Harbor (Renzo and Lucia #2)

har·bor

/ˈhärbər/

verb

1. keep (a thought or feeling, typically a negative one) in one’s mind, especially secretly.

2. give a home or shelter to.

There’s got to be more to life than this.

Even as the old man landlord bitched in the apartment doorway, Renzo Zulla’s mind was on something else entirely. Somewhere that bills weren’t a problem, and rent wasn’t due. Somewhere that a newborn didn’t cry harder than other newborns, and he didn’t have to stay up all night just to watch the baby shake in his sleep because the drugs their mother had pumped into her body during his pregnancy hadn’t left his blood yet.

Somewhere that was better than here.

He’d not found it yet.

“Where is your mother?” the landlord demanded.

Renzo came out of his thoughts to stare the man head-on. What should he say?

I don’t know.

She left the night we brought Diego home.

Probably shooting up somewhere.

Renzo figured none of those things would help his case here. If only because, well, the man might call someone on Renzo. It was just him and Rose, and two-week-old Diego in the apartment. He wasn’t even fucking seventeen yet, either.

“She’s out,” Renzo lied.

The bitterness that festered in his chest whenever he lied for his mother grew each time he had to do it. Mostly because he didn’t want to have to lie for her at all. It wasn’t like she deserved it. She couldn’t even do the bare minimum for the three kids she brought into the world, but here he was protecting her time and time again.

Even if it wasn’t really for her.

Still pissed him off.

“When is she gonna be back?” the landlord demanded.

Renzo swallowed the thickness in his throat, replying, “Later, maybe.”

Days was more like it.

If not weeks.

Carmen was harder to predict than the weather, and Renzo had stopped trying. Besides, he didn’t have the time or patience anymore. He had other things to worry about—the two-week-old in his arms, for example. Diego needed to eat, and Renzo was running low on that powder formula. Or even the girl in the living room trying to get her brush stroke just right with paint brushes he’d lifted from an art store, and a canvas her teacher let her take from school.

He couldn’t worry about where the fuck his mother was right now, or when she was going to get back. Frankly, a part of him wished she would never come back because honestly, life might be easier.

It would certainly be better.

“Well,” the landlord grunted, pushing his heavy body away from the door finally, “I am gonna need that rent before the end of the day, Renzo, or a notice is going up on the door. Do you hear me?”

Renzo wished his throat didn’t feel so fucking tight, so he could tell this man where he should shove his goddamn rent money. “You’ll get your money.”

“Make sure of it.” The man’s beady eyes dropped to the swaddled—the lady next door showed Renzo how to do it for Diego—baby tucked into Renzo’s arms. “Cute kid—having them younger and younger, huh?”

The landlord didn’t give him a chance to reply and deny that Diego was his son before he turned and left. Not that it would matter, really. Very few people had even known his mother was pregnant with a third child she would never be able to care for because of her drug habit and lack of love for her children. All the drugs she used kept her sickly-skinny, and sickly-looking, too. She’d barely looked pregnant when Diego was finally born, and he barely broke five pounds on the scale, too.

“Ren?”

Closing the apartment door, Renzo turned to face his almost-fifteen-year-old sister with what he hoped seemed like a smile. He couldn’t be fucking sure. Even smiling was more difficult than it should be, really.

“Yeah, everything is fine, Rose,” he told her.

His sister didn’t look like she believed it.

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 anybody. 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 stand 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 now, Vito.”

There, he said it.

Now, he could pretend like he hadn’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.

“Your Ma’s fucked off again, then?” Vito asked.

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. Or 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 money—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.