by Bethany-Kris
“Lucia,” John murmured.
Her gaze lifted to meet her brother’s. “Yeah?”
“He does miss you. I promise … that is all he cares about. That he misses and loves you, nothing else. And if for right now, that’s what you can focus on, too, then that’s all that matters, okay? Nothing else has to come into play.”
Easy for John to say.
Not so much for her.
“Yeah, okay,” Lucia whispered.
John nodded toward the door at the end of the hospital hallway, and didn’t move a muscle until Lucia started walking that way. She passed a look over her shoulder just before she came to the doorway, only to watch her brother disappear around the corner.
She took a deep breath, and passed the hospital room a look.
Now or never …
She knew Lucian loved her.
That was the problem.
He loved her too much, maybe.
Lucia put those thoughts in the back of her mind, and headed inside the hospital room in just enough time to watch the nurse take the cap her father offered. His hair stuck up in all different directions, but he was quick to smooth the strands back down once his hands were free of the white, jelly-looking cap.
“It’s been helping, then?” the nurse asked.
“Seems so,” her father replied, tiredly. “No hair loss.”
“Good, Mr. Marcello.”
Lucia stayed quiet in the doorway as the nurse removed the IV from the port that had been inserted in the right side of her father’s chest. Lucian glanced away from the nurse as she worked quickly and quietly to clean up the area, and then allowed him to button up his shirt.
“You know,” she said, “we could bandage down the IV port differently, if you—”
“This is fine; allows me to keep it out of sight.”
Lucia frowned.
John had said their father was keeping this a secret, hadn’t he?
But why?
It didn’t make sense when she knew her father was close to his brothers. She had no doubt that if her uncles knew her father was undergoing chemo treatments for renal cancer, that they would be here every single treatment. Or at least, one of them.
Lucia didn’t get the chance to think on it for too long. Her father stood from the chair, and reached for the blazer that had been tossed to a table nearby. As he did so, his attention finally landed on her.
He froze for a split second.
She smiled.
“Hey, Daddy,” Lucia said, waving a hand.
There was a flash of something in his eyes—some emotion she couldn’t place, but maybe that was because it was a mixture of a lot of things. And then, just as quickly, a small smile stretched his lips.
“Lucia,” he murmured.
The nurse was quick to pack up the rest of the things, and then she left them to have some privacy without saying a word. Lucia was grateful.
She came further into the room, and closed the door behind her. She waited her father out as he slowly put on his jacket, and with careful hands, buttoned up the first two buttons. She took that chance to look him over—to check for the changes she might have missed since the last time she had come home to visit.
Lucia didn’t know what she expected to see—she didn’t want to see him frail, and sick. That was one of the things she had been most sure of when she decided to come home. That wasn’t the man she knew to be her father. He wasn’t weak, and he wouldn’t show weakness. She didn’t want him to look weak, either.
Thankfully, he didn’t.
Mostly.
He did look like he had lost a bit of weight, and his movements were slower than they would usually be, considering. Still, his skin color was the same golden tan it had always been, and his eyes didn’t seem dimmed. He looked tired, sure, but she bet chemo was fucking tiring. It likely made him sick, and exhausted. According to John, their father was doing three rounds a week because this was an aggressive attack on the sickness after surgery hadn’t corrected it like they thought it would.
“Do I get a hug?” her father asked.
Lucia looked up from his hands—she’d been focused on the way his fingers deftly worked the buttons into the holes of his jacket. “Of course, Daddy.”
She crossed the room without hesitation, and found warmth in her father’s embrace. For a moment, the time and distance spent apart slipped away. All it took was the tightening of his arms around her shoulders for Lucia to remember every single little thing that she loved and adored about her dad.
“Missed you,” Lucian murmured into her hair.
“I know, me too.”
He cleared his throat, and loosened his hold just enough for Lucia to look up at him. “You look good, you know.”
Lucian laughed. “Lots of medication, nothing more.”
Yeah, she bet.
How much of it made him sick, too?
“John said you haven’t told anyone outside of mom and—”
“And I don’t plan on telling anyone until it’s all done,” Lucian interjected quickly. “It’s not hard to keep it quiet when at this age, I don’t have to be anywhere. No one is controlling my work or life. Jordyn helps, and tells people I’m … busy with something else, should they call.”
Lucia frowned openly. “But why?”
“I just want to focus on getting better right now.”
That didn’t make sense to Lucia.
She also wasn’t the one with cancer.
Lucian tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and his fingertips slid down her cheek with a soft touch. It was strange to her because just a couple of weeks ago, the thought of being in the same room as her father would have sent her rage spiraling again. And yet, here she stood, hugging him, and wishing she could make him better.
God, she wanted him to be better.
“Don’t cry,” her dad whispered.
Was she?
“I’m sorry,” Lucia said quickly, wiping away the tears that had escaped. “I don’t want to upset you, or anything.”
Lucian laughed. “You’re here, Lucia. You can’t upset me.”
But she had.
Before.
Purposely.
