by Bethany-Kris
Renzo was not the same.
Clearly.
“You can’t get cocky,” Corrado told him. “You know how Cree is, Ren. And you know how fucking Dare gets when he’s in a mood, too. Just watch yourself, huh?”
“Just give me the message Cree wanted you to pass on, and go on your way. Let me get back to my fucking job, Corrado.”
Corrado sighed. “You belong to The League until your contract is up in a couple months, Ren. Don’t forget it, man.”
Renzo, still unbothered, gave Corrado one last look before he continued his walk down the street.
Was that message supposed to be shocking?
A revelation?
It wasn’t.
Renzo couldn’t forget who owned him. They’d beaten it into him. Scars like those didn’t leave—they only faded.
TWELVE
Lucia shoved the last of her things into her messenger bag as she waited for the phone ringing in her ear to finally be answered. Today was her father’s second to last chemo treatment before he was finally finished—it was the hospital’s tradition for those who finished their chemo to ring a bell at the nurses’ station as a way to celebrate their achievement. Lucia wasn’t sure if her father was going to ring the bell or not, it didn’t seem like his style, but either way … well, she was going to be there for his last treatment.
“Hello?”
Finally.
“Kelly,” Lucia greeted, setting her bag on the bed so she could slip on her jacket. “How’s California?”
Her boss laughed. “Hot at the moment. And dry. How’s New York?”
“Polluted. Loud. Wet.”
“So, feels like home, then?”
Lucia grinned even though the woman couldn’t see it. “Yeah, it feels like home.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve called to say you’re not coming back because being home has made you want to stay. I don’t think I could take the pain, Lucia.”
She could tell Kelly was kidding, and at the same time, still serious.
“I’m not calling for that,” Lucia murmured.
“But you are calling for something about that, I can tell.”
Kelly was a smart woman.
“I know I am supposed to be coming back at the end of this week,” Lucia said, “but I was thinking I might need to stay a couple weeks longer. I wanted to make sure that was okay—that you could work it out for me to get the time off, or let me know if it wasn’t possible. I mean, I would understand if you couldn’t.”
Kelly was quiet for a short while, but then let out a dismissive sound. “Listen, it’s all right, Lucia. I can figure it out. I’m sure you want to spend some more time with your dad, and all, so yeah. I can get it worked out.”
Sure, her father.
That was certainly part of it.
Lucia was finally getting to a good place with her dad. No, they hadn’t sat down and hashed out all of the shit that happened, but she didn’t feel like that was necessary, either. At least, not yet.
It didn’t matter.
They were in a better place.
Wasn’t that what counted?
It was more about Renzo for the reason why Lucia wanted to stay for a little while longer. She had unfinished business with him, and she didn’t think that running across the country would solve them. It certainly wasn’t going to help her to put distance between them when what she wanted and needed to do was handle the emotional mess she constantly felt whenever he was around. They had things to deal with—she wanted the chance to do that.
She couldn’t do it in California.
“So, you really don’t mind?” Lucia asked.
She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she still was, in a way. Kelly was a great boss, and always had been. She let her workers have a lot of legroom when other bosses would have had their employees on a very short leash.
Lucia appreciated it.
She didn’t want to screw up the opportunity that Kelly gave her, either. This internship—the one Kelly offered her—wasn’t that common. Not one with as many benefits as this one had, anyway.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m hoping you get back soon, but I under—”
Kelly’s next words were interrupted by a knock echoing on Lucia’s hotel door. She listened to Kelly rattle on in the background of the call as she headed for the other side of the room.
“Yeah, for sure,” she replied to Kelly as she reached for the door.
Lucia didn’t even think to check the peephole; she hadn’t had any problems since switching hotels. The Cordial was just as nice and the employees kept things running smoothly. All good things.
She pulled open the door at the same time Kelly said, “Do you have a possible idea when you might come back, though? Just so I can work on a schedule and your hours.”
“It won’t be more than three weeks, for sure.”
Lucia would make sure of it.
Or … try.
On the other side of the door, a bellboy from the hotel stood with a smile on his face, and what looked to be a letter in his hands. “Miss Marcello, this was delivered for you this morning at the front desk.”
Lucia took the letter the man offered, and looked it over. Other than her name scrawled on the front of it, there wasn’t even a stamp or a proper address written on the front. Yet, it had been sealed shut, and felt light enough to probably be a standard letter.
But from who?
“This morning?” she asked the man.
Kelly still chattered on in the background, voicing her ideas for hours once Lucia was back, and some kind of project she wanted to put her on.
The man at the door nodded. “Yes, it was brought into The Cordial this morning and delivered right to the front desk—I was told he asked it be brought to you.”
He?
“Okay, I’ll let you go, then, Lucia,” Kelly said on the call. “And let you get back to … whatever you’re handling.”
