by Bethany-Kris
So did his face.
Diego looked like a younger version of Renzo, in a lot of ways. His features were softer and more boyish, sure, but Renzo was there. In the way the kid smiled, and how one of his eyes would crinkle with a wink when he laughed. Some of his gestures were a mirror of Renzo, too, like the way his hands became more and more animated when he was excited.
Lucia didn’t know if those similarities between Diego and his brother was a matter of nurture, or nature. Was it just in his DNA? Or was he, in a way, trying to hold onto the brother that he’d loved so very much for most of his life?
It was hard to say.
Lucia knew better than to ask.
Renzo was a touchy topic for Diego. She knew that he missed and loved his brother like nothing else, but the things he remembered about Renzo weren’t always the good things. Because that was the thing about the mind, and trauma. It had a way of blocking out the good things so that it could keep hold of the bad details. Diego remembered running—he saw Renzo being taken away, and feeling alone.
Did he hate how he remembered his brother?
Lucia sometimes did.
Still, she knew it probably wasn’t the same.
“Hey, buddy,” she said, feeling his arms tighten around her waist.
“Hey, Lucia.”
Lucia shot a look at Rose who was currently standing behind the kitchen island as she prepped some of the food for supper—it looked like a casserole. Rose smiled at the sight of the two of them, but quickly went back to her work.
Diego stepped back from Lucia, and grinned. “Rose got me a new book today. You wanna read it with me?”
Lucia smiled wider. “I would love to.”
“Cool.”
Yeah, everything was cool to this kid.
Unless it wasn’t.
Then, he could roll his eyes like nobody’s business.
Lucia sat down at the island with Diego, and the kid flipped his book open. He went back to the page where he had put his bookmark, and said, “I’m not allowed to fold the pages—Rose said that’s disrespectful.”
She pressed her lips to keep from smiling as she shot Rose a look. The other woman in the kitchen tried to act like her name hadn’t gotten said at all, but eventually, she just shrugged and laughed.
“What, it is,” Rose said.
“Book-lovers,” Lucia replied, like that would explain it all.
It kind of did.
She had a sister—Cella—who would gladly spend her entire life with her nose stuck in a book. Her sister had once used books to escape the pain in her life, but even after things got better for her, she knew Cella still found peace in a good book. And if someone was lucky enough to borrow one of Cella’s beloved books, but it came back dog-eared?
God save your soul.
“What’s the book about?” Lucia asked.
Diego beamed, and then quickly went into a whole discussion about the book—a discussion he mostly had with himself because all Lucia did was nod and agree. She was there to listen and spend time with him. Whatever he wanted to do, she was game for it.
“And there’s dragons,” Diego added.
“Really?”
Diego nodded. “They have to hatch them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know—that’s the point.”
Lucia laughed at the look he gave her, but Diego didn’t seem to mind. He went back to his book, and started reading out loud. He did well—only stumbled on one or two big words that he needed to slow down to get out properly.
It struck her then how much this kid had changed in the last few years. In small ways, sure, and in bigger ways, too. He just … wasn’t the same. He’d had his own little personality back then, but now, it was bigger and more honed to him. She regretted having spent so much time away to punish someone else in her life because she’d missed out on a lot here.
But what could she do?
Hindsight was still twenty-twenty.
“And then Mar—”
A knock on the door interrupted Diego’s reading. The kid pursed his lips, and annoyance flashed in his gaze at needing to stop his reading as he lifted his head from the book.
Lucia almost laughed.
Yep.
Just like every other book-lover in the world.
If only she would have focused on Diego, then, and not noticed the way Rose seemed to jump on the spot. She caught the way Rose’s gaze darted to the hallway leading to the front door of the apartment, and how her hands instantly clenched into the dish cloth she had been using to wipe down the counter.
Were those nerves?
Why would Rose be—
“Sorry, let me grab that,” Rose said quietly.
She didn’t meet Lucia’s gaze.
Or Diego’s.
What was going on?
THIRTEEN
Renzo tried not to be nervous. He wasn’t the fucking type to have nerves, anyway. He liked to bury that shit as deep as he could so it would never be used against him. Something else The League had taught him that he figured was good use in his daily life. Not that he was ever going to thank them for that.
He appreciated their lessons.
Respected them, even.
He didn’t agree with the way they went about teaching.
That was the difference.
Knocking once more on the apartment door—he probably didn’t need to, as he’d just knocked and it was likely the people inside heard him—he stepped back quickly and shoved his hands in his pockets. That way, he wasn’t going to knock again, and hopefully when the door was opened, the person waiting on the other side wouldn’t see how goddamn nervous he looked given that his hands were shaking.
Get it together, man.
This is crazy—stop acting foolish.
They love you.
All those thoughts ran like crazy in his mind, but it didn’t make a difference to the way he was feeling. Maybe it was because in some ways, he’d had to work himself up to come here tonight. It wasn’t that he thought he wouldn’t be welcomed, but rather, the fact that he had been gone for so long.
Things wouldn’t be the same, right?
