by Bethany-Kris
“Not particularly,” Renzo muttered.
“Well, nothing. If you can’t sell—if you can’t be the tool someone needs to add to their organization, or team … or whatever, then you are useless to The League. And they will cut their losses. You making it to the end of your contract is dependent on being useful, Renzo.”
Well, then.
Cree had delivered all of that with a cold flatness that rang heavily in Renzo’s mind long after the man was done speaking.
“They auction off my remaining term?” Renzo said.
“They spend the money to train you—to make you into … well, you see what we are. And in your case, you owe a debt to The League. You killed a trainee, Renzo.”
No, he had not. Lucia did that. Renzo was never going to tell them that, though.
“Which means,” Cree continued, “that your debt is even higher. Five years with this organization is what you owe—any money you make under the contract of your buyer, if you get a buyer, will go back to paying your debt. But if you’re going to be useless, they will cut their losses.”
Which meant death.
No Diego.
No Rose.
No Lucia.
No freedom.
Renzo swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “So—”
“You want privileges,” Cree interjected, not letting Renzo speak at all, “like contact with people outside, or the ability to get out of here once in a while, then you better fucking earn it. That’s how you get those things. Not by sitting in here doing fuck all, and wasting my time.”
Yeah, he got it.
“What’s my debt total to The League?”
“Twenty million—that’s the average one makes between the auction, and a four year contract with a buyer. So, they’ve rounded it out for you.”
Shit.
“What happens if after the five years, it’s not all paid back?”
Cree arched a brow. “I imagine, you’ll go under contract again.”
Nope.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Renzo sat up on the bed, and swung his legs over the side. His combat boots hit the cement with a hard smack, and then he was standing up straight. “So, all I have to do is make sure my buyer pays more than that at the auction, right?”
Cree laughed. “New York, at the rate you’re going, you’ll be lucky to get anything at all. Useless, remember? Typical purchase is ten million—fifteen if you’ve got a specialty worth taking a second look at. You’re six months into this and causing more trouble than you’re worth. Don’t get in over your head. You’ll drown.”
Maybe so.
“What’s basics for today?” Renzo asked, switching the conversation altogether.
“Explosives. Bombs.”
“That sounds fun.”
Cree gave him a look. “Earn what you want, Renzo.”
He would.
He’d have to.
• • •
A loud chime rang through the room filled with red lights and wall-to-wall mirrors. He knew, somewhere behind one of those windows, Cree was watching his trainee. Probably behind the only mirror without a light overhead to his right, but Renzo didn’t know.
And then, the distorted voice came over the speakers again to say, “Sold—twenty-five-point-three million. R.Z., please step down from the platform, and return to the door.”
Renzo felt like a robot.
That number was still ringing in the back of his mind even as he was shuffled in the opened door that he had also been brought in through, and found familiar faces waiting behind it. Cree … others who came from Cree’s team. One of the handlers for The League—Renzo would call the man an owner, but he barely spoke to any of them, and he seemed cold whenever he was around—stood in the corner with a red phone pressed to his ear as he fixed a button on his three-piece suit.
“That’s a fucking record,” he heard Cree say.
A hand slapped his back.
His debt was paid with that bid, but he still had four more fucking years here. Four years owed to The League, and whoever now owned his contract.
Four years without the people he wanted the most.
But who was his buyer?
“Tell M the product will be ready for the first job whenever he needs him to be sent out … as soon as the money is transferred,” the man in the corner with the red phone said. “Transfer must be done within twenty-four hours.”
Renzo almost wanted to scoff. He’d spent the last year of his life being molded into … a machine, frankly. Unfeeling. Indifferent. A killer. And he was reduced to being called a product.
And M?
M.
Well, who the hell was that?
TWO
Three and a half years later …
April showers bring May flowers.
The thought passed Lucia’s mind with a sing-song flair as she stepped out of her apartment. That was probably the thing she missed about New York the most … rain. At least, rain in the spring. In all her twenty-three years on earth, she thought there was nothing like a good rain in the springtime. There was a certain smell that followed a good spring rain. Fresh, clean, and earthy, if it were possible.
California wasn’t quite the same. Constantly dry, they were usually begging for a little rain here. There was a whole damn season for wild fires, even. For a small portion of the year, the air would have a slight taste of smoke every time someone breathed.
But … Cali was where Lucia needed to be. That didn’t mean she always wanted to be here, but it was where she knew she needed to be. It made all the difference when her traitorous heart dared to make her consider going back home.
After she finished her art degree six months earlier, she settled in Los Angeles. An offer came up from someone her aunt, Kim, knew that owned a gallery. A paid year-long internship in a major art gallery with some of the best up and coming names in the art world under the head curator.
Lucia didn’t dare say no.
