by Bethany-Kris
She stilled on the bed, and met his gaze again. “I’ll be careful, but he’s probably not any different than my family, Ren. I’m not worried.”
“I don’t think he’s like your family at all,” Renzo murmured. “I think he’s worse.”
Well …
What did that mean?
ELEVEN
Renzo paced the length of his hotel room, and tried to ignore the giant fucking elephant that was taunting him from the bed. Not a literal elephant, no, but it felt like it. That stack of white envelopes felt like the weight of an elephant had come to sit on his chest from the moment he had them in his hands.
He’d flipped through them, briefly. Not in front of Lucia, of course, but after he’d left her hotel. Twenty-two, he’d counted. She’d written him twenty-two fucking times. Her last letter had been dated and stamped from a year ago—when she’d sent it out. The Return to Sender stamp on the front had been dated three months after that.
Every single letter was the same.
Dated to send.
Stamped to send back.
And yet, she’d kept sending them. Over and over again, she kept trying.
Renzo hadn’t said anything to Lucia, but he recognized that address she had scrawled on the front of each envelope. It was a PO box The League used for different things—he’d never checked the box, sure, but he’d seen mail on Dare’s desk more than once with that exact address on it. There was no way those letters didn’t get in someone’s hand at The League. There’s no way someone—likely Dare—didn’t see them.
Which only meant one thing to Renzo, now. Dare purposely kept them from him—another choice taken away from Renzo. Another way to control his life, and the contact he had with the outside.
Or … just Lucia, it seemed.
One by one, they’d allowed him to go back to people from his past in one way or another. Like the phone calls to his sister, for example. It was just Lucia who they kept away from him for all this fucking time.
And God …
It made him want to rage.
He still wondered who had given her an address to use to contact him—her father, maybe? Johnathan, possibly? Her brother had seemed to know something about his involvement with The League, so it was possible. Nonetheless, whoever it was that gave it to her, they’d tried to give her someway to contact him.
It was The League that had kept her away.
His fucking heart clenched as his gaze fell on that stack of letters again. Resting on the sheets of his bed, they looked innocent enough. Paper—that was all. Stacks of papers. Ink scrawled across the front in black and red. Black, from her. Red, from the post office. Paper shouldn’t be able to kill a person, but it felt like those might have done exactly that. Just looking at them, and before, when he’d shuffled through each of the twenty-two … they all felt like a slice across the muscles of his heart.
She sent letter after letter—they came back unanswered every single time. One after another. And yet, she kept trying. She kept sending.
She kept hoping.
What must that have felt like?
To hope, and then have it ruined.
To try again, and get another slap in the face.
Fuck.
It was no wonder she was stuck in her head about this—no fucking wonder she didn’t know what to think, and why she was so hurt. For years, she’d believed Renzo purposely didn’t answer her back. That he had made the choice to keep a distance between the two of them. That he was the one who refused to answer her back.
And now, she had to face the fact it hadn’t been when she’d believed it for so long. No, he didn’t blame Lucia for needing her space and time.
But fuck.
He hoped she figured it out soon. He needed her to get out of her head, work through her feelings, and come back better than ever. He was ready for that.
She needed to be ready, too.
This wasn’t something he could fix for her, though. Whatever she was dealing with in her head and heart—he couldn’t make it better.
His pacing had finally stopped, but that was just so he could glare at that fucking stack of envelopes, anyway. He had a complex about them. They came from her, meant for him, and for that, he loved them—adored that she took time to write him when that was a lost fucking art. And yet, at the same time, he hated those letters because they had so clearly been a source of pain for Lucia.
Yeah, a complex.
Before Renzo could think better of it, he reached over and snatched up the stack of letters. He was quick to flip through them again, noting the fact that Lucia had kept them all organized. From the very first letter she sent, to the final one a year ago.
Had she finally given up, then?
Was the last letter her last straw?
Renzo sighed, and went back to the first letter in the stack. A part of him didn’t want to read these, at least, not without Lucia right there watching. Another part of him wanted to know what she had written to him—all those years ago, where had her mind gone without him? Had she been in a similar place to him?
Broken and alone?
Probably.
And that just bothered him more.
Not thinking it through, Renzo ripped off the side of the first letter. He tossed the rest of the stack down to the end of the bed, and sat down beside the pile. Tipping the envelope over in his hand, the single sheet of paper inside fell out to his palm. For longer than he cared to admit, he didn’t unfold the three creases keeping the letter hidden.
He just … stared at it.
What would be inside?
Pain, he knew.
Pain and loss.
He’d lived through that time once. He was still kind of living in it, if he was going to be completely honest with himself. Did he want to experience it from her side of things, too? Hadn’t his experience been enough to tell him that he barely made it out sane the first time around?
It didn’t matter.
She deserved to be heard.
Renzo unfolded the letter.
