to his heart.

  He didn’t turn around, but she came up behind him anyway. Those small, soft hands of hers pressing against his back was a momentary relief from the hell his life had just turned into.

  “You should go home,” he murmured, “back to your family. They’re right, you know? I’m not good for you, Lucia. This isn’t good for you. This isn’t your life.”

  “Ren—”

  He spun around, so he could stare her right in the face, and maybe then, she might hear him when he told her the hard facts about him and her. “This isn’t your life.”

  “But you are,” she whispered, coming close and grabbing hold of his jacket with both hands like she was terrified that if she let go, he might disappear. “You’re my life. You know what I realized today? I got up this morning, and I was looking at my calendar. It took thirty-six fucking days for my entire life to change. Do you know that? It’s been thirty-six days since I met you, and nothing is ever going to be the same, Ren. You did that. And now you want to tell me that I have to do all this alone? I’m not me without you, and all it took was thirty-six days.”

  “Lucia—”

  “You can’t go without me. You go, I go.”

  “Listen to me—”

  “You go, I go, Ren.”

  He dragged in a breath.

  Sharp, and painful.

  It’d be worse without her, though.

  He knew that.

  Breathing was so much harder without her.

  And fuck, he was selfish, too.

  He should have made her stay.

  “Together, then?” he asked.

  Lucia smiled that smile—through her panic and her fear and all of it. She smiled, and her fists clenched his jacket tighter than ever. Like he needed the reminder she was right there, and not going anywhere.

  “Ride or die, Ren.”

  Yeah.

  Him and her.

  Until the end …

  Ride or fuckin’ die.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “What’s he doing?” Renzo asked.

  Lucia didn’t even have to ask who Renzo meant. He’d been asking that same question every half hour or so. Like he needed to keep checking on his little brother, even though she knew good and well Diego was still sleeping in the back seat, because the boy might up and disappear otherwise.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Lucia found Diego in the same position he had been the last time Renzo asked. Facing the rear seat, his back turned to them, covered by his favorite blanket, and still hugging his stuffed dino close. He was out, and he wasn’t bothered at all by what was happening.

  “Still sleeping,” Lucia said, righting herself in the seat.

  Renzo nodded, and let out a small sigh. “Good.”

  “Hey.”

  For the first time since they got on the highway, Renzo glanced sideways at her. He’d been so focused on driving
, and putting as many miles between them and the place they’d come from as he could. She didn’t fault him for that, or his lack of attention. She did wish she could make it a little better for him, though.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered.

  A slow smiled curved the edges of Renzo’s lips. “That’s debatable.”

  “Ren.”

  “But it’s going to be a hell of a lot better with you, Lucia.”

  She smiled widely.

  That was the man she wanted to see.

  Reaching across their seats, she caught the edge of his jaw in her palm, and stroked the hard line with the pad of her thumb. His rough facial hair tickled her skin, and his gaze caught hers again. She wanted to believe—at first—that Renzo was just overreacting about his mother’s threats. That surely, Carmen would not be so vindictive as to try and get Diego taken away from the one person who clearly loved him more than life itself.

  And then she thought about all the other things she knew Carmen had already done to her children. What would something like this be compared to all of that?

  A drop in an already full bucket, Lucia imagined.

  She’d wanted to hope he was panicking.

  She knew inside that he wasn’t.

  Lucia peered back at Diego again who was still comfortably sleeping like his whole world wasn’t burning down around him. And hell, maybe it wasn’t for the kid. He still had his brother, after all. That’s all Diego ever seemed to want.

  “Do you have an idea about where we’re going?” Lucia asked.

  Renzo shrugged. “Maybe.”

  It was something in the lilt of his tone that had her attention going back to him again. In the darkening light of the day, and with the little glow the dashboard provided for them to see, Renzo finally seemed back to his old self again. Calm, unbothered, and hers. All things she loved.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s something.”

  Renzo nodded ahead, and Lucia glanced out the windshield to see what he was staring at. A sign coming up, it seemed. It read the miles left before they crossed over into a new state. Away from New York, her life, and family. It was the first time since she had gotten in the car that she thought about them at all.

  How long would it take them to figure out she was gone?