by Bethany-Kris
And a boxing ring right in the middle.
Speaking of which …
The hard smack of tape-wrapped fists connecting to hard flesh brought Renzo back to the present, and put his attention on the three men in the room. Corrado Guzzi was going head-to-head with Cree in the ring, and getting his ass beat.
It was almost funny.
Not that Corrado wasn’t a good fighter because he was. But nobody was Cree, either. The man took the whole float like a butterfly thing to a new fucking level. Cree always seemed cool and calm—usually—but especially when he was fighting. So much so, that it could be creepy. And then he waited until he could find your weakness, the opening for him to use against you, and he struck.
If you gave him that opening—and you would; everyone did—he was going to lay you out.
Renzo had only managed to make Cree tap out once, and it was after a particularly hellish week where his mind was constantly racing. He was too unpredictable, and just needed an outlet for his craziness. Cree took him into the ring, but because he was so wild, never managed to find that opening.
Which let Renzo in on Cree’s weakness, in a way.
“Fucking hell,” Christopher—though, he preferred Chris—said, leaning over the top rope of the ring. Corrado’s back hit the mat of the ring hard enough to take his breath away, and he didn’t move. “Stay down, you stupid fuck.”
“Hate you,” Corrado snarled at his brother.
“You know Alessio and Ginevra don’t want to deal with your concussed ass again. The last time was enough.”
Renzo chuckled under his breath at that. So, maybe this wasn’t the first time Corrado had tried to go head-to-head with Cree, like he thought each time was going to make a difference. The man’s spouse—Ginevra—and his … other spouse, Alessio … yeah, Renzo didn’t understand how that whole relationship came to be with two men and one woman between them, but he knew enough to know it wasn’t his fucking business to ask.
Simple as that.
Nonetheless, the man’s spouses didn’t enjoy taking care of Corrado after he tried to take on Cree for another round. It probably didn’t help that Alessio, the third person in the whole relationship, was also a free-range member of The League, too. So, he knew what Cree was like, and that this would always be pointless to try.
On the other side of the ring, Cree leaned against the ropes, and stretched his neck back and forth as he let the twins shout at one another. Still cool and calm. Still entirely unbothered, and looking like he hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Then, all at once, Cree’s gaze drifted to the doorway and landed on Renzo. The dark-eyed man didn’t look the least bit surprised to find Renzo standing there. It was as if he had known the entire time that Renzo was watching the entire fight play out.
He probably did.
Cree was strange that way.
“Finally got a call, did you?” Cree asked.
That drew in the attention of the Guzzi twins as well. Chris nodded to Renzo, and he returned the gesture. Corrado, on the other hand, waved one tapped up fist in a silent hello, but offered nothing more. Renzo didn’t blame the man. He knew what it felt like to be on the mat after getting the air beat out of you from Cree.
It wasn’t a fun experience.
“Guess so,” Renzo replied in response to Cree’s question. “About time, too.”
“What’s it for?”
Renzo shrugged. “I wasn’t told.”
It could be anything. Even though Renzo’s remaining contract had been sold to someone who went by M when he asked for a job to be done, M was also known to allow The League to negotiate the use of Renzo’s skills in other jobs and for teams, too. M didn’t care—as long as he still had his tool to use when the time called for it, and he needed Renzo.
Odd as it was …
“Ah.” Cree nodded at the doorway. “Get going, then. You don’t need to be making him wait when he calls. Likely knows you’re already in the building and pissing around, too, instead of being where you should be.”
He gave the man a look. “You know, for being my handler, you’d think you would loosen up my leash every now and then.”
Cree laughed. “No can do, New York.”
Renzo bristled at the nickname.
Cree still used it when he wanted to differentiate between friends, and the man he was responsible for because of The League.
“Abused dogs never forget where they come from,” Cree said from the corner of his mouth, never taking his gaze off Corrado who was still lying on the mat. “And just when you think they’ve learned enough to listen, and you give them a bit of freedom, they never miss the chance to bite you when they believe they can.”
“Did you just call me a dog?”
Although, Cree wasn’t wrong. Renzo was waiting for his moment—for the second they loosened the chains around his neck, and let him go free again. He was going to bite back, and bite hard. It might be just the fact that he never came back to The League, or it might be something different.
Not that it mattered.
Cree was still right.
The man knew it, too.
Cree looked his way again. “Why are you still standing there?”
Asshole.
• • •
“Is that another fucking tattoo?”
Renzo looked away from the window—which only faced another fucking steel wall of the warehouse across the way—in Dare’s office to see the man glaring at him from the doorway. He didn’t need to ask what Dare was going on about now. He knew.
The intricate start of a tattoo on the back of his neck—all black, beginning with a large rose right above his neckline, and surrounded by different shapes to create a design that disappeared up into the high fade of his hairstyle. The rose was the new part on his back—Dare had made Cree lock Renzo in the quiet room for a week after he’d gotten the bit up under his hairline.
