The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5)

by Bec Linder

  “I agree,” Max said. “I’m glad. I was afraid he was living—well, I didn’t really know.”

  “Are we really going to do this?” I asked.

  Max took my hand and squeezed, and my heart turned over in my chest like an engine starting. “We’re really going to do this.”

  We got out of the car and walked up to the front door. My heart hammered with a mixture of elation and terror. I shoved my hands in my pockets, unwilling to be the one who rang the doorbell. Max glanced at me, smiled, and used his thumb to firmly press the bell.

  A dog started barking inside the house, and then fell silent. The doorknob turned. I held my breath. But it wasn’t Renzo; it was a woman, small, dark-haired, drying her hands on a dish towel. She gave us a polite, expectant look, eyebrows raised. “Hello,” she said, looking back and forth between us.

  “Good morning,” Max said. “I’m sorry to bother you. We’re looking for Renzo.”

  I winced. That was probably not the best opening.

  The woman’s expression shuttered. “I don’t know any Renzo.”

  “Maybe we have the wrong address,” Max said. “Are you sure you don’t know him? He’s about this tall—”

  I elbowed Max in the side, and he shut up, thank God. I looked at the woman and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. She definitely thought we were cops. “We knew Renzo in New York. We lived with him on the streets. We’ve been looking for him for a long time. If he’s here, please tell him that Bee and Max are in town and would like to see him.”

  Her face relaxed. “You’re Bee,” she said.

  I nodded. I didn’t know how I felt that Renzo had told this woman about me. Wonderful. Terribly sad. “Is he here?”

  She hesitated for another moment, the dish towel wadded between her hands, and then she said, “You had better come inside.”

  The interior of the house was bright, clean, uncluttered. Wooden floors gleamed in the morning sunlight. The woman led us toward the back of the house, but I glanced into the living room as we passed and noticed blocks scattered across the floor, a child’s toys.

  Did Renzo have a child? Was this woman his wife?

  The kitchen was small and smelled like bacon. The sink was full of dishes and soapy water. We must have interrupted her in the middle of cleaning up from breakfast. “Please have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the little round table pushed against one wall. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “We couldn’t trouble you,” Max said.

  I kicked him discreetly and said, “Coffee would be wonderful.” I felt a connection with this woman, like we were kindred spirits, and I thought she would be hurt if we refused her hospitality. I sat, and tugged on Max’s jacket until he sat down beside me.

  The woman gave me a tentative smile, her hands busy with the coffee maker. It was one of those old-school carafes that you didn’t see much anymore, tall and silver with a long spout. She plugged it in and it started making a steady thunking sound, aggressively perking. “I’ll go find Renzo,” she said, and went through a swinging door.

  Alone with Max, I rested my face in my hands and took a few long, slow breaths.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Max said. He set one hand on my back, comforting. “Renzo’s here. She knows who we are. He’s talked about us.”

  He had talked about me, at least. I wasn’t so sure about Max. But I was borrowing trouble; we would learn the truth soon enough.

  I heard voices approaching: the woman’s, high and cajoling, and a deeper voice, raised in anger.

  Renzo.

  Max heard them too, and must have heard the anger in Renzo’s voice, because he stood and moved to stand behind me, hands resting on the back of my chair.

  Oh, God.

  The swinging door banged open. Renzo stood in the doorway, glowering. He was taller than I remembered, and more muscular, with long hair pulled back into a low ponytail. “Get out of my house,” he said.

  I flushed with humiliation and failure. I had been right all along: he didn’t want to see us. I set my hands on the seat of my chair, preparing to stand up.

  “Not you,” Renzo said, his face softening as he looked at me. “You,” he said, pointing at Max. “You get out of my house.”

  I twisted in my chair to look up at Max. He gazed down at me, face a blank mask, and then looked over at the woman, who was standing behind Renzo with her hands covering her mouth. I didn’t know what to say or do. After a long moment, Max said, “Okay. I’m leaving. Beth, I’ll be in the car. Take as long as you need.”

