Contempt (Renzo + Lucia Book 3) Read online

  “It’s cliché, kiddo, but what’s meant to be, will be, and fuck the rest.” John pointed at the paper in her hand, saying, “There’s your lifeline, Lucia. You want to talk to Renzo—you want to know? He’s right there. I’m sorry it’s not more.”

  Lucia clenched the paper between her fingertips again, and stared at her brother. She didn’t know what this paper or the address on it was going to lead to—but it was something. A first step. An option for her to take. Maybe it would give her everything she had been searching for this last year. Maybe it would fill the emptiness she constantly felt now.

  She wouldn’t know unless she used it, right?

  “This is perfect, John.”

  Her brother smiled. “That’s all I wanted to—”

  John never got to finish his sentence. It was drowned out by the screams of people in The Annex, and the sudden swell of a crowd rushing their way when in the background, she heard, “She’s got a gun!”

  Maybe it was the look in John’s eye—the fear staring back from her brother—that told Lucia … this wasn’t random. So was their life, it seemed. Even hiding herself away in California couldn’t keep her safe and untouched by the mafia. Nothing would ever keep her safe from it all.

  Lucia had been right, too. It was about them … or rather, her brother and Siena.

  Later in the evening, while she sat in a hard plastic chair of an emergency room as Siena Calabrese fought for her life … Lucia managed to convince a nurse to find her a pad of paper and a pen.

  She wrote her first letter to Renzo as her family paced in the waiting area. She watched the clock, counting the minutes of a surgery that took longer than normal on Siena for her brother who was barely able to breathe. She heard her father demand someone get Lucia a ticket as soon as fucking possible back to California just in case.

  To keep her safe.

  Like it would ever make a difference.

  Lucia penned that letter, then.

  Renzo, it started. And then, right below, she wrote, Do you feel like this, too? Alone all the time? Empty, too? That’s me without you.

  ONE

  “Fair warning.”

  The man walking in stride with Renzo down the dark corridor grinned. It was almost a creepy sight, if Renzo was the type to let that sort of shit bother him. A sly smile that curved a little too much at the edges, and in the darkness, all he could see was the man’s white teeth and his eyeballs glowing under the black lights.

  Why did they need black lights in the hallway anyway? Except at the far end of the corridor without doors, he could see a red light flashing over top of what looked like the only door. A stark, black door. What did that lead into?

  They’d covered his head for a portion of time—most of the fucking time. He didn’t know what kind of a building they were in, or even where in the country considering they’d driven for what felt like days. They covered his head, then, too.

  Hell, he still wasn’t sure if he should even ask where he was. It didn’t seem like the right time. The team of people walking behind him and the man beside him didn’t seem up for conversation.

  They walked in rows of three—there were nine of them in total—shoulder to shoulder, and the only thing visible beneath the bandanas wrapped around their faces were their eyes. And not one of them would look at him. They didn’t meet his gaze, and they didn’t speak a word. Maybe they weren’t allowed, or maybe they couldn’t. Renzo wasn’t sure.

  What had Lucian Marcello gotten him into now?

  What was this deal?

  Lucian hadn’t said anything like this was going to happen when the man visited him in the prison. Sure, he hadn’t said this wouldn’t happen, either. In fact, he hadn’t given Renzo a lot of details about this stupid deal. Just his freedom for five years of his life. That was it, that was all. Renzo was starting to think he should have demanded a hell of a lot more info.

  “What’s that warning?” Renzo asked, rubbing his raw wrists while he had the chance. They’d cut the broken cuffs off him from the prison after snatching him during a transfer, and they weren’t easy about it by any means. “Is it going to help me?”

  The man laughed.

  Renzo didn’t even know his name.

  Or the others’ names, either.

  “This place, New York, is gonna break you.” The man nodded, his smile gone in a blink. “It’s gonna break you—that’s inevitable. You’ll come out better for it, that’s how it works. Just accept it now. Better to learn to enjoy it instead of waste energy hating it. Let it go now.”

  Christ.

  He’d been told that before. The whole let it go thing. It never did make much of a difference for him. It never helped to get rid of the bitterness and contempt bred deep into his sinew for the shitty hand life had dealt him in some ways. No, he’d never let it go, but he had handled it.

  It was basically the same, right?

  All too soon, the end of the hallway was right in front of Renzo. He finally realized what that blinking red light was for when the guy who had been walking with him, looked upward, raised a hand, and nodded. Renzo followed his gaze to find the gleam of a lens trained right on them.

  A security camera.

  Fuck.

  What was this place?

  Renzo was sure he was going to be asking that question a lot for the next while. Who knew for how long, because he sure as hell didn’t know a thing.

  “You’re going to enter this door,” the man beside him said, “and everything is going to change. That’s all I can tell you.”

  The white skull design on the man’s bandana hanging loosely around his neck—he was the only one in the team of ten that came for him who pulled his face covering down—lit up a funny purple color under the blacklights.

  “Can’t even tell me your name?” Renzo asked.