Renzo,
Do you feel like this, too? Alone all the time? Empty, too? That’s me without you.
I don’t know where you are, but I wish you were here.
And I’m sorry.
Love,
Lucia M.
It was short.
Maybe too short.
And then again, maybe those few sentences were all she could manage at the time. He didn’t know, and since she wasn’t here, he couldn’t ask. He also wanted to know what she was apologizing for—none of what happened had been her fault.
Renzo tucked the first letter away, and picked up the second in the pile. It was dated one week after the first letter had been sent. That likely meant she sent out the second letter before the first had even come back with the Return to Sender stamp.
It, too, was short.
Ren,
I talked to Rose today, and Diego, too. I want to go back to New York just to see them, but I can’t go back because I hate it there, now. No, that’s a lie.
I hate other people who are there, and that hate turns me into someone I don’t want to be. That’s scary—I don’t want to be this person. I don’t know this person.
You know, I still feel alone without you.
I’m always alone now.
Miss you.
Love,
Lucia M.
He folded the second letter up, and stuffed it back into its home. The third letter had been sent after the first had finally come back with that Return to Sender stamp on it. It was short, too, but angry. The fourth was the same, and then the fifth, too. Yet, each time, in between her anger and confusion over her letters being sent back, she kept telling him the same things.
I miss you.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
I’m not me without you.
Renzo was about halfway through the stack of letters when his hotel phone started ringing—he already knew who it was going to be b
efore he picked it up. Rose was the only person he had given it to, and since he was still in New York, he’d decided to let his sister know she could keep calling it, if she wanted.
With a letter in his hand, he leaned over and picked up the call. Balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder as he read through the letter, Renzo said the first thing that came to his mind because he needed to tell someone. Who better than his sister?
“She wrote me letters.”
Sure enough, it was his sister.
“Who did?” Rose asked.
“Lucia,” Renzo murmured, thumbing through the first letter that had been more than a single page. It wasn’t as angry as the last couple, and she’d purposely written that in the first couple of lines. That she wanted to just … talk, and update him on her life with school, and everything else. “She wrote me letters that I never got—they all went back to her unopened. I never saw them, Rose.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-two.”
Rose made a noise under her breath. “Ouch.”
“I don’t know what to do. I mean, I didn’t get them. And it’s obviously something that hurt her a lot, so what—”
“You write her back,” Rose said instantly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Renzo let out a quiet laugh. “Rose, I don’t think that’s what she intended by giving them to me.”
“Why not? That’s obviously what she wanted when she first sent them. That’s the point of writing someone a letter, Ren. They will then write you back. So, they might be a little late getting to her—who cares?”
How simple that seemed.
Renzo didn’t know if it would be.
“Oh, and I am having dinner next week,” Rose said, “that’s why I called. I want you to come, and you better be here for it. As long as you are in this city, I expect you to show up.”
Okay.
His sister wasn’t fucking around.
“And what about Diego?” Renzo asked.
Because he still hadn’t seen his brother since being back in New York. Rose was keeping that boy protected—as Renzo would want her to, but that wasn’t the point. It was the fact that, in a way, she was keeping him protected from him.
That burned.
A little.
“Well, I’m not telling Diego anything,” Rose said. “I don’t want him to get his hopes up and then have them shattered again. So, don’t fuck this up, Ren. I have to be the person who looks out for him now, you know? That means I stop things that hurt him—don’t be something that hurts him again.”
Then, Rose added, “And write her back.”
His sister hung up the phone.
Renzo wasn’t surprised.
• • •
The man who walked into the darkened restaurant didn’t notice Renzo sitting in the corner. He’d perched himself in the back of a booth, and used the table to rest his foot a little higher than the rest of his body.
Lazy, sure, but fuck it.
In fact, the man walked halfway across the floor and was heading toward a back hallway where the sounds of keys clicking on a keyboard continued to tap away. Like it had for the last half of an hour since Renzo broke into the business, and found himself a place to sit while he waited for Johnathan Marcello to show up.
As he always did.
Seemed the man liked to end his wife’s night where she worked by coming to get her, and taking her home.
Fucking sweet.
“John,” Renzo said.
He took great satisfaction in the way John’s back stiffened at the sound of Renzo’s voice. Maybe the man had meant to spin slowly to face Renzo, but it was fast. He didn’t miss the shock in John’s eyes, either, even if he was quick to hide it.
“How did you get in here?” John demanded.
Renzo’s gaze slid to the front door. “The same way you did.”
“I have keys. The place is closed.”
“John?”
The soft, feminine voice coming from the back hallway echoed out to their spot. John was quick to give Renzo a look before calling back to his wife, “It’s fine, Siena. Keep working—I’ll be back in a minute.”
“If you’re su—”
“I’m sure, Siena.”
The woman in the background made an annoyed noise under her breath, and Renzo chuckled. “I bet she keeps you on your toes, huh?”