Besides, it gave her another reason to avoid the discussion with her mother—or God forbid—her father, about why she wasn’t coming home yet. From the day she graduated, they asked her when she was coming back.
New York is your home.
Your family is here, Lucia.
We miss you.
They weren’t wrong; they weren’t entirely right, either. New York had been home, once. And yes, her family was back there while she was here. The fact still remained the same for her … going back only made her angry. Maybe she’d been trying for almost five years now to let go of that anger. Yet, with every short trip back to New York, Lucia found it was like ripping a scab off an almost-healed wound.
She’d be hurt again.
Bleeding again.
Raw again.
New York was full of memories that stung like needles poking into her heart constantly. It felt like an apology that never came from her father, and an emptiness in her chest that she couldn’t escape from no matter how hard she tried to do exactly that.
New York felt like Renzo.
It felt like what her life was like without him, now.
Lucia didn’t think heartbreak was supposed to be like this—although, was it heartbreak if there had never been a proper end between them? If they were never able to truly say goodbye to one another, was it losing her first love?
She didn’t know.
It still felt like it.
Maybe that’s why it was made worse. Because there hadn’t been a proper goodbye. There had been no closure, at least, not for her. Despite the fact that she tried to find him, wrote letter after letter that was never answered, and hoped for something that clearly wasn’t going to happen, well, she was stuck. Suspended between the things she wanted, and a reality that just killed her every time she had to face it all over again.
And fuck her stupid heart because no matter how hard she tried to just get better, feel better or something … he was still there. In her dreams and thoughts. Absent in he
r heart where she wanted to feel him the most.
Gone, like her soul.
He’d taken that.
Wherever he was.
Her trips home became more and more infrequent over the years to the point she hadn’t been back home in almost … well, over a year now. The longest she’d gone back for was a two-week stay during that trip three and a half years ago, a year after she moved to Cali. Not that it stopped her family from asking her to come back more often.
She didn’t.
It wasn’t about them—even if her anger was caused by the things her father had done. Sure, she’d mostly forgiven her brother over the years, but not her dad. It wasn’t Lucian’s fault for that, either.
It was Lucia’s.
He would try, if only she would let him. That was the thing, though … maybe she was too damn stubborn for her own good. Maybe she was like every good Marcello who knew how to hold a grudge like nobody’s business. Who cared what the reason was?
Lucia wasn’t ready to forgive.
She certainly couldn’t forget.
Distance and time should have helped. That’s why she came to California in the first place, but here it was … almost five years after Renzo had been taken from her, and she was still raw. It couldn’t be normal, but this contempt she lived with constantly felt like an old friend, now. A friend she wasn’t willing to give up because it was the only thing that left her with any sort of comfort, even if it was a cold one.
The Uber she had called earlier was already waiting at the entrance of her apartment building when she exited. She slipped into the backseat, and rattled off the address for the gallery as the phone in her bag started to vibrate with a call. She pulled it out to answer the call as the guy driving pulled out onto the road.
Lucia didn’t even bother to check the caller ID. “Hello?”
“Lucia.”
She smiled at her mother’s sweet tone.
“Hey, Ma.”
“Thought if I didn’t call you now, I’d probably miss you later,” Jordyn teased. “I never seem to get the time difference right.”
That … or the truth was more like Lucia often ignored calls that came from her parents’ home. There was a good chance it might be her father calling, and she didn’t want to have a conversation with him. She would rather ignore the call, and if it was her mother, Jordyn always left a message. She called her mother’s cell phone, then.
Simple.
Honestly, it was exhausting.
Whatever.
“You got me for a few minutes,” Lucia said, buckling up in the backseat when the driver gave her a look in the rearview mirror. “I’m heading over to the gallery for my shift this afternoon.”
“Yes, Kim said you were enjoying working there.”
Lucia heard the edge to her mother’s words. It wasn’t like Lucia called her aunt more than she called her mother, but considering that the curator Lucia worked under was also her aunt’s friend … well, it would make sense that the woman kept her aunt informed.
“It’s nice,” Lucia said. “Fits me, you know?”
“You always did have a healthy appreciation for art.” Jordyn cleared her throat, asking, “Have you given any thought to when you might be coming home again?”
“I—”
“I was hoping it would be soon,” her mother interjected before she could figure out some kind of excuse. “We would really like to see you, Lucia.”
By we her mother meant her father, too. But Jordyn was getting smarter about these conversations with Lucia. The less she brought Lucian up directly to her daughter, the more likely Lucia was to stay on the phone.
Damn her for being quick.
“I’ve only been at the gallery for six months, Ma,” Lucia said. “I don’t think I could get time off right now if I tried. Maybe in the summer, okay?”
Jordyn sighed.