  “Not yet,” the man returned.

  A loud ring echoed throughout the hallway. It was distracting enough that Renzo almost wanted to cover his ears. It took his attention away from the guy for just long enough that he didn’t see him pull his bandana back up, never mind the rest of the nine people behind them who quickly closed the distance to come closer.

  The door opened.

  Renzo turned back around.

  It felt, sort of, like he was staring into hell for a second. Like he turned around to see faceless people dressed in all black, their bodies strapped with weapons, and he was the intended target.

  “You can fight if you want,” the guy murmured behind his skull bandana. “It’s still gonna happen, New York.”

  What would happen?

  Renzo didn’t ask that.

  He had a different question.

  “Where in the hell am I?”

  The man’s eyes gleamed—amused, Renzo thought. He looked amused. “The League.”

  • • •

  Renzo blinked out of the memory, and knew exactly why it had been pulled forward in his mind and so quickly yanked him out of the present. The red lights surrounding him were far too bright. Even when Renzo closed his eyes, he was still seeing a shine of red behind his eyelids. It certainly wasn’t the blinking red light over the black door that changed his life that night, but it was the thing he remembered first before anything else.

  Everything else was … difficult.

  His gaze scanned the room he was currently in just because he could, and this was what he had been taught to do. Renzo knew better than to move, or make some kind of scene. It didn’t matter that he was mostly naked—in nothing but boxer-briefs—and standing on a raised platform of sorts while facing a wall of mirrors that weren’t mirrors at all. He knew they weren’t just mirrors—more like windows for the people behind them to watch him.

  To appraise him.

  The windows continued all the way around the room in sections of eight-feet wide by ten-feet tall. Except for one off to the left—another black door. The League loved their black doors. He always felt those black doors were a warning, of sorts. A way to tell people … you don’t belong here; do not pass.

  Over each section of windows, a red light rested behind metal cages. For now, they were all lit up and unblinking. Just stark, red lights shining down on him. Overhead, far brighter, white lights gleamed down on his body. The heat from those lights was more than enough to keep him warm, but that didn’t mean he was fucking comfortable.

  No, those were two entirely different things.

  “Six feet, three inches,” came a distorted voice ringing throughout the room. Renzo didn’t know where in the hell the speakers were, but he stiffened in place as the voice continued on with listing his physical stats. Everything from the length of his arms, to the width of his shoulders. How much he could bench, the distance and speed at which he could run, and finally, they finished it off with, “One hundred ninety-two pounds.”

  Renzo blinked.

  How in the hell did they know his weight, and he didn’t even know that? Oh, sure, The fucking League certainly kept up with all of that when they brought him in twice a week to be weighed and checked over, but damn.

  He maybe weighed one-seventy-five when he came to this damn place. That weight gain spoke to the intensity the last year had been for him. One year—that’s all it took from the time he stepped into the compound run by The League to the point he now stood here.

  On a platform.

  Being appraised.

  Soon to be sold.

  Like cattle.

  • • •

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Renzo blinked awake with fuck as his only thought as the rattling overhead started up again. His warning that the chains attached to the harness that was connected to the straight jacket he wore was about to start lowering him.

  Again.

  Into that tank of water.

  Again.

  How long had he been in here again? This black room … it felt dead, he thought. Dead, and cold. No life, no light, and no sound. At least, not that he had ever seen.

  The darkness and silence wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that it was just one of those things or the other. But when both of them were put together, it made a hell of a combination. It was enough to make a man’s mind play tricks on him. Renzo often thought he was seeing or hearing things that didn’t exist in the space. And it didn’t matter how much shouting and fighting he did, he was not getting out of that straight jacket.

  Oh, sure, occasionally someone came in, pulled him down from the harness, and let him out of his restraints. He’d tried fighting back once—quickly learned that wasn’t going to change a thing. It was one person who came in, and the man beat the shit out of Renzo himself before putting him back in the straightjacket, and hooking him back up to the harness. He didn’t get to eat or relieve himself that day—or night; he didn’t even know what time it had been.

  For the most part, Renzo was alone.

  He thought … it had to be a few days, now. A few days he had been doing this same thing over and over and over—

  He didn’t get to finish his thought before he was plunged into freezing cold water. If the rattling of the chains overhead hadn’t properly woken him up and reminded him of the hell that was his current life, the fucking water sure did it.

  Because he couldn’t breathe.

  He’d learned the first time the hoist let him fall into the water that as soon as he was dropped down, a cover on some kind of automatic arm flipped on the tank to close it up tight. Or as tight as it could get, anyway. Tight enough that he couldn’t open it.

  Basically, he was dropped in the tank of water, the lid closed him in, and then for several minutes, he was under water with no way to breathe while being entirely bound by a straightjacket. He basically had no sense of what was up or down while he was in the tank because he couldn’t see anything. He was rarely able to get to the top where he might find a small pocket of air to breathe in, and he mostly just focused on trying to stay alive.

  Fun, right?

  Yeah.

