Page 10 of Cusp: A Renzo + Lucia Companion

FIVE

Diego

McCarran International Airport’s arrivals was like navigating a maze. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but with the amount of people Diego had to duck and swerve on his way through to the luggage carousel, it certainly felt like a damn maze. It wasn’t his first time at the airport. Not even his tenth. Ever since Ren came back years ago, Diego regularly flew back and forth between New York and Las Vegas whenever his older brother worked in Nevada for a stretch of time.

Not that Ren really explained what he did here. Sort of. Diego knew, yes. He understood that Ren worked for a company that called themselves The League. His brother explained—partly—what his business for them boiled down to, and what it meant, but he didn’t go into great detail and made it clear he preferred Diego not to ask questions.

Not that he needed to ask.

Diego got the gist.

Ren worked as an assassin—yeah. A real, actual fucking assassin that was hired to do not so great things to other people or organizations depending on who had enough money to hire him through The League.

It was something Diego tried not to think about. Not because it made him think less of his brother—he understood very well how Renzo found himself in his current situation with The League; he never lied about it—but rather … he worried.

A lot.

What if Ren didn’t come back from a job?

What would Lucia do—or their son?

What would Rose do?

Diego?

It was just better he didn’t obsess over it. He barely thought about it at all now, and it was easier that way, honestly.

Shifting the backpack on his shoulder to ease a bit of the weight, Diego pulled the cell phone from his hoodie pocket. Turning on the screen and avoiding eye contact with anyone who thought to try as he navigated arrivals, he was quick to turn his phone off flight mode.

Just as fast, the device dinged.

And dinged again.

And again.

Again.

Diego sighed as the phone dinged over and over again in his hand with text after text and text. There were a couple of missed calls, too. A voice message or two, by the looks of it. Most came from his sister, some were from her husband, and there was a couple from Lucia. He didn’t have anything to say to Rose’s husband—they didn’t have the kind of relationship where Diego cared to text the man back. He would give Lucia a call later.

And probably his sister, too.

Probably.

Really, he just didn’t want to talk. Not when he felt like he had listened to Rose talk herself out for days leading up to his trip to Nevada. She had barely let him talk back at all. It had been less of a conversation and more of a lecture.

No, thanks.

He wasn’t up for doing that again. At least, not anytime soon. The only thing he intended to do during his stay in Vegas was figure out what exactly he wanted when he went back home. Whether it was chasing a dream he wasn’t sure was possible … or something else entirely. If anyone could help him make sense of the mess in his head, it was Renzo.

Diego considered putting his phone back on flight mode just to keep the damn thing from dinging again with another missed text or call, but he didn’t. Instead of focusing on the many notifications lighting up the banner on the screen, he shut the device off and shoved it back in the pocket of his hoodie.

Later, he thought.

He’d deal with all that later. Rose would be pissed that he didn’t reply to her many calls and messages as soon as his flight landed just to say that he was okay, but he figured she should probably expect that by now. He loved his sister—just like he loved his brother—but sometimes, he only wanted to be left alone.

Now was one of those times.

With his attention off the phone, Diego scanned the large crowd gathered at the luggage carousels. He hadn’t brought anything but a couple of outfits and whatever else he needed for the week that he could fit into his backpack, and he was allowed to carry his skateboard on the plane to put in an overhead bin. He didn’t see his brother waiting in the crowd, and for a brief second, considered pulling his phone back out to shoot Ren a text and ask where in the hell he was.