Page 74 of Contempt

It’s funny, that. How I hate them, and respect them at the same time. I feel that way about your father, too. For the same reasons. He, and them, gave me the chance to be something, and to make something of myself … I didn’t realize the things I would have to sacrifice for it, and they never thought to tell me the cost.

The cost was high.

I love you.

I’m sorry if you ever thought I didn’t.

—Ren

Lucia folded up the letter with more questions. None of them were questions Renzo could answer.

It was time to talk to her dad.

• • •

“You must feel like you can’t get a second to breathe, huh?”

Lucian looked up from the book in his lap at the sound of Lucia’s voice in the doorway to his room. His brother had just slipped past Lucia—Gio. Dante had been in first, and then switched with Lucia’s mom, Jordyn. Gio went in before Lucia could see her dad.

It seemed like now that her father’s secret was out, the entire family was determined to see him through these last couple of treatments. He wasn’t given one single second alone. Someone else was always quick to step into the room.

Did he need a drink?

A snack?

Gio offered to sneak him in a joint—apparently, her dad had started smoking a bit of herb again after cutting that habit decades ago because now, it helped him to eat without getting sick. Her ma hadn’t thought Gio’s offer was very amusing, but Lucia did.

That was her uncle in a nutshell.

Lucian’s gaze drifted past Lucia to the hallway behind her. “You know, I didn’t think I would enjoy having everyone here constantly. I figured it would be too much … they’d get on my nerves.”

“And?”

Her dad smiled, and glanced down at the magazine in his lap. “I should have had them here from the start, that’s all.”

Yeah.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Lucia murmured.

Lucian glanced back up then, and nodded. “It is.”

Maybe it was the tone of her voice, or the way she stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. It could have been that posture, or the aura she gave off just from standing there thinking about all of the questions running through her mind.

Whatever did it, she swore her father just knew she was there to talk. That it was finally time for them to lay some of those cards they’d been holding tight to their chest down on the table. They needed to be honest, and speak the truth between one another.

Now was that time.

She kept saying this wasn’t it—he was sick, and he didn’t need this kind of shit while he was trying to fight the sickness in his body. She justified putting it off by saying it was better if he didn’t have to deal with any emotional issues when clearly, he had enough on his plate. Right?

Lucia didn’t give her father enough credit.

She should have known better.

After all, she’d come from this man.

She was his strength.

“Just ask what you want to ask me,” her father said, still smiling a little. “Don’t chew on it—your mother does that, too. You get that from her, not me.”