  The panic didn’t swell as hard this time. Sure, he gulped in a mouthful of water, and choked on it because he’d been distracted when he fell in. Too distracted to prepare himself for another round of this goddamn game of torture.

  Shame on him.

  Renzo had gotten used to counting the seconds when he was in the tank. Even as his body twisted to find the spot to come up, and even as he kicked and struggled because that was human instinct to try and save one’s self, he still counted the seconds.

  Usually, around the three minute mark … he knew he was going to be coming back up soon. Except this time, three minutes passed.

  That panic he hadn’t been feeling before started to rise hot and heavy in his throat. He became acutely aware of his heartbeat as his lungs started to scream with the need for air. With his eyes wide, though he couldn’t see a damn thing, he felt his shoulder hit something hard. The wall of the tank, likely. It wasn’t that big. A six foot by six foot box, maybe.

  At the four minute mark, he was damn sure he was going to die. He didn’t even think about it when he opened his mouth, and let out a shout. Instinct again, maybe. Who knew? All that caused was for water to rush into his mouth, and he swallowed it down.

  Ever vomit under water?

  Renzo did.

  Yep.

  His back hit the wall again, and again. He managed to get some kind of leverage with his foot in the corner, and he pushed his weight against the top—or what he thought was the top—of the tank, and the side wall. His gaze started to blacken, and the constant swell of fear and panic became a background noise to the humming in his ears.

  Well, not so much a humming as a white noise.

  Constant, and low.

  Death was on the way.

  Just as his eyes started to close without his permission, his body finally giving up the fight, he felt the pressure release. It wasn’t the hoist pulling him up this time, though. No, instead of going up with the hoist, he dropped fast. Like a sack of rocks being released from six feet high. He heard the rushing sounds fill his ears, and felt his body skim across something hard as more water rushed over his face.

  He didn’t know when he came to a stop. He didn’t know why it was so bright when he opened his eyes. He didn’t know the faceless people who now stood above him in a tight circle—each holding a long, rod in their hands.

  It looked like bamboo.

  Maybe?

  Renzo choked and coughed, his lungs aching with every breath he sucked in. And with every exhale, he vomited more water. Humiliation filled Renzo in a way he’d never felt before. He probably looked like a fucking idiot. Rolling over to his knees, he finally figured out what happened as his gaze landed on what used to be the box he suspected they were using as his fucking torture chamber.

  All four walls of plexiglass had collapsed. Because of him, or because it was time to let him out, Renzo didn’t know.

  Water fell from his face in droplets as he breathed heavily and tried to calm his racing thoughts. The anger was most present—rage so strong it was thick in his throat. But there was a darkness there, too. Like the darkness he’d been kept in for so long felt like an old friend who now made a home inside his mind.

  It wasn’t about to leave anytime soon, either.

  “Almost too late, Cree,” someone murmured above him. “Another ten seconds, and—”

  “He looks fine,” came a feminine reply. “He was strong-willed. He needed that, didn’t he, Cree?”

  “Mmm, we’ll see. Get up to your fucking feet,” someone else—Cree?—barked. The voice sounded familiar to him. It was the same voice belonging to the man who walked him to this hell with the skull bandana hanging around his neck. “Time for something different, New York.”

  Renzo didn’t move.

  The first strike of the bamboo rod came down across his back. He shuddered, and shook. Still didn’t stand, though.

  “Maybe that extra ten seconds would have been good for him, then,” the first voice muttered.

  “Remember what I told you?” The familiar voice—Cree, if Renzo was to believe the people around him talking—came close as a man bent down beside him. Sure enough, when Renzo tipped his head to the side, he recognized the man’s eyes. “Do you remember what I said about this place, New York?”

  Renzo swallowed hard. “It’s gonna break me.”

  Cree nodded. “Yeah, just let it happen. It’s easier. Renzo Zulla, that person who walked in here a few days ago, he doesn’t exist anymore. You get to be whoever you wanna fucking be here, all right? Just let it happen, man.”

  He stood, then, despite the fact he didn’t want to. Not that it mattered. The second he was up on his feet, someone knocked him to his back when they hit him across the chest with a bamboo rod. He found the cement almost welcoming, if it wasn’t so goddamn cold.

  Letting out a bitter, breathless laugh from the pain, Renzo said, “Jesus, at least let me be dry for this, or something.”

  “Learn to enjoy being in a state of discomfort, and it will never be used against you,” Cree murmured from up above him. “Comfort is for the weak.”

  Well, then …

  “All right,” Renzo muttered.

  “Stand again.”

  He did.

  Only to get knocked the hell down again.

  More fun.

  • • •

  “Scores,” came the voice again through the speakers to drag Renzo from his thoughts once more. “Ten out of ten—hand to hand combat; excellent. Seven out of ten—hacking; moderate. Ten out of ten—weapons, in both practical and applied; excellent.”

  The distorted voice continued on describing skills that had been, for the most part, either beaten into Renzo during his first year at The League, or ones he already had that were picked up on and honed. Everything from his understanding of vehicles, to his ability to survive.