by Bethany-Kris
He might ask it.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Cree glanced sideways at his partner when Dare didn’t continue with his briefing. “Sorry, were you waiting for me?”
Dare let out a sigh, offering nothing else as he turned his shoulders to face the room once more. “Back to what I was saying—keep your attention on the images. We will not be going over this a second time in the same fashion. And since the job just came in, it’s very likely this could turn time sensitive, and then we’ll need to just move on it. Better for us all to figure out where we all stand here and now. Understood?”
Confirmative murmurs passed over the room. Including Renzo’s and the woman beside him. A good head and a half shorter than him, in a room full of assassins, Luv Moore looked like nothing more than a kid out of her element. From the second he met her, he always wondered how she found herself mixed up with The League, but he knew better than to ask.
While everyone else in the room went with black ensembles and used tactical gear as accessories, she wore skinny jeans with blown-out knees and a bomber jacket she’d zipped up to her throat. With a head full of thin, blonde hair that curled a bit at the ends and big blue eyes that seemed innocent, her small figure and dainty features only added to the whole pixie-vibe she had going on. Add in the fact the girl could bounce from one thing to the next, bubbly one second and then vicious in a breath, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.
Except the chick was his new … pet project.
Dare’s words, not his.
All League members took their turns mentoring someone who could match their energy and skills in one way or another. The only thing Renzo understood about his new partnership with Luv while she finished the remaining months of her training was that like him, she enjoyed blowing shit up. She was pretty quick with wires, had a taste for hacking when she was in the mood, and that was basically it.
He didn’t even know her age officially, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she was young. Really young. Barely eighteen, he assumed. If that.
Her age is not important, Dare explained when Ren arrived yesterday. All he was expected to do with Luv was engage her with training and have her accompany him on any job where she wouldn’t be considered a risk until she was cleared to go out on her own after next year’s auctions, and her contract was picked up.
He had a handful of conversations with her. Today was supposed to be training for her while he observed, but then Dare called the team in.
This job.
Whatever the fuck it was.
“A private-owned bank,” Dare said, “currently holding a quarter of a billion in gold owned by one—”
“You got a kid, right?”
Renzo’s gaze drifted down to the girl at his side. “Pardon?”
“People talk. Before you showed up, they said you live in New York with your wife and kid.”
Mostly, he didn’t mind Luv’s questioning because it was innocent enough. He cared more that people at the compound were discussing anything about another member without said member there to join. He would deal with that another time.
“I have a son, yes,” Renzo said quietly as to not gain Dare’s attention from the front of the room. After all, the man was busy explaining the takeover and robbery of a bank in a country across the world. That flight was sure to be fun. Not. “He’s three. Lorenzo. We just call him Lo or Loren.”
“Huh.”
He gave her another look. Her noise gave him the impression she didn’t understand the concept of a parent and child. It made him consider her further—if only because he was curious how she found her way to The League when she looked to be an age where she probably still needed a parent minding her. Then again, who was he to talk when he practically raised himself?
“Orphan?” he asked.
Ren didn’t need to say more for her to understand.
Luv shrugged. “Chosen.”
What did that mean?
He opted not to ask.
At the front of the room, Dare continued on. “The name we’ll be using for this job is Selective.”
The man’s stare found Renzo.
“And why is that, New York?”
Goddammit.
That nickname still stuck.
Cree always smiled when someone else used it.
The room turned on Renzo in the corner. A long time ago, the attention might have annoyed him if for no other reason than he didn’t appreciate people staring just because they felt like it. Right then, however, he didn’t have time to be bothered when Dare was waiting for an answer.
Always testing them, he knew.
It never failed.
“Selective destruction,” Renzo said, looking over the new image on the projection—the layout for the bank and the vaults.
Because apparently, there was more than one.
“Selective destruction,” Dare echoed. “Exactly. It’s how we’ll handle entering and removing what we need from the vaults. Minimal damage to lessen any blowback after the job is done, but also for the client. He would like his gold. Undamaged. You all will receive a secure text with file attachments in two minutes. You’ll find more information on this job. Preparations begin immediately. Don’t waste time.”
Luv bounced beside Renzo. “Well, this looks like fun.”
He didn’t bother to reply because a text had his phone buzzing in his pocket. Pulling the device out to check it, he hoped it would be his wife—Lucia still kept him updated on her day, but now with the addition of pictures and voice memos from his three-year-old son, too.
There, life was a dream.
Here, it was entirely different.
It wasn’t Lucia. It was from Rose. His sister’s message didn’t have him smiling, either. We need to talk about Diego, it read. What was that about?
Renzo didn’t think he’d like it. Whatever it was. For the most part, Rose handled everything about Diego because Ren couldn’t when he had to travel back and forth between New York and Nevada. He helped when he could, but she was in their teenage brother’s everyday grind. She was the one who made sure the kid got up, did what he needed to do, and everything else. If she said they needed to talk, then he’d make time.