“Sure, and hey, thanks again for the time off.”
Her boss laughed. “No worries.”
The call clicked off as Lucia thanked the man at the door once more, and then closed her door. Turning to face the empty hotel room, she tapped the envelope against her palm. She didn’t think it was anything dangerous inside—wouldn’t it be a little bigger, or heavier?
Lucia opened the side of the envelope, and peeked inside. A single sheet of folded up piece of paper came out onto her palm when she tipped it over. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she opened the paper.
She was sure her heart stopped.
Oh, it certainly ached.
Renzo’s handwriting—why she hadn’t recognized it on the front, she didn’t understand—stared back at her.
Lucia,
I was told to write you back. I’m sorry you’re not going to get the response you wanted—from way back when, you know? I hope this is just as good.
I still feel that way. Alone and without. Unsure. Cold. I don’t want to feel that way at all, but I don’t know anything different.
It’s uncomfortable.
The League taught me to enjoy discomfort.
Strange, huh?
It’s funny, that. How I hate them, and respect them at the same time. I feel that way about your father, too. For the same reasons. He, and them, gave me the chance to be something, and to make something of myself … I didn’t realize the things I would have to sacrifice for it, and they never thought to tell me the cost.
The cost was high.
I love you.
I’m sorry if you ever thought I didn’t.
—Ren
Lucia folded up the letter with more questions. None of them were questions Renzo could answer.
It was time to talk to her dad.
• • •
“You must feel like you can’t get a second to breathe, huh?”
Lucian looked up from the book in his lap at the sound of Lucia’s voice in the doorway to his room. His brother had just slipped past Lucia—Gio. Dan
te had been in first, and then switched with Lucia’s mom, Jordyn. Gio went in before Lucia could see her dad.
It seemed like now that her father’s secret was out, the entire family was determined to see him through these last couple of treatments. He wasn’t given one single second alone. Someone else was always quick to step into the room.
Did he need a drink?
A snack?
Gio offered to sneak him in a joint—apparently, her dad had started smoking a bit of herb again after cutting that habit decades ago because now, it helped him to eat without getting sick. Her ma hadn’t thought Gio’s offer was very amusing, but Lucia did.
That was her uncle in a nutshell.
Lucian’s gaze drifted past Lucia to the hallway behind her. “You know, I didn’t think I would enjoy having everyone here constantly. I figured it would be too much … they’d get on my nerves.”
“And?”
Her dad smiled, and glanced down at the magazine in his lap. “I should have had them here from the start, that’s all.”
Yeah.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Lucia murmured.
Lucian glanced back up then, and nodded. “It is.”
Maybe it was the tone of her voice, or the way she stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. It could have been that posture, or the aura she gave off just from standing there thinking about all of the questions running through her mind.
Whatever did it, she swore her father just knew she was there to talk. That it was finally time for them to lay some of those cards they’d been holding tight to their chest down on the table. They needed to be honest, and speak the truth between one another.
Now was that time.
She kept saying this wasn’t it—he was sick, and he didn’t need this kind of shit while he was trying to fight the sickness in his body. She justified putting it off by saying it was better if he didn’t have to deal with any emotional issues when clearly, he had enough on his plate. Right?
Lucia didn’t give her father enough credit.
She should have known better.
After all, she’d come from this man.
She was his strength.
“Just ask what you want to ask me,” her father said, still smiling a little. “Don’t chew on it—your mother does that, too. You get that from her, not me.”
Lucia laughed. “Probably.”
Lucian shifted on the chair to get a little more comfortable. His gaze drifted to the IV pole, and the bag hanging from the top. The nurses always covered the bag of chemo with a sheath so that they couldn’t see the medicine, and even the line that led to her father’s chest was an opaque white color. She never understood that.
“Well, you’re smiling,” Lucian said, “so I’m going to say whatever it is, it’s not going to upset me too much. Or you, maybe.”
“All depends,” she returned.
Lucian chuckled, and patted the seat next to his, offering it to her. Lucia didn’t even think about it. She headed across the room, and took the chair next to her father’s. It was funny because once she was sitting there, those words that she wanted to say—the questions she knew that she had to ask her father—suddenly stuck in the back of her throat like sticky tar.
They were not coming out.
Lucian waited her out.
Lucia couldn’t speak.
Maybe that was all those years of keeping silent—of swallowing her words instead of letting them out. Maybe it was all that anger and contempt and pain that she’d kept tucked close to her chest like an old friend that felt more comfortable than this.
She wasn’t sure.
“Renzo wrote me a letter,” she finally whispered.
Without saying anything else, she pulled the letter out of her bag, and offered it to her father. Lucian took it from her fingertips, and she waited him out as he unfolded the paper, and read the letter silently. She knew when he was finished because his fingers tapped the edge of the letter, and he made a quiet noise in the back of his throat.
Contemplative, maybe.