  “Max,” I said, torn. He bent to kiss the top of my head, and then walked out of the kitchen without looking back. In another moment, I heard the front door open and shut behind him.

  In the silence that followed, the woman said, “The coffee’s ready.”

  She left us alone in the kitchen. Renzo got mugs from the cabinet and creamer from the refrigerator. He handed me a cup of coffee, perfectly doctored with just the right amount of cream. I wrapped my hands around it. I was still a little stunned.

  Renzo sat down beside me. “So,” he said.

  “So,” I said, and then felt a foolish grin spread across my face. “Oh, Renzo. I missed you.”

  He turned and wrapped his arms around me, my coffee sloshing precariously as the mug bumped against his chest. “Careful,” I said, laughing. I set the mug on the table and returned his embrace, and we sat there like that for a few minutes, holding on.

  He drew back at last and wiped one hand across his eyes. “God. Bee. I never thought I’d see you again, and I sure didn’t expect to find you sitting in my kitchen.”

  “Surprise,” I said. “I didn’t have much to do with it. Max found you.”

  His mouth tightened, and he looked away. I desperately wanted to ask what had happened between them, but Renzo would tell me if he felt like it, and otherwise I would never be able to get an answer out of him. “You came here together?”

  I told him the whole story: how Max had showed up at the club and refused to go away, how he had talked me into coming out to San Francisco with him. I told him that Max was rich now. He listened in silence, gazing down at his coffee cup, periodically taking long sips. When I was finished, he looked at me and said, “That’s quite a story.”

  Did that mean he didn’t believe me? “I was shocked, too,” I said. “I didn’t hear anything from him for years. But when he told me he had found you, I knew I had to take the chance.”

  “I shouldn’t have dropped off the face of the planet like that,” he said. He shrugged, shoulders hunched, and looked down at his coffee again. “I was ashamed.”

  Oh, Renzo. “There’s no need to be,” I said, as gently as I knew how. “You played with the cards you were dealt.”

  “And discarded all of the good ones,” he said. “Now I’ve got nothing but the shit cards that nobody else wants.”

  I touched his knee briefly, my fingertips brushing against his kneecap. “This is a nice house.”

  “It’s my sister’s,” he said, shrugging. So the woman was his sister, then. “She and her husband are letting me stay with them while I get back on my feet.”

  “That’s kind of them,” I said.

  “Her husband didn’t want to,” he said. “Didn’t want a criminal living under his roof. Lucy twisted his arm. It’s been okay. Her husband’s gotten used to me. And their kid likes me. I’m a free babysitter.”

  “How old is the child?” I asked. I wanted to know everything about Renzo’s new life. So far it was so much better than what I had imagined that I felt like weeping with gratitude.

  “Five,” he said. “His name’s Oscar.” He smiled, then, wide and genuine. “He’s my little buddy. I like being Uncle Renzo. I’m going to teach him how to ride a bike, soon.”

  “Are you working?” I asked, even though of course I knew he was.

  He nodded. “Construction. It’s okay. I’m on a framing crew with a bunch of Honduran guys. They were pretty suspicious of m
e at first, but I think they’ve gotten over it by now. The boss likes me because I can translate. It’s fine so far. It’s steady work.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “It’s hard, Bee,” he said, and sighed. “I was in prison for so long. I was good at prison. I knew how it worked. And now I have to be an upstanding citizen and pay taxes and report to my parole officer on a regular basis. It’s hard. Everyone in the neighborhood knows I’m a criminal. The grannies clutch their purses when I walk by. The woman next door told me she’d kill me if I ever touched her son. I guess she thinks everyone who’s been in jail is a child molester.”

  “You could move somewhere else,” I said. “You could come back to New York with us.”

  He shook his head. “I want to be near my family. It’s important to me. Lucy and Oscar—I missed so much of his life already. I want to be here with him while he grows up.”