“What did it, anyway?” her dad asked.
“Huh?”
“Guilt from your brother, or …?”
Oh.
He thought she came here because John emotionally blackmailed her into it. That was so far from the truth, it wasn’t even funny. Sure, she might not have known that their father was sick had John not let her in on the secret, but she came home because of something else her brother had said.
She had enough time.
It was enough.
“I came because I wanted to come,” Lucia said, smiling a little. “That’s all, Daddy.”
“I’m going to be fine, Lucia.”
“I know.”
She was sure he would.
He was her dad.
How could he not?
“But while you are here,” her father said, “maybe we could work on … well, us.”
She blinked.
Yeah, there it was.
“Maybe,” she whispered.
“You still can’t forgive me, then?”
“I forgive you.”
The lie came out easily.
Maybe that was the guilt.
Lucian laughed under his breath, and hugged her a little tighter. “You don’t, and I know it. You might look like your mother, Lucia, but God knows you are just like me.”
Yeah.
She really was.
“Okay, then I want to forgive you,” she said. “Or get to that point.”
That was not a lie.
She didn’t want to live forever in a constant hurricane of contempt and pain that she had created by forcing distance between her and Lucian. She didn’t want to feel like she hated him whenever he crossed her mind.
She loved her dad.
That’s all she wanted to do.
He hu
gged her again. “How long are you staying?”
“We’ll see. I was due a visit, so it could be a while. All depends.”
“Good enough for me, dolcezza.”
Yeah, her too.
• • •
The one thing Lucia didn’t want to do during her visit to New York? Stay at her parents’ home. She knew her old bedroom would be waiting there to comfort her if she felt the need to use it, and her parents would jump at the chance to have her there with them … but she still needed a bit of space.
That was all.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lucia toyed with the cell phone in her hands as she peered out the double doors leading to the hotel room’s veranda. Overlooking a bustling Manhattan street, she certainly felt at home sitting there.
That’s what New York was for her, even if it was also painful. She was starting to think the pain might not entirely be owned by her father, either. It was here that she met him—Renzo. It was in this city that she fell in love. He wasn’t taken from her while they were here, sure, but it still kind of felt like it, in a way.
The clenching ache in her heart was more than enough to make Lucia want to do something—anything—different. She was sick and tired of constantly feeling like her heart was broken, and empty.
Even if that something else was nothing more than a distraction, she didn’t care.
Turning the phone on, she dialed a familiar number, and put it to her ear. On the third ring, a familiar voice picked up with a sweet, “Hello?”
“Hey, Kelly,” Lucia replied.
Her boss hadn’t even blinked when Lucia said she had a family emergency that she needed to deal with. Sure, Kelly had asked for a little bit of details, but Lucia thought that was normal, all things considered. She tried to explain what was going on without giving away all of her father’s personal issues, but it was enough.
Kelly gave her time off, just like that.
“How’re things in New York—your dad?” Kelly asked.
“Pretty good. As much as can be expected, you know.”
“I bet. It’s been a while since you’ve been back home, right?”
“Yeah, it’s been … a long time.”
“Well, try to enjoy it.”
Yeah, she didn’t exactly know how possible that was going to be, but she was going to make the best of it.
“So, I just wanted to check,” Lucia said, “but we’re still good if I need a couple of months?”
“I hope it doesn’t take that long, but yes, I will figure something out, Lucia. You don’t have to worry about that, I promise. Besides, you know what I think of you, don’t you?”
Lucia laughed. “I mean, not really.”
“You are too talented to waste it—I will be waiting whenever you are ready to come back. All right?”
That was good enough for her.
“Yeah, okay. Thank you again. I can’t tell you enough.”
Kelly made a noise under her breath. “No thanks needed. Oh, and guess who came to the gallery today and asked about you?”
Lucia blinked. “Uh … who?”
“Christian Savino. Well, to be fair, he had to come in to overlook the contract and take a copy for his lawyers for me to acquire the piece of art he wants, but while he was here, he happened to notice you weren’t here, too.”
“Oh.”
Lucia was still trying to figure out why she should care about that, honestly.
“Anyway, he asked where you were,” Kelly continued on, clearly missing the confusion in Lucia’s tone, “and I thought he seemed … interested in you, so to speak. I hope you don’t mind, but I mentioned you had flown home to New York for a family thing. I didn’t give details, but yeah.”
Fuck.
Well, yeah, Lucia did kind of mind a little. She had no interest at all in Christian Savino. Not that the man wasn’t good-looking—he was. And sure, he seemed interesting enough. He’d certainly been charming, but most men were when they cleaned up well and put on a three-piece suit. Hell, she’d grown up around all kinds of men like that. Their charm didn’t particularly work on her.
Still, Lucia could put this issue out of her mind, for the time being, anyway. Christian could have all the interest he wanted, but she didn’t plan on answering it back. Besides, he was in California dealing with Kelly, and Lucia was here … in New York. A whole fucking country away.
That was fine with her.
