Renzo + Lucia: The Complete Trilogy - Bethany-Kris Page 0,7

his siblings could have something good in theirs.

But nobody cared about that. Those were details. Nobody liked those.

“Well,” Noah asked again, “are you?”

“Yeah,” Renzo said, his voice coming out gruffer than he intended. “Later.”

He probably should have grabbed something to drink, at the very least, but he was already late taking his little brother, Diego, to the shelter that morning, so he’d be safe for the day. It wasn’t like Renzo could count on his mother to take care of her four-year-old, and the chick on their block who watched him had shit to do today. At least at the shelter, they had a free daycare as long as the spots weren’t filled by the time he got there. He’d much rather have Diego there than walking the streets with him all day, anyway.

“Well, when will we—”

Renzo turned his sharp gaze on Perry. The youngest of all of them at seventeen, Perry was a handful sometimes. Sure, he got the job done, and he was sneaky as fuck when it came to staying out of trouble, but still … a handful.

“You’ll get your packages tomorrow. Don’t you have a bit to carry you through?”

Perry shrugged. “I guess I got enough.”

“Yeah, all right.”

Giving the rest of them a look as if to silently ask, Anyone else? None of them spoke up.

Renzo stuffed his hands in his pockets, and eyed the quiet streets. Across the way, a man slept in the mouth of an alleyway tucked inside a dirty sleeping bag. Every day, that man and his pigeon stayed in the same exact spot. And every fucking day, it was a reminder to Ren.

He’d been there.

More than once.

Shortly after his birth, his mother sucked on a meth pipe, blew a positive, and got kicked out of the shelter where she’d been staying with him. She called it an act of kindness that the shelter hadn’t called CPS for four-week-old Renzo.

He just called it bullshit.

At thirteen, he slept inside the tunnel of a slide at one of the city parks, and used a public bathroom to wash his face every morning.

His sister, Rose, had been around then. She cried all the damn time. She was cold, and hungry. Sometimes, their mother showed up with enough money to keep them warm in a pay-by-the-hour motel but that was just as much a blessing as it was curse.

Especially when they had to step out of the hotel room every so often, and listen to the sounds that slipped out from under the door when each new man would randomly show up.

Renzo made a choice, then. That was the first time he went out on the streets, and looked for some kind of work to give him money to keep his sister warm, and feed her. At first, it’d just been chasing dregs and homeless away from businesses that didn’t want that kind of problem in front of their windows. One day, a guy in a leather jacket handed Renzo a package, and asked if he’d run it up to the man sitting in a bakery in Queens.

No questions, he’d been told.

Don’t open the package, he’d been warned.

He ran that package, and without ever knowing what it was, had a thousand dollars in his hand by the time he got home.

That man was Vito,

Vito came back, too. Renzo kept saying yes to jobs. He put money away, worked from the time the sun came up, until the streets were pitch black. He kept walking and moving and running for people who wore better clothes than he did and drove vehicles he could only dream about because they paid well, he didn’t ask questions, and he needed to do better.

He needed to do better for his sister, and then later, his brother, too.

The rest was fucking history.

His life was not a pretty one.

It was the only he was given.

And fuck anyone who said he didn’t try because he did. All he ever did was try.

“I’ll get your shit to sell,” Renzo told the guys, “right after I make a trip into Brooklyn.”

Noah and Perry nodded like that was enough for them. Diesel, on the other hand, decided he wanted to test Renzo’s already thin patience by running his mouth. As he usually did.

Nothing new.

“Say hi to Rose for me, yeah?” Diesel punctuated that smartass comment with a smirk. “Haven’t seen her in a while.”

Renzo turned a bit, ready to leave, but not before tossing a remark over his shoulder he knew would cut the other man. “Rose