They couldn’t be.
That was the thing about time—it changed everything. And God knew he had been gone for a long fucking time, now.
“Hey, Ren.”
The sound of his sister’s greeting had Renzo lifting his head. She smiled at him on the other side of the apartment door, but even he could see the anxiety in her gaze. She did her best to hide it, sure—all of them were exactly the same. Maybe it was a Zulla thing to hide their emotions so that no one else could pick them out, even to one another.
“Hey,” he replied.
Rose flipped the dish cloth she was holding over her shoulder, but didn’t move to let him inside the apartment. “Ground rules for tonight?”
“Do there have to be ground rules?”
“Sure, if I feel like you might run again.”
Renzo let out a hard sigh. “I’m not gonna—”
“Say I’ll see you later. That’s it. If you have to go … if it gets to be too much, or he asks you to leave, then that’s what you say. Never goodbye, Ren. Goodbye scares him, even if he doesn’t want to say it. So, we don’t say that. We say something that means we’ll be back again soon, simple as that. Got it?”
He could do that.
“Is that all?”
“No,” Rose said, pursing her lips. “And make sure you play nice with my other guest tonight. I didn’t get her here for you to chase her off. She’s here because I figure the both of you could use a little help together.”
Renzo blinked. “What are you talking—”
“Ren?”
He stiffened all over.
Like ice water had been tossed down his spine.
It wasn’t the reaction he wanted to have when he heard an older, gruffer version of his little brother’s voice, but there it was. Maybe it was because of the change in his brother’s v
oice—older, and slightly deeper, although not so much so that it meant he was becoming a young man. Just enough to shock Renzo with the sound, and remind him of how many years he had missed with this kid.
Renzo found his brother quickly.
There he stood at the end of the hallway in black slacks rolled up at the ankles, a faded band T-shirt, and a face that reminded Renzo of years gone past. He stared at Diego, and the kid stared back. He took in the changes of his brother—the boyish features starting to form into the face of a young man, and the inches he’d grown since the last time Renzo saw him. He imagined Diego was taking in all the differences he could see in Renzo, too.
The tattoos.
The shorter hair.
The nose ring.
Just … all the different things.
Renzo felt like shifting on the spot. He just needed to move. Down the hallway, Diego looked to be in the same situation. The way the kid twisted his hands into balls at his side, and rocked from foot to foot as the silence stretched on.
It was funny, he thought.
They were the same.
And yet, they weren’t.
“Talk,” Rose muttered beside him. “Say something, Ren.”
“Hey, buddy,” Renzo finally said.
Fuck.
Buddy?
Really?
The kid wasn’t four anymore, he was almost nine. Was buddy even a thing he liked to be called anymore? Did he have a fucking nickname? Was he hanging out with the right kids? Did he feel a need to refuse to conform to every single thing authority told him to like Renzo did?
Those were things he didn’t know.
Things he needed to know.
Diego gave Renzo a small smile. “I missed you, Ren.”
“Yeah?”
His little brother nodded.
All right, then.
“You’re gonna stay for dinner, right?” Diego asked. “Like Lucia is, too?”
Renzo shot Rose a look.
Well, there was the other guest, he supposed.
Rose shrugged. “Don’t be an asshole.”
Really, that’s what his sister thought he was going to do?
Whatever.
He put his attention back to Diego. “Could I get a hug?”
Renzo didn’t miss the way that Diego hesitated, but he didn’t blame the kid, either. He bet this was a little overwhelming, and all. Rose hadn’t told their little brother that Renzo was coming tonight—rightfully so, considering—so he suspected Diego was having all kinds of feelings about this that he was keeping locked up tight.
He could have them, too.
Renzo would wait them out.
Finally, Diego nodded. “Yeah, a hug would be cool.”
Renzo laughed.
Good enough for me.
He didn’t waste time coming into the apartment, and closing the distance between him and his brother. Diego stood perfectly still until Renzo was close enough for him to reach out and grab him, then he did just that. Once he had his brother wrapped tightly in his embrace, another part of his life felt like it had slipped back into its proper slot. Like once again, his world was righting itself back to the correct axis.
Everything had been messed up for so long.
Nothing had been right.
Slowly, Renzo was getting it back.
One piece at a time.
“Missed you,” Renzo murmured into his brother’s hair.
Diego held him tighter. “You never came to see me, Ren.”
He couldn’t.
He didn’t explain that—to Diego, it would be an excuse and not a real reason. It would be better for him to just not say anything at all.
“I’m sorry,” Renzo said, pulling away to stare at his brother. “But I’m going to do better now, okay? I’ll be around as much as you want me to be around, huh? I won’t miss anything if you don’t want me to.”
Somehow.
He’d make sure of it.
Diego nodded as his gaze drifted to the colorful ink coloring up the side of Renzo’s throat. “Did those hurt?”
Renzo laughed. “A little.”
Some more than others.
“Want to see a cool one?” Renzo asked.
Diego nodded.
