Page 24 of Privilege

Renzo swallowed hard, and took in their surroundings. “Next parking lot on the right—that’s our apartment building.”

“Okay.”

Thankfully, Lucia was soon pulling up in front of Renzo’s apartment building. He wasn’t sure what might be said next between them if he didn’t get the hell out of that car, and soon. He was also getting a little tired of having his own foolishness shoved in his face.

Lucia quieted as she put the car into park. He turned to thank her—because frankly, he might not have had a mother who raised a half-decent guy, but he still was one at the end of the day—and noticed her gaze skipping over the front of the building.

God knew the place was an eyesore. Two steps from being condemned, too. Broken bricks, and cracked cement stairs. Two apartments on the bottom had their large windows broken out, and covered with plastic garbage bags because the landlord was a lazy fuck. There were always a few dregs hanging around the outside. Selling dope—Renzo never dealt where he lived just because that could cause problems.

He could see it written all over Lucia’s face.

The harsh reality that the two of them were not anything alike. They came from two entirely different worlds.

This was his.

It was nothing like hers.

Renzo scoffed, drawing Lucia’s gaze to him as he muttered a quick, “Thanks.”

Stepping out of the car, he didn’t say another word to her even as he opened the backdoor, and unbuckled his sleeping brother. He didn’t have anything to say.

Lucia seemed to think the same.

Good fucking riddance.

• • •

“Come on, Ren, it was a mistake.”

“Fuck off, Carmen.”

That was all Renzo offered his mother before he slammed the front door of the apartment. He’d already run Diego down to the shelter daycare in just enough time before they closed the open spots. Laurie wasn’t screwing around the day before when she warned him that they wouldn’t be holding a spot for Diego anymore.

As much as that sucked, Renzo did understand. It just pissed him off, too. It wasn’t Diego’s fault that his mother was a fuck up, and Renzo made a mistake in thinking he could trust his mother to do anything. Honestly, he should have known better.

“You little asshole!”

Renzo kept his back turned to his shouting mother as she opened the apartment door just to lean out in the hallway, make a damn scene, and scream at him. This wasn’t anything new. And the whole floor knew what Carmen Zulla was like on a good day.

“Remember what I said,” Renzo warned. “I come home one more time and find you strung out, and I’ll personally drop your ass outside. I don’t give a fuck who you are to me, Carmen.”

Because mothers … they didn’t act like that. They didn’t abuse or neglect. Not a real mother, anyhow.

Renzo was done feeling guilty for treating his mother like the abusive addict she was simply because she was his mother. The woman deserved what she got—she either wanted to be good for her kids, or she could fuck off.

That’s just how it was going to be.

Carmen made a screech—a little too high, he thought. She wasn’t strung out as badly as she had been the night before. But she had definitely smoked something to keep the shakes away and make sure she was up. She hadn’t been home when he took Diego to the daycare, but she was there by the time he got back.

Someone was feeding the bitch’s need for a fix. And it was somebody close.

That was probably going to be a problem. One Renzo would eventually have to deal with, but today was not that day. Already, he was late for the daily meeting with his guys down by the corner store. He was already edgy enough considering he had a whole brick of cocaine in his messenger bag, a half a pound of weed, and a bag of opiate pills that were all too popular on the streets lately.

He hadn’t had time to drop that shit off individually to each guy who needed to deal it. He preferred to do that late at night when he could just skip from building to building without being seen until he had nothing left but his own shit to sell. He certainly didn’t like walking around with this much product in broad daylight.

If someone thought to jump him, and they took it?

He’d be the one who had to fix it. Come up with the money to pay it back—impossible, there was at least a hundred-thousand dollars’ worth off drugs in his bag—or something. If he thought to run from the higher ups who kept him supplied with drugs, well … that wouldn’t end well for him.