  “What about your parents?” I asked.

  “They still won’t talk to me,” he said. “Can you believe it? They live ten miles away and they won’t even let me in their house. I guess it’s too shameful to have a son who’s a faggot.”

  “Don’t say that word,” I said sharply. “That’s a terrible word.”

  “That’s what they think I am,” he said. “Even if I married a woman and popped out ten kids, that’s still what they would think. They don’t understand. They haven’t made any effort to understand.”

  “What does your sister think?” I asked.

  “She says she doesn’t care,” he said. “Her husband cares. That was part of the reason he didn’t want me living here. But I was dating a woman for a few months and brought her home for dinner a few times, so now he isn’t sure what to think.”

  “You could get your own place,” I said. “Max can help you—”

  “Fuck Max,” he said, with so much raw hurt and anger that I sat back in my chair. “I don’t need Max’s help. Lucy and Diego are helping me. They won’t let me pay rent. I’m saving money. I’m going to buy a car, and then maybe I can get a warehouse job. Those pay better.”

  My heart was breaking. Renzo was so smart, had always been so eager to learn everything about the world around him, and the thought of him working some backbreaking warehouse job filled me with mute rage. He was capable of so much more.

  And he knew it. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, slumped, resigned. He was struggling to accept his fate. A few poor choices as a desperate teenager had condemned him to a marginal life of wage labor. “Let me help you,” I said. “I have a good job. Renzo, you deserve more than this. You could go back to school—”

  “Thank you, Bee,” he said. “But no. I made my bed. I have to lie in it now, no matter how uncomfortable it is.”

  What a martyr. I didn’t intend to give up, but I would let it go for now. There was no point in provoking him when we had only just been reunited.

  “You’ve got a good job, huh?” he asked. “Tell me about it.”

  So I did, leaving out some of the more explicit details—I could all too easily imagine his response if I told him what the dancers did with clients in the private rooms. I told him about my book, and about my writing group, and about my apartment. He listened quietly, drinking his coffee. At one point he got up to refill both of our cups, and then stayed standing at the sink, gazing out the window.

  I trailed off. “Renzo? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m just thinking,” he said. He came back to the table and handed me my cup, but instead of sitting down, he went back to the window. “It sounds like you’ve made a good life for yourself.”

  “It would be better if you were a part of it,” I said. “But I understand why you want to stay here.” And I did. With his parents rejecting him, his sister’s love and support would be even more important.

  “I shouldn’t have cut you off like that,” he said. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair of me. You never did anything wrong. I was just so mad at myself, and ashamed. I didn’t want you to see what I had turned into. I thought you would be better off if I left you alone.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “I missed you. Please don’t disappear again.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but just then the door swung open and a small boy burst into the room. He had dark hair and eyes, and looked very much like Renzo. “Tio Renzo!” he said, and then began rattling something off in Spanish, too quickly for me to follow.

  He broke off, having caught sight of me. Shy now, he darted over to Renzo and clung to Renzo’s pants.

  “Hey now,” Renzo said, settling his hand on the boy’s head. “Esta bien. Oscar, this is my old friend Bee. Can you say hello?”

  “Hello,” the boy mumbled. Still clutching at Renzo’s leg, he said, “Mama said to see if your friends want to stay for lunch.”

  Renzo cocked an eyebrow at me. “What do you say?”

  “I shouldn’t,” I said reluctantly. “Max is waiting for me.”

  Renzo looked away. The elephant in the room: whatever had caused the rift between him and Max. I had prepared myself for Renzo refusing to see either of us, but I hadn’t anticipated that Renzo would be delighted to see me but unwilling even to have Max inside his house.

  I spun my coffee mug on the table. “Dare I ask?”

  “Don’t ask,” he said. “It isn’t my place to tell you,” which raised far more questions than it answered. He looked down at Oscar and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Why don’t we go outside and show Bee your new bike?”

  “Okay,” Oscar said, looking like he wasn’t totally convinced.