The quiet room being a black room with no light, no noise, and … nothing.
Like that fucking bothered Renzo, now.
It didn’t.
Mostly, he tried to keep his tattoos where people couldn’t see them—the design up the back of his neck, double guns pointed down, with two doves holding a ribbon that wrapped a heart, was the first one where he hadn’t done that. And Dare had not been impressed, clearly. He had one sleeve done on one arm, and his other was entirely bare. Besides his back, he kept his tattoos mostly to one side of his body.
“It looked kind of stupid with a big spot there,” Renzo pointed out.
Dare’s gaze narrowed. “You …”
He didn’t know Dare’s real name, except that Dare wasn’t it. That was about all he was told. They all called the asshole Dare. A last name wasn’t even in the equation for them to know.
Turning to face the man fully, Renzo shrugged. “It’s there now, so …”
Which was the same thing he always told Dare whenever he added something new to his body without permission. They had to know when he went in for another ink session. They had a tracker in his body. He always took his phone, and he knew that fucking thing was tracked, too. They could stop him, if they wanted. They never did. That told him one thing—they either enjoyed punishing him, or they knew it would be pointless to try and stop Renzo from doing this simple thing.
A rebellious thing, sure. But it was a constant need he had since he’d been here. It never left him. He blamed them. They controlled everything about his life—sure, they loosened up a bit over the last year, letting him take trips out alone, and call his sister on occasion, but it was still an illusion. He was not making those choices because he could. He made them because they allowed him to. And this was the one way they seemed to allow him to rebel, even if he did suffer for it.
The need was never going to leave him.
Not while he was here, anyway.
Dare scowled, but shook his head. “And you still have that nose ring in, I see?”
Renzo chewed on the piece of mint gum in
his mouth, unbothered by the dangerous edge to Dare’s tone. “Yeah, it’s healed now. Nice, huh?”
The gold ring in his left nostril had been another split-second decision. Not that he had any particular reason why he had it done during his second to last tattoo session, but it was in there now. Unless someone wanted to rip it out of his face, he wasn’t removing it.
Renzo could tell he was pushing Dare’s very thin patience to the limit, but that was just fine, too. He needed to do something back to this man for all the hell he put Renzo through daily. Dare, one of the main owners of The League, rivaled Cree for the biggest asshole in the building regularly.
Dare also thought Renzo was too … difficult.
Stubborn.
Wild.
Insubordinate.
The man also wasn’t wrong.
Ren just didn’t care.
God knew he had to keep a bit of pride—The League had stripped the rest of it away in different ways.
“You got a job for me, or what?” Renzo asked.
Dare’s jaw muscles tightened, but he nodded. Probably happy that they were now onto an entirely different conversation. Nobody said dealing with Renzo when he was in one of his moods was particularly easy.
Even he knew that about himself.
“Folder on the desk—black strip across the front,” Dare murmured.
Ah, great.
A black strip on the folder meant the job came directly from M. It was the only way Dare chose to differentiate from the jobs he negotiated for Renzo, and the ones that came specifically from M for him to do.
Crossing the office, Renzo picked up the folder, and flipped it open. He found the picture of a tanned-skinned man with short, black cropped hair and brown eyes attached to a sheet of details with a simple paper clip. He gave the picture about five seconds of his attention before lifting it up to read the bit of details it covered.
Christian Savino.
32.
Born: Sienna, Italy.
Known drug trafficker.
Renzo took in the rest of the details about the man before quickly closing the folder, and giving Dare his attention again. The man still hadn’t come further into his office, instead opting to stand in the doorway.
“So the job is what, kill him?”
Because the file didn’t say.
Dare shook his head. “M wants you to keep an eye on the man, apparently. He doesn’t come over to this side very often—most of his business stays on his side of the world, I suppose. Except, he’s here for a span of time. Could be a couple of weeks, could be a lot more. For whatever reason, your boss has reason to believe that while he’s here, he could cause trouble. So yes, keep an eye on him. Report back to me once a week, and I will relay whatever information you give to M. He will decide what to do from there.”
Renzo blinked.
Like a fucking idiot.
“You want me to babysit some fucking Italian because he came to America?”
All the skills Renzo had … the shit he could do, and they wanted him to babysit somebody?
“That’s a joke, right?” Renzo asked.
Dare glanced at the folder. “That’s a folder from M, Ren. Do you think that’s a joke?”
Jesus Christ.
“Fine, where is this … Savino now?”
“Apparently, California,” Dare replied, “but it’s possible he’s doing work across the states, too. You might have to follow him.”
Renzo heard a lot in Dare’s statement, but only one thing registered to him.
California.
Lucia.
He knew better—he needed to stay away until the five-year term was up. The rebel in him was fucking dancing, though.
“Yeah, all right,” Renzo said. “Cali first, then.”
“Follow him wherever he goes.”
