Page 96 of Harbor

“I was trying to be sensitive.”

“Don’t bother. I don’t need your sensitivity. I lived my life—I know what’s happened to me.”

Lucian leaned back in the chair, and stroked a hand down his jaw. Never once did he take his gaze away from Renzo, though. “You know what kind of amazed me is that while you were a kid who grew up poor, though, and even when you were bringing in five-K a month selling drugs and handling your group of guys in the Bronx, you still lived like you were poor, too. Shitty apartment, no vehicle … secondhand possessions, and hand-to-mouth when you could get it. I wondered why that was, but it didn’t take me very long to figure it out. Your sister, huh?”

Renzo said nothing.

“See, I talked to an owner of a shop where your sister frequents to buy her canvases—I guess she prefers oil paint to the others—and you know, she’s so fucking proud of you, Renzo. Talks about you all the time. Her brother who used to lift paint brushes and whatever else she needed from the art store just so she had something to practice with. And then you got older, she got lucky with the scholarship, but you knew there was no way you were going to be able to afford the things that the scholarship wouldn’t cover, right?”

“She’s going to be something great,” Renzo said, shrugging. “I promised her she would. I made sure of it.”

“She is quite talented, I agree.” Lucian fiddled with the watch on his wrist as he straightened in the chair. “And so my point here, is the more I went around to ask about you and learn who this boy was who turned my daughter into someone I didn’t recognize … the more I realized I didn’t know anything about you at all, despite what I had assumed. I asked the right questions too late. I took too long to give you the chance to prove your worth, and now look where you are.”

Renzo blinked, unsure he had heard the man correctly. “What?”

“Mea culpa,” Lucian said thickly. “My hubris always seems a little more vicious than someone else’s but then again, maybe I am biased to it as well.”

“I have no idea—”

Lucian waved a hand. “Not important. Are you going to sit yet, or …? I mean, if I wanted you dead, I would have had you killed in San Francisco while my daughter watched on. You know, before I took the time to … try to understand why taking you away from my child made her hate me. I had to know, you see, what it was about you that she loved enough that she was willing to leave behind the rest of us for you. Not that it matters—she hates me enough that she had to go to an entirely new state just to get away from me. I love her enough that I had to let her go.”

Renzo let out a hard breath, the understanding he had been missing for this whole conversation suddenly dawning on him like a hundred pound weight slamming into his chest. He sat down in that chair because it felt a little more stable than standing up in those moments.

“Surprise,” Lucian murmured, smiling sadly, “I found those things I couldn’t be bothered to look for before. What is more interesting is the things you taught me without knowing, young man. That I am not perfect—I am fallible. I forgot where I came from for a time, that I was not always Lucian Marcello, powerful with just my name alone. And so, here I am … doing the thing I never wanted to do again. Look at you.”

He stared back at the man on the other side of the table … unashamed and brazen. Renzo was all too aware that in a way, he had no one to blame for his current position except himself. He made the choice to take Diego. He robbed the store. He stole the vehicles. He made bad choice after bad choice, and they caught up to him in the end. Those choices may have caught up to him because of the actions of the man across from him, but at the end of the day, Renzo would still have twice as many fingers pointing back at him when he tried to place the blame on someone else.

“You know, finding you wasn’t so hard after Vegas,” Lucian said offhandedly. “Your friend there … he helped us when you had stopped there, but after that, I knew you were running out of options. You only had so many places you could go, and so narrowing down the list to the people I thought could and would help you was simple.”

“You had my uncle killed. He was a good man.”

Lucian swallowed hard. “John sent in the wrong man … my instructions were not followed. His death was unnecessary, and the man was appropriately punished for it. That’s all I can say.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“Nothing ever will. No amount of apologies or spilled blood will ever make it better. I know this better than anyone. So will you, in time.”

Renzo barked out a bitter laugh. “In time? Take a look around, asshole, this is the time I’m looking at. The walls surrounding this place. So if that’s the time you mean, thanks, I already know all about it.”

Lucian’s face gave away nothing as he replied, “That may not be the case. Depending on a few things.” He checked the watch on his wrist, frowning. “Our time is running out. I’m not sure if I will be able to pay enough people to look the other way in order for me to get in here a second time … at least, not before the point where it’ll already be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Vegas. Let’s go back to that, actually. Tucker—what do you know about him, hmm?”

Renzo’s jaw tightened. “We were friends.”

“Do you kill all your friends, or was he just a special case?”

The chair he was sitting on felt a hell of a lot more uncomfortable after that question. Renzo wasn’t one to lie, so he looked away from Lucian’s gaze as he replied, “He deserved what he got, I suppose.”

Lucian quieted.

It took a second, then two …

“Did you kill him?” he asked.

“Who else would?”