Who knew?
“A reply to letters I sent him,” she explained quietly.
“When did you send him letters?”
Lucia shrugged. “John gave me an address. Told me it wasn’t about you, that it was between him and me, you know.”
Her father said nothing.
Lucia wished it was easier to speak.
“Why, Daddy?”
Lucian sighed. “Why, what?”
“You helped him, didn’t you? He says that, even if he doesn’t like the way you did it. But you did—help him, I mean. I just want to know why you let me be angry for all this time. And why you let me hate you. Why not just tell me the truth—put it all in front of me, and let me see what you did. You helped him, got him free, and gave him an opportunity to become something, right? That’s how he describes it. Had you just told me that, and let me see what you had done, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. All these years, they wouldn’t have happened. Why let me keep blaming you and … hating you.”
Lucian made another one of those noises. “You never hated me.”
“I think I did.”
“Hate and contempt are not the same, dolcezza. Hate is in your heart. The other, in your mind. Sometimes, they might feel like they are the same, but they aren’t. You cannot hate the things you love. You learn that over time, or I have.”
He wasn’t wrong.
She still didn’t know what to feel.
“I didn’t tell you,” her father murmured, “because I wasn’t going to manipulate your feelings, or the reason why you offered forgiveness. And I felt that by giving you these things … telling you everything that happened that you didn’t know about would do that. I would hand you a reason to forgive me, and that teaches you nothing. I didn’t deserve that, either. You have to learn real forgiveness on your own, and in your own time. I can’t hand you the roadmap for it, and expect you to come out of it better.”
“You didn’t deserve my anger and treatment, either.”
Lucian hummed under his breath. “Didn’t I? I only corrected my mistakes when it was already too late. I only realized the things I had done wrong—that I had hurt you and that young man—when it was already over. Your mother and I … well, we were never supposed to step in for our children. Not where love and life were concerned, and I did that with you. I made a mistake. I see it as life teaching me more lessons, and they’re not easy ones. They’re never easy when they come later in life.”
Lucia blinked down at her hands.
Her father kept talking. “And part of that lesson was waiting for you, my girl. I had to wait for you to come back when you wanted to—when you were ready. It couldn’t be about me when I’d already made it about me enough. I’m sorry for that.”
She hadn’t realized it until the first tear fell into her lap. She moved to wipe the wetness from her face, but her father was there to do it first. He used the pad of his thumb to swipe the tears away, and smiled at her all the while.
Funny.
He was getting chemo.
He was sick.
He needed love and care.
And there he was, comforting her.
Like he could read her mind, Lucian murmured, “It’s what fathers do, Lucia.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Lucian nodded. “I know, and I love you.”
“What happens now?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want. That’s the beauty of it.”
Was it?
So, why was she still scared?
Why did she still hurt?
• • •
I’m having dinner in a couple days. Do you want to come? Diego would love to see you again.
Lucia stared at the text from Rose as she left her father’s hospital room. The nurse was just finishing up the treatment, and cleaning whatever she needed to clean. Lucian preferred to have privacy during that time, especially with there being so many people around no
w for his treatments. It was probably the one time he did get to be alone.
She hesitated to answer Rose back right away. It wasn’t Rose’s fault, honestly. More like Lucia’s emotions swirling and threatening to drown her again.
Like usual.
She was getting tired of constantly feeling like she was two seconds away from drowning. Still, Lucia wasn’t sure how many more opportunities she would have to see Rose and Diego before she headed back to Cali. And once she was back there, she had no clue when she was going to be back in New York.
Yeah, I’ll be able to make it, she texted back, just let me know the date and time.
Rose’s next text was exactly that.
Lucia left the hospital feeling like she might have finally fixed one thing in her life—the fractures between her and Lucian.
That just left one person, now.
Ren.
How was she supposed to deal with him?
She didn’t have the first clue.
• • •
“Lucia!”
An almost nine-year-old Diego came her way with arms already opened. Lucia had hers ready to take him into her embrace the second she walked around the corner into the kitchen, and saw him reading a book at the island.
He was at that age, Rose liked to say. An age where it wasn’t as cool to show affection, and he didn’t want his hand held for every little thing. He wouldn’t hold his sister’s hand when he had to cross the street, and he liked to roll the bottoms of his pant legs for his school uniform up around the ankle of the Timberland boots he refused to not wear.
Apparently, the school called a lot about that. Rose had been called in for a lot of things regarding Diego, and the private school he attended. Fighting with other boys, school uniform code issues, and other rebellious things.
Diego didn’t look four anymore.
Far from it.
He now reached Lucia’s chest in height, and she swore he was growing taller with every passing day. He was a lanky kid, but Lucia knew that was only going to last a couple of more years before puberty hit. His dark blond hair had darkened into a light brown, and those russet eyes of his reminded her of his brother like nothing else.