  “Go tell your mom what we’re doing,” Renzo said, and Oscar scampered off.

  “I hope you’ll speak with Max,” I said, once he was gone. “I know he’s missed you as much as I have.”

  “I’ll speak with him,” Renzo said grimly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  We went outside, Oscar clinging to Renzo’s hand. Max was sitting in the car, but he clambered out of the driver’s seat when he saw us coming down the walk, and leaned against the car, arms folded on top of the roof.

  “My bike is in the back yard,” Oscar said, tugging at Renzo’s hand and pointing toward the back of the driveway.

  “I know it is,” Renzo said. “Why don’t you show Beth how you can balance on your own? I need to have a word with this fellow.”

  Oscar stared up at me, eyes narrowed like he was taking my measure. “Okay,” he said, releasing Renzo’s hand, and turned to me with his arm upraised.

  Taking orders from a five-year-old. I obediently clasped his hand in mine, and he smiled at me. I had passed muster, then.

  “Let’s go look,” Oscar said, leaning toward the back yard, trying to drag me with him.

  “Renzo,” I said, helpless, wishing I could prevent the confrontation that I knew was about to happen. “Max.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Renzo said, staring intently at Max. “You go ahead.”

  There was no helping it. I went.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Max

  Renzo looked like he wanted to beat me into a pulp, and I didn’t blame him. He had the decency to wait until Beth and the little boy—Renzo’s son? Nephew? Younger brother?—were out of sight in the back yard. Then he turned to me with such black rage in his eyes that I was convinced he was going to hit me, and I tensed my muscles in preparation for the blow.

  “I’m not going to hit you,” he said. “But I really want to.”

  “Why don’t you, then?” I asked. “I’ll take the hit. I won’t even fight back.”

  “That won’t suffice to make amends,” he said. “And I’m trying to stay out of prison. So there won’t be any hitting.” He flexed his fists, clearly still fighting the urge to punch me in the face.

  “Renzo, I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s all I can say. I was a stupid kid. I didn’t know anything about life.”

  “No,” he said. “And you still don’t. I want you staying away from Bee.”

  So
that was it. He hadn’t emerged from the house to mend fences. He’d come out here to threaten me. “I’m not going to do that. Maybe you won’t forgive me, but she has.”

  Renzo looked back over his shoulder. Beth and the boy were still out of sight, but he turned to me and said, “Let’s take a walk down the block.”

  We walked in silence, side by side, until we reached what was evidently a safe distance from the house. Then Renzo stopped and rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets. “I never gave her your letter.”

  I had the feeling of going down a staircase in the dark and reaching the bottom without realizing it, or sitting down in a chair that was lower than expected: an abrupt, unexpected jolt, and the proverbial rug yanked out from beneath me.

  If Beth had never read that letter…

  “She doesn’t know,” Renzo said, answering my unspoken thoughts. “I never gave it to her.”

  “Fuck,” I said, and turned away.

  The thing I regretted most about my misbegotten adolescence—more than running away from home in the first place, more than terrifying my parents—was lying to Beth and Renzo about who I was. The letter had been my attempt to explain, and to absolve myself.

  And Renzo never gave it to Beth. No wonder she hadn’t gotten in touch with me.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked him.

  “I read it,” he said. “I was suspicious. Your story didn’t add up. You were too smart about some things, and too clueless about others. So I read the letter. And when I learned that you had lied to us, I decided that Bee should never know. It would have broken her heart.”

  “I thought she knew,” I said. Oh, Jesus. My stomach churned. This changed everything. I had, without meaning to, renewed my relationship with her under false pretenses. “I have to tell her.”

  “Don’t,” Renzo said.

  I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t tell her. At least not yet. It isn’t the right time.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “She’ll be mad at both of us. And I—I’ve just found her again. I don’t want her to disappear.”

  “You selfish fuck,” I said, incredulous. “If you had just given her the letter in the first place—”