Renzo + Lucia: The Complete Trilogy - Bethany-Kris

PROLOGUE

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.

— Oprah Winfrey

Lucia Marcello

The baby hadn’t been planned or expected, not when her oldest sibling had over a decade of years on her, and her parents had believed undoubtedly that they would not have any more children after their last daughter.

But here she was.

And God knew she was loved.

Maybe she hadn’t been planned, but she had been most wanted.

Born in the early morning inside a private suite, the baby girl was wrapped in the softest muslin wrap after being warmed, and washed of any remnants of the birth. Tucked away in a Labor and Delivery Ward of a hospital where there was a doctor for every few patients, and three nurses to every laboring woman, her parents made calls to people who were probably still sleeping, and had their own children to care for.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents …

Despite sleeping, those people would still come.

They would come to welcome a new principessa to the Marcello family. They would come to congratulate her parents. They would bring her oldest brother, and two older sisters to say hello for the first time. They would bring gifts, and beautiful things to say thank you for being ours.

They would all hear her name.

Lucia.

And they would love her simply because she was alive. They would love her because she was born a Marcello.

Born rich, to a family that was both adored and feared, her parents would make sure she wanted for nothing.

That was the privilege of Lucia Marcello.

Simply because she had been born.

• • •

Renzo Zulla

The baby hadn’t been planned or expected, not when his mother was barely past her sixteenth birthday and hadn’t slept on a mattress with a sheet since before she found out she was pregnant.

But here he was.

And God knew he wasn’t wanted.

Maybe he hadn’t been planned or wanted, but his mother couldn’t find it in herself to give him up, either.

Born on a warm evening in an Emergency Room triage bed because his mother had waited too long to go to the hospital, and the Labor and Delivery Ward was full, the baby boy laid wrapped in scratchy cotton. His mother explained tiredly for the third time that she didn’t have an insurance card. With a smear of ruddy blood still staining the floor of a hospital where the hallways were currently full of the sick, and the nurses were overworked, one thought to ask his mother if there was someone she might like to call.

Grandparents, other family … the father, perhaps?

Those people would never come.

They wouldn’t come to welcome a new baby they hadn’t even known the teenager was pregnant with. They wouldn’t come to congratulate his mother. They wouldn’t come to help, or to show his mother how to love him or keep him alive. They wouldn’t bring gifts, or any beautiful things.

They wouldn’t hear his name at all.

Renzo.

Given the name his father hated when his mother told the man the ones she was considering for him in a dank alley months ago. Given a name that would already make his absent father hate him.

Born poor, to a mother who’d only stopped sucking on a pipe long enough to birth a healthy child she refused to give up, and without a home to keep him warm.

That was the misfortune of Renzo Zulla.

Simply because he had been born.

ONE

The one thing a person could never escape once they were born a Marcello?

Love.

Sometimes that love was soft, and supportive, and everything a person needed to propel them into a world that was ready to tear them to bits. And sometimes, that love was suffocating, and heavy, and everything a person wished they could escape from because there was no growth when people were holding you too tight.

Lucia Marcello liked to call that a double-edged sword. Maybe it was because she was the baby, but she was on the receiving end of that love a hell of a lot more than any of her other siblings when it came to her parents. Like they were scared to let her fly, and so they were just going to keep holding onto her until she broke free on her own.

She thought … maybe it was time to do just that.

“Principessa,” Lucian said, placing a kiss to the top of his daughter’s head.

“Hey, Daddy,” Lucia greeted.

She went back to the binder of information that she needed to study. Apparently, volunteering for a women’s and children’s shelter for the summer wasn’t as easy as simply signing up