Without a word, Renzo shrugged off his leather jacket, and tossed it to the floor where it could stay for the rest of the night for all he gave a damn. Lifting the sleeve of his T-shirt, he turned a bit to let Diego see the portrait he’d gotten done on his upper, right bicep.
Diego stilled. “That’s me.”
Renzo smiled. “Yeah, Diego. Rose sent me a picture from your first day of school—I went in and had it done shortly after.”
He was scared The League would take the photo away from him. They didn’t let him keep very many things, and even that photo … they’d kept that from him for a good month after he’d finally been given an address to use to let Rose send some things to him. Another thing he was made to earn, unfortunately.
It was only then that Renzo noticed the figure hanging back by the kitchen island. Lucia stayed on her stool watching them, and saying nothing. She was smiling, though. A lot like his sister behind him.
Renzo wondered if Rose was trying to play matchmaker.
He’d deal with that later.
“Lucia told me you’d always come back for me,” Diego whispered.
Renzo met his brother’s gaze again. “When did she say that?”
“A long time ago.”
Back then, he meant.
San Francisco.
The bad time.
He hugged his brother again. “She wasn’t wrong, Diego.”
“I know,” his brother mumbled. “Missed you, Ren.”
He had missed Diego more than this kid knew.
• • •
“Go wash your hands, all right?” Rose said from the head of the table.
Diego’s smile faltered as his gaze drifted from Rose, to Renzo. “But—”
“I’ll be here,” Renzo said quickly. “We’ve got that game to play on the Xbox, right?”
“Right, okay.”
Diego still peeked over his shoulder when he disappeared around the corner like he just needed to make sure Renzo wasn’t going anywhere. To his credit, Renzo gave the kid a smile to reassure him without calling him out on it.
Once Diego had snuck from the kitchen to do his business, Renzo went back to the table. For the most part, Lucia had been quiet during the dinner. Sure, she joined in on the conversation when Diego or Rose pulled her into it, but otherwise, she didn’t say much.
Renzo didn’t think that was because of him. At least, not because of his presence. He suspected it was more likely because Lucia was trying to give him a chance to catch up with Diego as much as possible without inserting herself into it.
He appreciated that.
“Thanks,” Renzo told Rose.
His sister arched a brow. “For what?”
“Everything, I suppose.”
Lucia cleared her throat, but stayed quiet in her seat while the two siblings talked.
“You don’t have to thank me for anything, Ren,” Rose said.
Renzo disagreed. “Who else will? You stepped up, right. You shouldn’t have needed to, I guess. He wasn’t your responsibility, but I kind of threw him onto you when it was probably the last thing you needed at the time. And yet, you just kept on going—you did what you needed to do.”
Rose nodded. “Maybe I had a good teacher, huh? Did you ever consider that?”
“No, why would I?”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Rose replied in a sigh. “It was always second nature for you to take care of us. You never questioned it because it was all you ever knew, right? It was how it always was for you, so you did it.”
“Of course.”
And he didn’t feel bad about it, either.
Rose shrugged. “I had an older brother who busted his ass day in and day out as I grew up to make sure I never went hungry, or cold
. I learned what it meant to sacrifice because you taught me that it was okay to give up a piece of yourself for someone else if it meant they were going to be a little happier. As long as I loved someone else, then I would be loved in return. That’s the lesson you taught me, Ren.”
He shifted on his chair.
Huh.
He’d never thought of it that way.
“It shouldn’t have been our jobs anyway,” Rose said, “but we didn’t have anyone else to take care of us, Ren. Not parents worth anything, you know. So, the only person I had to learn from was you, but I’m grateful for that.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Renzo murmured. Then, he had another thought. “Does she ever come around—or him, even?”
“Mom?”
Renzo nodded. “Or dad, I guess.”
“Never.”
He wished he could be surprised.
“Ever?” Lucia asked.
Her first time speaking, and this time, she inserted herself into the equation without someone else bringing her into it.
Rose turned her attention to Lucia, and smiled sadly. “Back when Renzo was first … uh, taken away, yeah, she came around. But that was only to try and take Diego away from me. She wanted the check that would come with him, basically. She put on a good show for the CPS workers, and everything, but she couldn’t stay clean. I had a good lawyer. Hansen and Hansen Law were great—they didn’t give her a fucking inch when it came to Diego.”
Lucia stilled, and her gaze drifted to Renzo. “Hansen and Hansen?”
“Yeah, why?”
“That’s a really expensive law firm,” Lucia said quietly. “I know because my cousin’s wife works for them—she’s a partner.”
Rose didn’t even blink when she replied, “I know, at first I thought it was pro bono, but it turned out someone else was footing the bill for the law firm. I found that out later when some paperwork accidentally got mailed to me instead of the firm.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Your father, Lucia,” Rose said. “He paid for my lawyers. He never asked for anything in return, and I never got the chance to thank him.”
Lucia looked to Renzo again.
A silent question in her eyes …
Did you know?
He nodded, although it was never something that had passed his mind over the past years. Lucian had told him during his visit to Renzo in prison.
