He didn’t have time to placate her. Not right now. A quick peek out the window told him they were getting close to the day being over which meant the rent needed to be in that asshole’s hand. He didn’t have the rent money—all the money he had saved up from doing odd jobs for Vito Christiano—which wasn’t very much—went straight into getting them into this place before Diego was born, keeping his mother calm so she didn’t ruin the whole damn thing, and making sure Diego had what Renzo assumed a baby needed.
He was deadass broke.
He hadn’t been able to pick up a job from Vito since Diego was born because he hadn’t been able to leave the baby alone. Who the hell else was going to take care of him? His mother? Her coked-out ass could barely take care of herself when she was around to do that.
“I need you to look after Diego for a couple of hours,” Renzo said, passing over the sleeping baby. “Do not put him down and walk away from him, Rose. He’s still shaking, and he doesn’t sleep a lot as it is. It helps when you hold him—he doesn’t get as scared or loud.”
Really, Renzo thought it didn’t hurt the baby as much when someone was holding him. It calmed him. Rose didn’t really understand because Renzo never thought to explain to her that drugs plus a pregnancy didn’t equal anything good, but as long as she followed his direction with Diego, then that was all he cared about.
Rose peered down at the swaddled baby. “What if he wakes up?”
“Change his diaper, and give him a bottle.”
“But he throws up every time he eats, Ren!”
Yeah, that was another thing …
“As long as he doesn’t choke, then he’s okay. Just pat his back and see if he’ll take more. Can you handle it, or what?”
Rose didn’t look all that confident, but Renzo didn’t have the time to find someone else to watch the baby.
“I need to get out of here—I will be two hours, tops. Okay?”
“Just two hours?” Rose questioned.
Renzo shrugged. “Maybe less.”
Unlikely, but if it got him out of that apartment …
“All right,” Rose said.
Great.
• • •
Vito Christiano was a terrifying figure on the streets—he always wore black, no matter what. Black shoes, black suits, and a fucking black heart, if you asked somebody. Black was his color. Like his dark eyes, and the color of the Cadillac he drove through the Bronx twice a week just to remind every fucker working on the corner that he owned their asses.
Renzo’s work with Vito always came down to two simple things—Renzo’s availability and willingness to do a job, and Vito’s needs at any given moment. He could always be available, and he was willing to do just about any job, but Vito on the other hand, didn’t always have work to give Renzo, or … he made it seem that way.
Another thing the guy didn’t do?
Take requests.
Maybe that was why Renzo was so surprised to see that familiar Cadillac pull up next to the alleyway where he’d been keeping safe from the rain for the last forty-five minutes since he made the call to Vito on the payphone down the block. The passenger side window rolled down, and Vito’s cold, dark eyes stared at him from the driver’s seat.
“What, are you going to sit in that alley all night, Ren?” the Italian asked. “Because I am not getting my ass out of this car to walk to you, cafone.”
It wasn’t that getting inside the Cadillac made Renzo scared, but rather … uncomfortable. Mostly because when he was outside of the vehicle, he felt like he had a little more control. He wasn’t closed off, and closed in. He could—or he had a chance, rather—to get away if he needed to.
There was nowhere to go inside that car.
And he knew things about Vito … he knew what people said about this man. Mafioso, they whispered. Organized crime, people said.
Bad fuckin’ news.
“I don’t have all night,” Vito snapped.
Renzo was quick to push off the wall of the alley, and head for the car. It wasn’t like he had a choice. The smell of new leather and pine needles filled his lungs the second he sat in the vehicle. Warmth blew from the heaters, and a quiet melody strummed from the speakers—old music Renzo had little to no interest in.
But he wasn’t here for the leather, the warmth, or the music.
“Lucky I was in the area,” Vito grumbled around the toothpick he’d pulled from behind his ear to stick in the corner of his mouth. “I don’t have time to chase boys all around the city, Renzo. What do you need? I thought you had other things to handle. New baby, right?”
Renzo kept one eye on the man in the driver’s seat, and one on the road ahead of him. “Need a job. Something to get done and be paid before the day is out.”
Vito grunted. “I don’t have anything for you at the moment.”
Shit.
“At all?”
Vito shook his head, and scrubbed a hand down his throat. “Nothing you would wanna take, anyhow.”
“I have a four-hundred-dollar rent bill to pay, and food to buy for my sister and brother. So, I’m not really picky at the moment, Vito.”
There, he said it.
Now, he could pretend like he didn’t.
Vito was quiet for a long while, but Renzo still felt the man’s eyes burning holes into him from the side. It was easier to act like the guy wasn’t sizing him up when he didn’t have to look at him. He hated pity—useless emotion, really. It did nothing for him. Pity didn’t make money appear, or keep them from going hungry.
Pity just was.
Renzo stiffened in the seat. He’d never told Vito about Carmen, or the constant shit she put her kids through. There wasn’t a need to tell the man, really. “How—”
“And I bet your fuck-up of a father ain’t been around, either,” Vito mumbled.
His head snapped to the side, and he eyed Vito openly, wary and concerned. They didn’t talk personal shit whenever Renzo did a job for the guy, and he wasn’t even sure how Vito knew anything about his drug addict mother and deadbeat father.
Vito was about to explain, apparently. “Used to run these streets with your dad, yeah? Me and him, wanted that button like nothing else. Gonna be made, we used to say.” The man chuckled, and gave Renzo a look from the side as he shrugged with a raised brow, adding, “Made men, you know?”
