Page 53 of Contempt

“I have cancer,” her father snapped. “I don’t owe anyone anything.”

“Daddy,” Lucia whispered, “be nice.”

Chemo made him pissed, sometimes. Like that bad mood only got worse, but she understood. Her uncles might not, though.

Lucian looked her way, and then back to his brothers. “I was trying … to handle it.”

“Alone, though?” Gio asked. “We could have—”

“What?” Lucian asked, though Lucia heard it in his tone. The pain—the ache. He was tired, and he didn’t want to do this today. “What, Gio, watch me get sick? Watch them pump poison into me so that it can kill another kind of poison? Watch me struggle to eat because it makes me want to puke? Watch me take twenty minutes to crawl into bed because I’m fucking exhausted? What do you want to help me with?”

“All of it,” Dante said, softer than she had ever heard her uncle speak. “We would help for all of it, Lucian, whether you want us to see it or not.”

Lucia saw the fight leave her father, then. Sure, she had more things to ask him, especially about Renzo, but it could and would wait for another day. They had other things—more important things—to handle right now.

She slipped out of the hospital room to let her father and uncles have some privacy, but not before glancing over her shoulder as she closed the door.

The three men inside were hugging.

And crying.

She closed the door.

The world didn’t get to see that. Not her father’s breakdown, his brothers’ fear, or their pain.

Ever.

NINE

Renzo kept his head down as he walked down the block leading toward his hotel room. The phone in his ear kept ringing with no goddamn answer, which only pissed him off more. He’d been trying to get ahold of Dare for the last two hours—since he left Lucia at the hospital with her driver.

No answer.

Or rather, Dare just wasn’t picking up the phone because he was being a complete asshole. Maybe he was in a mood about someone else, or maybe he was in a mood about Renzo, specifically, but he bet that was the problem. Not that Dare couldn’t answer his phone—the guy always had at least three on him—but that he simply didn’t want to.

Renzo went another route.

Cree.

No matter what was going on, Cree would pick up his phone if it was someone from The League calling him. He might not be nice when he answered, but he would do it.

Renzo entered the lobby of the hotel just as Cree picked up the phone with a low, dark, “What?”

“Sleeping?” Renzo asked.

“Resting my eyes.”

Right.

That’s what Cree always said when someone caught him napping. It was like the guy didn’t want to admit that he was just as human as everyone else around him. No, he wanted to be superhuman—or at the very least, make everyone else believe that was the case.

“What do you want?” Cree asked, his words mumbled a bit. “Don’t you still have a job to do, New York? Lucky you that it’s in New York now, huh?”

Renzo scowled. “Yeah, lucky.”

That was one way to put it.

More like entirely fucked up.