He typed back a quick I’ll call in a bit as Dare said from the front of the room, “Bomb specialist will have final say on all plans—he’ll be the final act in this. Make sure you know where and what he’s doing because of it. Ren?”
His head popped up from his phone.
Right.
He was the bomb specialist here.
“Sounds good,” he told Dare.
Dare clicked a button on the remote, and the projection screen disappeared from the wall. At the same time, every phone in the room that belonged to a member buzzed, dinged or rang in some fashion. Including Renzo’s.
“Your files have arrived,” their boss said, “so get to work.”
THREE
Diego
Keeping the selfie stick high and angled down to catch Diego’s lift from the ground before he landed the bottom of his board on the metal railing of the cement stairs, he caught it perfectly. And so did the camera, he bet. The skateboard protested under the weight and pressure of being stuck between him and the railing—how many had he broken doing this exact stunt over the last year alone?
Enough.
Or that’s what his sister said.
The few people who had gathered at the bottom of the stairs were quick to scatter when Diego flew off the end of the railing seemingly out of control. It kind of felt like he was, too. Those few seconds of being weightless in the air on his board, rushing too fast, changed to the ground coming at him before he even realized what happened.
Yet, it never scared him.
He liked it too much.
Diego swung the selfie stick around to catch the bright rays of the sun overhead and then a wide shot of the skatepark as his board slammed into the ground on all four wheels. Learning the skill of skateboardi
ng was one thing, but doing it while running a camera at the same time was a whole other ball game. While he had yet to suffer a broken bone—well, nothing beyond a broken toe or sprain—he took a lot of falls. He got a lot of stitches; bruises, gashes and bloody noses or mouths was part of the territory.
Still, he liked it.
Sometimes people liked to see that shit; sometimes they didn’t. He quickly learned to edit videos to make a minute or two entertaining—or rather, how to edit things out, if needed. A lot of work went into both his vlogs and photography. More than people understood, typically. He liked doing both, though. One let him focus on what he could see, and the other allowed his followers to see how he did it all.
The second his weight came down on the board as he rolled across cement, Diego let the selfie stick and camera fall to his side, so he could focus on coming to a safe stop in the semi-busy skatepark. A lot of the faces were ones he recognized.
It was only the call of his name that reminded him why he’d actually skipped school—and that exam—to come to the park today.
“Hey! Over here, Diego!”
With his camera still rolling, although it wasn’t catching anything but passing cement and audio, Diego came to a stop just two feet away from Marty Lorde. He hadn’t been sure the guy would even come seeing as how during their last meeting, Diego hadn’t exactly jumped at the opportunity the Los Angeles manager—who toted an entire list of recognizable names that he represented.
He should have jumped at it, though.
Wasn’t this the chance of a lifetime?
“No school?” Marty asked him.
Diego shrugged, and slammed the heel of his Vans sneaker into the back of the board. The front flew up from the ground, and he caught it easily. Just as fast, he shut off his camera, knowing now wasn’t the time to go back through the footage though he really wanted to see if he had caught the takeoff and landing like he hoped. “Wasn’t that important today.”
Marty chuckled; the almost thirty-year-old man was slightly out of place in the skatepark with his black, fitted suit and professional demeanor considering he was the only one around who looked like he did. “School is always important.”
“But not today.”
Even if he had missed an exam that was a large percentage of his final grade.
Oh, well. Win some, lose some.
“Did you give what I said any thought or—”
“I have some questions.”
“Shoot,” Marty replied with a wave in his direction. “I’ve got nowhere better to be, and I know something like this is … I mean, it’s a big change. A huge step. You wanna know what I can do for you, then ask away. It’s the only way you’ll learn and feel like you can make the right choice for you.”
Right.
It was the same thing he said when he first approached Diego with the offer. He could tell the guy was serious—he wanted to sign on to managing Diego’s career not just entertain him while the man was in New York on business. He saw potential and wanted to help get Diego where he needed to be to make his wildest dreams possible.
Or that was the dream Marty tried selling.
“I want to have freedom of my name and brand,” Diego said, “and not just … be a rep or whatever.”
Marty nodded, seemingly pleased with that statement. “With representation on the ground for you, it’ll be a lot easier to do that.”
“And brand deals—”
“Will secure you a decent amount of cash. Income. Influencers struggle the most to secure brand deals in the current market because it’s oversaturated, but I can make it a hell of a lot easier on you. In LA, you’re going to need the income coming in regularly and consistently. And the more present you are, with the most recognizable brands on the market at the moment, the better off you’ll be, and the nicer you’ll look to anyone else. It’s all about raising your profile, Diego. Making you … in demand.”
“Huh.”
He understood.
Mostly.