Yeah, Renzo knew what that meant.
Sort of.
“Sure,” he said.
Vito nodded, and laughed in that dry, dark way again. “I think you know the words, but not what it is, kid. And that’s fine—you don’t need to know. Couldn’t leave that mother of yours alone, though. Like he couldn’t leave the fuckin’ bottle alone, too, and how you couldn’t trust him with anything more than a few dollars because he ran it to the casino or a damn bookie the first chance he could.”
Renzo swallowed hard.
None of that was a lie.
“Gotta follow the rules of made men if you’re gonna be a made man,” Vito mumbled more to himself than Renzo as he patted the pocket of his silk shirt. Soon, he found the cigarette and lighter he was looking for, lighting it up and sticking it in his mouth. Renzo ignored the heavy smoke, and tried to focus on the quiet street ahead of him. “I followed the rules, you know? Got my button, but had to step away from him. Can’t be connected to people who make you look bad. Knew about you, though, and your sister. Your ma never got any better; neither did your father.”
“Listen—”
Vito coughed on a heavy drag of the cigarette, and rolled down his window a bit to flick the ash outside. “No, you listen. I’ll spot you what you need, Ren. I bet you don’t like owing somebody money, so I suspect you’re gonna do whatever I want you to do to pay me back, and that’s good. That’s a good thing because you’re smart enough and just quick enough to maybe make something of nothing on these streets. We’ll get you figured out for that. But it’s not that—the mo
ney—that you need to worry about, okay?”
Renzo glanced over at the man. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s a book,” Vito said, taking another drag from the cigarette and then eyeing the cherry red tip. “A book called The Angry Christian. The author—a guy named Bert Ghezzi—says that resentment is akin to taking poison into your body willingly, and hoping it kills the person you’re resentful of, or who caused your resentment.”
He didn’t know how to reply to that, so he just stayed quiet. Vito didn’t seem like he minded, really.
“Anger’s the same way, you know. Bitterness, too. You harbor enough of that for them, Ren, and it’s only going to get worse over the years. It ain’t gonna do nothing to them, but it’s going to kill you. Like putting a gun to your head, holding it there, and then pulling the trigger hoping it’s going to kill them. It ain’t never gonna kill them, kid … harboring that only hurts you. Learn to let it go.”
Renzo blinked.
Vito wasn’t wrong.
He hated his parents.
Hated this life they brought him into.
Hated everything.
“Yeah,” Vito said quietly like he could read Renzo’s mind. “Yeah, kid, that right there. Gotta let it go, Ren.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Do you know what harbor means, yeah?”
Renzo cleared his throat. “I guess.”
“Mmm, not the noun, or the usage of the verb I just gave you, the other one,” Vito said.
“No.”
Vito sighed. “If you can’t let go of what you’re harboring, Ren, then you need to learn to be someone else’s harbor. The safe place—the refuge. People are counting on you, right? Don’t let them down. Don’t let them down by falling into the same rabbit hole of the people who made you, kid. You gotta be better.”
Renzo sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah, all right.”
“You gotta do better.”
With that said, Vito opened the dash on the car to expose stacks of money. He gestured at it with one hand, saying to Renzo, “You take what you need, and you pay it back with forty percent interest on the top. You got me?”
That’s a lot of money.
“Go ahead,” Vito grunted, replacing the cigarette with the toothpick again, “and then we’ll talk about what job you’re gonna do for me next, kid.”
Renzo took the money.
Like Vito said, he had to be that shelter—the safe harbor.
People were counting on him.
He couldn’t let them down.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bethany-Kris is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to four young sons, one cat, and three dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, a snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a spouse calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something ... when she can find the time.
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OTHER BOOKS
Andino + Haven
Duty
Vow
John + Siena
Loyalty
Disgrace
Cross + Catherine
Always
Revere
Unruly
The Companion
Naz & Roz
Guzzi Duet
Unraveled, Book One
Entangled, Book Two
DeLuca Duet
Waste of Worth: Part One
Worth of Waste: Part Two
Standalone Titles
Effortless
Inflict
Cozen
Captivated
Dishonored
Donati Bloodlines
Thin Lies
Thin Lines
Thin Lives
Behind the Bloodlines
The Complete Trilogy
Filthy Marcellos
Antony
Lucian
Giovanni
Dante
Legacy
A Very Marcello Christmas
The Complete Collection
Seasons of Betrayal
Where the Sun Hides
Where the Snow Falls
Where the Wind Whispers
Seasons: The Complete Seasons of Betrayal Series
Gun Moll Trilogy
Gun Moll
Gangster Moll
Madame Moll
The Chicago War
Deathless & Divided
Reckless & Ruined
Scarless & Sacred
Breathless & Bloodstained
The Complete Series
Maldives & Mistletoe
The Russian Guns
The Arrangement
The Life
The Score
Demyan & Ana
Shattered
The Jersey Vignettes
Find more on Bethany-Kris’s website at www.bethanykris.com.
Copyright © 2018 by Bethany-Kris. All Rights Reserved.
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted material is illegal and punishable by law. No parts of this work may be reproduced, copied, used, or printed without expressed written consent from the publisher/author. Exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in reviews.
eISBN 13: 978-1-988197-77-7
Editor: Elizabeth Peters
Proofreaders: Tracy A., Mia B., Tori W. and Felicia F.
Cover Design © London Miller
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, corporations, locales and so forth are a product of the author’s imagination, or if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.