John looked back to Renzo. “Don’t speak about my wife, yeah?”
Touchy.
“I meant it as a compliment—we all need someone who challenges us.”
John seemed as though he was considering what Renzo said, and then nodded. “You still didn’t explain how you got in here, or why, for that matter.”
“I think the why is obvious, John. I like reminding people how close I can get to the things they love or care about, in some way. It’s a good way to keep people in their place.”
“Huh.”
Renzo arched a brow. “What?”
“I was just thinking … you’re a fragment, Renzo.”
He blinked.
John chuckled. “Of who you used to be, I mean. Sometimes, it’s shocking. I’m unsure if I should be pissed, or impressed.”
“Or … I’m a better version of me.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“I picked the lock—also, I didn’t come here to remind you of your place, John.” Renzo tipped his head toward the hallway. “I wouldn’t touch her—I’ve watched you the last week, and her. I see how you feel, you know.”
John cleared his throat. “So, what do you want, then?”
“Your business with Christian Savino. I’m curious about what the details are, and anything else you might be able to tell me. You weren’t willing to talk the last time—I’m wondering if that’s changed since then.”
“He’s a drug trafficker with a hand in some other shit I don’t touch, Ren. There’s nothing to talk about. I’m working a deal—or trying, he’s a fucker on his good days—for some imports. We’ve got a deal already going on with Mexico for cocaine, but having more than one source doesn’t hurt, you know? Why do you have such a hard nut for this guy?”
“I don’t like that he seems to have taken an interest in Lucia, honestly.”
There, better for him to just get it out.
John cocked his brow. “I—”
“You don’t think it’s a little … concerning that he just randomly had an art print to take to the same gallery where your sister works, John? It’s what, just a coincidence that he had a fucking reason to get close to someone from your family while he was also doing business with you? And then he comes to New York, likely for business with you still, and approaches her again at the hotel she’s staying at?”
“It could be just coincidence, yeah, but we don’t have to worry about it, do we? Lucia is moved from that hotel—my father says she’s not interested in the man, and apparently, you’re keeping an eye on her along with the enforcer I posted to her. Should I be concerned? Maybe, but we’re taking care of it.”
John shrugged, quickly adding, “This business is fucking dirty, Ren. I would have been more shocked had Christian not tried to make some legroom for himself while he was here, you know? If I go somewhere for business where I don’t control any territory, I try to make myself clear where I stand, too. Let them know how close I can get to them, so to speak—just like you did tonight.”
Renzo’s jaw clenched. “He’s not going to do that with Lucia, though. I won’t let it happen.”
“Well, that’s what I’m saying. It’s taken care of.”
“I don’t trust Christian Savino, John.”
“Me, either.”
Yeah, but for the same reasons as Renzo?
That’s what he didn’t know.
There was something about that guy … something he didn’t know and couldn’t put his finger on, but it didn’t feel good. Renzo wasn’t the type to ignore a gut feeling.
“And there’s nothing else about Christ
ian that you know that could be useful to me?” Renzo asked.
John shook his head. “He’s a possible business partner. Yeah, a dangerous one, but we all are, Renzo. So, look at it like that.”
Nope.
He couldn’t do that.
• • •
“Look at you, walking around in the middle of fucking daylight like an idiot.”
Renzo’s stride came to a sudden stop on the sidewalk, and he glared up at the sky with narrowed eyes, and a groan already on his lips at that familiar voice. Sure enough, when he turned his head slightly to see who was waiting, he found Corrado Guzzi grinning in a shadowed alleyway.
“What the fuck do you want, Corrado?”
The man flashed his teeth. “Checking up on you, New York.”
He still wasn’t sure if he hated or liked that nickname.
Probably both.
“Dare send you?” he asked.
“Cree,” Corrado murmured.
Surprise, surprise.
For the most part, Renzo had been ignoring his phone for the last week. Or at least, he’d been ignoring Cree’s calls who was the only person calling his goddamn phone. Maybe the guy would get the hint—apparently, not.
“What, did he get pissy because I don’t want to listen to him bark at me?” Renzo asked.
“He thinks you’re getting too … confident,” Corrado returned. “His words, not mine. He thinks you might need a reminder of your place and whatnot, seeing as how you can’t seem to pick up a call from him or whatever.”
Renzo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m working a job.”
“Mmm, in your old stomping grounds, too.”
“Yeah, fucking fun, huh?”
Corrado gave him a look.
Renzo stared back, unbothered.
The differences between him and Corrado Guzzi were obvious on the surface, but it was the differences that one didn’t know and weren’t as obvious that made a bigger impact on Renzo.
Like the fact Corrado had chosen The League willingly, was a free agent for them, and could come and go at his will. They didn’t control his life, or the choices he made. His life wasn’t given to The League like a fucking present for them to unwrap.