“I mean, were you planning anything else next year?” Marty asked. “College or whatever?”
Diego barely considered his reply. “Not really.”
Everyone else was.
Not him, though.
“Nothing else I really want to do,” Diego admitted after a stretch of silence.
Marty passed him a look, but said nothing. Diego didn’t offer a reply after that, either. Maybe it was something in his voice that the manager heard, but the guy smiled slightly telling him, “Listen, you still have time to think about it. I’ve got time. And it’s not like I can’t just fly you out, you know? If you wanted to come out and see what it could be like for you in LA with a decent rep watching your back—say the word, kid, I’ll make it happen. Get you set up. You’re worth it, Diego.”
Was he?
Diego didn’t really know.
“You still have my card, right?” Marty asked.
“Yeah, tucked away.”
“Then, you know how to reach me. Say the word, and your next stop is LA, kid.”
He was still considering Marty’s offer long after the man had left the skatepark. Fucking with his camera to check the footage from earlier, the idea of LA continued playing on repeat in his mind and what it could all mean. Maybe it was just too much information for his seventeen—almost eighteen—year-old brain to truly comprehend, but that didn’t make much of a difference to him.
LA seemed like the right choice.
The buzzing of his phone had him glancing to the left of his current perch on the cement steps of the park’s exit. Figuring it was just going to be Rose saying the school called again because he didn’t show up, he was surprised to find a different name lighting up the screen.
Renzo, that was.
He snatched the phone up from the ground and answered the call without thinking about it. “Hey, Ren.”
“You know Rose has called me twice today because you didn’t show up to school—”
“I had something else to do.”
“Again,” Renzo finished quietly.
He loved his brother.
He did.
Sometimes, though, Ren got that parent tone going on when he spoke, and Diego didn’t want to hear any of it. He blamed that on the fact that he never really had parents to begin with. Only his older siblings that looked out for him and did what they needed to do even though raising him wasn’t their job.
He wished they understood that didn’t make them his mother or father—so far, no such luck.
“I was looking forward to coming to Nevada to see you,” Diego said, referring to the trip he was supposed to take soon, “but less when you … do that, Ren.”
“Do what?” his brother asked.
“That. You know what.”
Renzo sighed on the other end of the call. “I know about Rose and what’s been going on. Skipping school. The restlessness. Late nights. You’re not in some shit I have to take care of again, are you?”
Diego rolled his eyes. “No.”
“Diego—”
“I said no, bro.”
And he meant it.
He wasn’t in trouble.
He was just …
“Hey,” Renzo said, his tone soft but firm at the same time on the call. “You can talk to me about anything. You know that, right?”
Maybe that’s what he’d been waiting for here—the thing that he needed to finally make a decision about what he wanted to do with his life. Or rather, whether he should take the leap and uproot his entire world just to chase what felt like a pipe dream across the country. Something like college and a traditional job were sure things. Hopes and dreams were not.
Diego felt like he was on the verge of something. Or a lot of things. Adulthood. Understanding himself. Greatness. Whatever form that took.
“You okay?” his brother asked.
He was.
Sort of.
Instead, Diego replied, “Just—hey, can we talk when I get out there with
you? I need somebody to listen and let me talk through some stuff.”
Renzo didn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely.”
FOUR
Renzo
“Rose, I told you. Did I not tell you?”
“I know, I know.”
His sister said she knew—like she had told him again and again since their last conversation—but he wasn’t sure she did understand a lot of what was going on when it came to Diego. She assumed a lot he realized. Both his sister and her husband decided a lot about what was the case with their younger brother, but Renzo also learned something else the more he talked to Rose about what was happening back in New York.
She didn’t talk to Diego.
Or rather, she didn’t listen.
It was a lot of we want and we think and he should whenever Renzo got Rose down into the nitty-gritty of the problem they thought they had with Diego and his lack of … motivation. The bigger issue was that Diego’s disinterest was probably a symptom of something else, and he didn’t think Rose or her husband understood that at all.
They were too busy trying to make sure Diego could be a responsible adult because his adulthood was right around the corner. Renzo absolutely recognized the whys of it all, but that didn’t mean their seventeen-year-old brother did, could, or even cared.
But given he was in Nevada, Diego wouldn’t be on a flight to him until tomorrow, and Ren had a job to do here before he could get back home and be present in New York … well, for the moment he was stuck dealing with what he could during phone calls. He and Rose made attempt after attempt to come to some solution between the two of them that would allow them to be united in front of Diego when they presented him with some options.
Except that was hard to do when Renzo hadn’t even spoken to his little brother for long enough to get into the topic of what was going on. He respected Rose’s position on encouraging Diego to further his education—or at least, try. He also thought that maybe there was something his brother might want to do, and why couldn’t he have a conversation with Diego about it first before he decided anything else?