If she knew her daughter was lying, she didn’t seem willing to call Lucia out on it. Truth was, the curator she was interning for had already told her that she could take up to a month’s worth of vacation, if she needed. And they were always willing to make arrangements if something came up like an emergency in case she needed to take more time. The gallery was a dream.
New York was the fucking nightmare.
“Okay,” Jordyn said softly. “Um, your father might call later.”
Lucia stared out the window at the passing buildings. A coldness settled in her heart as she replied, “Tell him not to bother, Ma.”
“Please don’t do that, Lucia.”
“Ma—”
“He loves you.”
And she loved him, too.
That changed nothing.
“I gotta go, Ma,” Lucia said.
She didn’t wait for her mother to say goodbye or even her familiar I love you before she hung up the phone. So was her life, now.
This was easier.
• • •
For such a short, tiny woman, Kelly Campbell had a big personality, and an even bigger presence. Often, people assumed gallery curators—and even the owners—all came from the same stuffy, stuck-up stock. Pant suits for the women, and slicked back hair for the men.
Kelly was not like that.
At all.
Kelly was light-hearted, and free-spirited. She didn’t take anything too seriously, and she wasn’t afraid to tell a client where they could shove their attitude and money when it was needed. It was one of the many reasons why Lucia adored her boss.
Today, she was wearing a flimsy summer dress that looked like she had needed to tape the plunging neckline to her chest lest she show off more than she was willing to. Her pale pink, cropped hair stuck out around her ears where she had tucked the strands back, so it would stay out of her eyes as she surveyed the print resting on an illuminated table.
“Lucia, come here and look at this, will you?”
Dropping the file she had been surveying for another client, Lucia crossed the room and took the magnifying glasses Kelly held out for her. Slipping them over her eyes when the woman waved at her, she was quick to lean over the table, too.
“What do you see on this print?” Kelly asked, pointing at one section of the abstract face of an unknown man. His chin, actually. A bright blue compared to the black of his mouth.
Lucia took in the specks and ink spots on the print through the magnifying glasses. Some of the ink was a little smudged where maybe the press hadn’t come down perfectly, and left a bit of paper beneath uncolored. All typical of art prints done with the usual press. Nothing stood out to her that Kelly would want her to see, anyway. Pulling the glasses off her face, she glanced up at her boss.
“It all looks normal.”
Kelly pursed her lips, and nodded. “Try the other one—same spot.”
Lucia did as she was told, and surveyed the second print on the table of the same abstract profile. Except this time, she couldn’t help but notice there were more spots on the ink that were missing color, and less perfection. She was sure if she took the measurements of the first print to the second print, parts of the profile would be slightly off, too.
Also, not uncommon.
With hand-pressed ink prints done in productions of a hundred—typical, give or take a couple of dozen—then each print couldn’t exactly replicate the one that came before it. It was part of what made each piece unique in the row.
Lucia pulled the glasses off again, and carefully rested her elbow along the edge of the table as she peered up at her boss. “It looks standard.”
“Doesn’t it?” Kelly mused.
Something was wrong with it, though. Lucia could tell just by the tone her boss used as she folded her arms over her chest, and glanced between the two prints.
“Can you guess how much this piece is worth?” Kelly asked. “The second, not the first. The first belongs to a friend—I had him bring it in today for me to compare because it was the thirtieth printed in the production.”
Lucia knew the artist well—not person
ally, simply by name and his work. She liked his abstracts and his methods of printing using ink-covered, smoothed down wooden blocks pressed against paper. The man was edging closer to his seventies, now, and it hadn’t been more than a few years ago when his art blew up in the art world.
“A Blackmouth went for two-hundred thousand at an auction you took me to last month,” Lucia said, referring to the print they were currently overlooking. Only fifty had been printed of this particular piece. The artist had the original, and the first print. “So, in that range, I would say.”
“Even if it were one of the first ten printed?” Kelly asked.
Lucia blinked.
Then, she quickly went back to the prints. She didn’t miss how the first print had the usual 30 scribbled on the bottom of the print with the artist’s name directly beside it. But the second print? It had 8 alongside the artist’s name.
“It’s a fake,” Lucia murmured.
She found Kelly grinning at her. “And how do you know that?”
“Eight comes before thirty,” Lucia said, shaking her head. “There’s no way the eighth print would be less perfect than the thirtieth. It has more area where ink hasn’t properly covered, and the jaw area of the profile is slightly off centered from the bottom lip.”
“And?”
Lucia laughed. “I mean, usually we don’t see that in hand-pressed prints until around the fiftieth print when they reset the blocks.”
Kelly nodded. “Well done.”
“It’s a good fake, though. I mean, if the number was different, maybe higher, then I would have overlooked it. Especially if it was in a print run with more than a hundred copies.”
“The eighth print in this edition has been missing for years.”
Ah.
Makes sense why someone would choose that number, then.