Renzo nodded. “No worries.”
Mostly.
FOUR
The second a plane’s wheels hit the runway was always the most nerve-wracking moment for Lucia during a flight. Just the way the plane jerked and jumped was enough to make her clutch at the armrests of the seats, and suck in a quick breath.
Maybe throw up a prayer to God.
Anything helped.
Thankfully, those few seconds never lasted long, and the plane had taxied into the gate at LaGuardia. Lucia didn’t bother to rush like all the other passengers did once they were allowed to deplane. She was already a mixture of emotions that she didn’t know how to deal with, so she figured prolonging the need to face it head-on would be in her best interests.
Or that was the lie she was going to tell herself.
Whatever worked.
All too soon, she had deplaned, and was heading down the escalator for arrivals when she first spotted her brother. It wasn’t like she could miss John, honestly. He tended to stick out in a crowd considering he towered over six feet, always wore a three-piece suit, and practically refused to meet the gaze of anyone who looked his way.
Besides, he wasn’t looking for anyone but her, anyway. His gaze was already locked on her form as she started to come down the escalator. Like he knew somehow that she was going to be the next person coming down.
Lucia still felt the occasional flare of annoyance and anger whenever she saw her brother, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. The fact that John didn’t try to make excuses for the things that had happened almost five years ago helped that along.
Right now, she wasn’t sure what—if anything—she felt about her brother. She had been trying to avoid New York as much as possible, and yet, all it took was a single visit and a conversation with her brother to basically put her on a flight less than a week later.
And here she was.
In New York.
Fuck.
“Hey,” John greeted, arms already open.
Lucia took her brother’s hug, and then passed her carry-on luggage over when he offered to take it, too. “Hey, John.”
“Do you have any more luggage?”
“A small bag.”
John arched a brow. “That’s all?”
Lucia didn’t want to say it out loud, but the truth was, she didn’t know how much stuff to bring, or if it would be a smart idea. Hell, if she took a weekend trip to somewhere for work, she would pack a large suitcase full of shit just because she liked to have options. Problem was, if she did that now, it might give her father the idea that she was going to stay for longer than was good for her.
She needed to see him.
Wanted to, even.
That didn’t mean she could stay after it was said and done. Lucia brought enough stuff to get her through a few days, but nothing more. And if she did, for some reason, opt to stay longer than what she prepared for, well she would handle that, too.
She couldn’t do much else.
Lucia offered her brother a shrug, but said nothing. John only nodded like he understood, and then draped an arm around her shoulders as he said, “Let’s go get your luggage then, kiddo.”
She couldn’t help it.
Lucia laughed.
“You know I’m twenty—”
“I know how old you are,” her brother muttered. “Still my kid sister. Even when you hate my guts.”
Damn.
Yeah, that was the thing, right? Even when she had been terrible to John—it didn’t matter how much awful shit she said to him, or the distance she forced between the two of them—he was still there loving her.
That’s just what he did.
It’s what family did.
Lucia still didn’t know how to handle it.
“I don’t hate you, John,” she said.
John’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Not now, maybe.”
“Not even back then.”
It was almost sickening how Lucia didn’t want to verbalize the worst time in her life. She didn’t like to say Renzo’s name out loud. It felt like a fucking echo every time she dared to let it slip past her lips. One that continued
to bounce around and come back to her time and time again like a slap she couldn’t dodge no matter how many times she tried. So, she just avoided it altogether. It was easier on her heart.
“You certainly said it enough times back then,” John muttered.
That was true.
“Because I didn’t know how to deal,” she said lamely.
Also, the truth.
John chose not to push, instead saying, “Well, what matters is while you’re here, that you let it go. Or try, Lucia. Be good for him—Dad, I mean. He could use that right now.”
Lucia knew that.
She didn’t need to be told.
“I know, John.”
That didn’t mean this felt good, or that she wasn’t wary about what might come out of this trip because she was. All of it. The unknown left Lucia feeling a little out of control, and she didn’t like that feeling at all.
It didn’t matter.
Her brother was right.
It wasn’t about her.
“Let’s get your bags,” John said.
Yes, and then what?
Lucia didn’t need to be told.
She knew.
Her dad.
• • •
“Aren’t you coming in?” Lucia asked.
John shook his head. “You’ll be fine … besides, they don’t like more than one support person in the room when he’s having his chemo.”
Lucia flinched.
Chemo.
Just the word made her stomach clench.
John didn’t say anything if he saw her reaction, though. Checking his watch, he added, “He should be finishing up, anyway. It’ll be good for him to see you. Maybe it’ll make him feel better—chemo isn’t easy, you know.”
Jesus.
Her brother was putting this on thick.
“Where are you going to be?” Lucia asked.
John waved the phone in his hand. “Siena and the kids; she had something today, so I need to check in.”
Lucia nodded. “All right.”
She still didn’t move.
Neither did her brother.
