Page 124 of Contempt

Pop.

The quiet noise was all Lucia heard before the heavy weight pinning her to the floor, and the constant pain echoing through to her bones was suddenly gone all at once. Christian fell to the side in a heap—a single bullet hole bleeding out of his forehead.

She gasped in air.

Tears streaked down her face.

Her whole body trembled.

“You got it, Lucian?”

Lucia looked up to see her father rushing into the room before he called over his shoulder, “Make sure they’re taken care of out there, yeah.”

“You got it.”

Lucia just kept blinking. “Daddy?”

“You crazy girl,” he muttered thickly, pulling her up from the floor with shaking hands. “You crazy fucking girl—why?”

Lucia sobbed as her father wiped the tears from her face. “I had to try. Didn’t I?”

“Lucia—”

She glanced over her shoulder to look at the screen where Renzo was still in front of the bomb. She looked in just enough time to watch him let go of whatever he was holding, and dart backwards toward the car lowered on the lift right next to him.

He disappeared.

She didn’t know where he went. Where did he go? She dragged in a heavy, painful breath. And the bomb blew.

The cameras went black and so did her vision right before she hit the floor.

TWENTY-ONE

Let go.

Let go.

Let the wires go, Ren.

It was a fucked up thing to know you were about to kill yourself when that wasn’t something you wanted to do. A bad analogy for it might be the Band-Aid—suck in a breath, and rip the Band-Aid off as fast as possible to minimize the duration of the pain. It was still going to hurt a lot, but at least by doing it quickly, it wouldn’t last as long.

That’s how it went, right?

Well, this was kind of the same.

Just a thousand times worse.

Renzo’s fingertips slipped on the wires ever so slightly. Certainly not enough to break the circuit and make the timer start counting down, but it was enough to get his fucking heart leaping into his throat. Which just reminded him all over again that this was not what he wanted. He was not fucking ready for this.

He hadn’t been given the chance to grow up into somebody. Never got married, or had kids. He didn’t know what the world looked like when he wasn’t pissed off at it. He couldn’t remember what the sky looked like when he woke up that morning, and now he was wishing he had one more morning to see it.

He hadn’t said goodbye, even if he didn’t like goodbyes. He hadn’t told his brother and sister that he was sorry for being a fuck up, and that he loved them. He never got the chance to show them the better man he wanted to be, only the man they had always known. Was that a good enough man for them?

He never got the chance to tell his parents that he forgave them because he knew they just didn’t know how to be parents that loved their kids, and he didn’t think it was all their fault. They were sick in their minds—addiction and life made them that way. He wanted them to know he forgave them for himself, but he couldn’t ever forget.

He was never able to thank Cree for being such a prick because the man knew that’s exactly what Renzo needed to push him to make him break. Cree made him into a better human. He taught him the tools to slaughter and bury the parts of him that he didn’t want to be anymore, and he owed the man something for that.

He never got to tell Lucia he loved her again.