“That was okay, right? I mean … I thought it was sweet that he remembered you, and thought to ask.”
Ugh.
“Yeah, no worries,” she told Kelly. “I’m going to head to my parents’ place for dinner. I’ll give you an update soon, okay?”
“You better.”
But maybe not.
Especially not if Kelly thought she was going to try playing matchmaker with Lucia and some strange Italian that she didn’t know from a hole in the ground. Lucia had better things to be doing than worrying about dating, or love.
Besides, she felt love.
She was still in love.
She just didn’t have the man she loved.
FIVE
Tucked inside the entrance of a damp alleyway, Renzo brought the filter of a lit Marlboro to his lips, and took a heavy drag. The thick smoke filled his lungs, and he refused to exhale, instead letting it burn and ache in his lungs until he didn’t have a choice. The smoke came out in a steady stream, lifting higher in spiraling streaks of gray.
He’d made a choice—one he might regret, sure, but it was too late to back out now. There was something familiar about the dampness in the air, and the way the city smelled polluted and yet wet at the same time that felt comforting to him. There was a chill in the air, despite it being spring, and he reveled in the feeling even through his leather jacket, and dark-wash jeans.
God.
Renzo sucked in a breath of air, no smoke this time.
He was finally home.
New York never looked better.
Oh, sure, Dare was going to kill him when he got back to Nevada. There was no doubt about it. He’d have Renzo’s ass on a silver platter for this, but it would be fucking worth it, too. How could it not be?
The last time he was in New York was two and a half years ago for a job that involved breaking into the home of a Senator, and busting open the man’s safe. Given the fact the safe was underground, and built into a concrete wall, Cree’s team had needed his skills with explosives to get it done quick, easy, and mostly clean, too. He hadn’t known what they were looking for in the safe, but it hadn’t mattered to him, either.
As fast as they were in New York back then, they’d taken him away from it, too. He hadn’t been able to visit his sister, or brother. Shit, he barely left the hotel room, and he couldn’t even get a piece of roadside pizza, for fuck’s sake.
Well, he was going to do all of that now.
He had time, after all.
Renzo would deal with the consequences later, especially those that came from Nevada, and The League. Besides, they had to know where he was right now. He’d not tried to hide what he did after spending two weeks following that stupid fucking Italian around California and to neighboring states.
The man didn’t do a lot of shit. Dinner meets, and phone calls. Christian Savino kept his head down, and didn’t cause problems. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like to Renzo. He visited a lot of art galleries, for whatever reason. One of them happened to be the one Renzo knew Lucia worked at—if the information he had on her was to be trusted, anyway, but that was probably just circumstance.
He’d not seen her, either.
He looked, though.
Fuck yeah, he looked.
Five years.
That was the deal.
Nonetheless, The League had to know what Renzo had done. They could locate him with his phone, and the chip in his arm. He wasn’t hiding this—they were welcome to come get him, if they wanted to. But until then, he had other business to handle.
&nbs
p; Finishing off the last bit of his cigarette, he eyed the cherry red tip before cocking his boot up over his knee to stub the smoke. Then, he stuffed the ruined cigarette into the pocket of his leather jacket, tucking it safely away. That way, he left nothing behind to say he had been standing in this alleyway for almost an hour now trying to convince himself just to walk across the goddamn street and say hello. Force of habit, maybe—The League liked to think of them all as ghosts, and the first thing they learned was how to behave like one.
Now that the cigarette was gone, Renzo had no choice but to stare across the road again. The small shop with the pretty sign above the large bay windows overlooking the inside didn’t seem like much, maybe. A small place, but he bet his sister loved it like nothing else.
It was hers.
Her shop—or gallery … studio, whatever.
Renzo didn’t know what Rose considered the place. Maybe a mixture of all three things. She had rented the place out for two years, now. She used it to work, display, and sell her many pieces of art. It was all hers.
Like he wanted, she’d done something. Made something of herself, and took care of Diego all the while. Some of it, after a while, had been with his help from afar. He called maybe once a month after the first two years of being with The League, but those phone calls were contingent on a lot of things.
One, that he never talked about business.
Two, that he behaved.
Three, that it never lasted more than ten minutes.
Four, she could never talk about him to anyone.
God knew he fucking wanted those phone calls. He craved them like nothing else. His sister was his one contact with the outside world, and honestly, his past. Before The League had happened, and all of the rest of it. Rose was his one connection—so fuck yeah, he didn’t talk about where he was, or what happened, regardless of how many times his sister begged; he didn’t step out of line, mostly, and he kept to the time limit they demanded when he called. He wanted those calls to Rose, so he did what they told him to.
Simple as that.
As for whether or not Rose kept up her end of the bargain … well, he didn’t know. He suspected she did if only because he explained how important it was that she follow the rules, so he could keep calling.
Anyway, contact with Rose allowed him the ability to help her. At first, she hadn’t wanted to take any money from him—some shit never changed. Still, she took it when he didn’t give her a choice. The one thing he wanted the most from their conversations was the chance to speak to Diego again.
