Page 32 of Privilege

It wasn’t like his father would try to lay a lickin’ on him or anything. Charlie stopped doing that when Renzo turned fifteen. He hit a fucking growth spurt, and broke his father’s face on a kitchen table after he showed up one day, slept on their couch, and then called Rose a slut for wearing a skirt he didn’t like.

But the man might just be stupid enough to try.

“Ren.”

His father’s call was punctuated by footsteps a second before a hand landed hard to his shoulder. Fuck.

Just having this man touch him—even if it wasn’t in a violent way—was enough to make Renzo’s rage spike as high as it could go. There was no one who made him want to go out and catch himself a felony like Charlie did every time his stupid face showed back up for one thing or another.

Swinging around fast on the street, Renzo’s hands came up to shove against his father’s chest. Charlie hadn’t been expecting the move if the way he stumbled back a few steps in order to catch himself was any indication. Renzo took a bit of satisfaction in that fact.

“You keep your fucking hands off me,” Renzo warned.

Charlie sighed, and shook his head as he righted himself. “You got the viciousness of your mother, but all that anger is me, Ren.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

His father tipped his head to the side like he was considering those words. “That may be true enough, son.”

“What do you need, huh?” Renzo asked. “How much cash is going to get you away from me for a while?”

“It ain’t for me. You want to keep those lookin’ for your mother away from your little brother, and your sister, too, don’t you? Stop acting like a prick, Ren, and use your head. You know what you do when somebody owes you, yeah? Well, she owes somebody. I’m the first place they came to. Who do you think they’re coming to next?”

Was this his father’s fucked up way of trying to take care of them in a roundabout way, or was this just another stunt of Charlie’s? That was the thing—it was damn near impossible to tell the difference.

“How much?” Renzo demanded, his teeth clenched.

“Right now, she’s two-Gs in the hole,” Charlie returned.

Fuck.

Renzo had it, sure. Stuffed away in a container he kept hidden in the apartment freezer. The only place his mother wouldn’t look because she couldn’t cook worth shit, and instead of consuming food, she just pumped drugs into her body. But that small bit of money was the only savings Renzo really had. It was his backup if something came up, or whatever. If he took two grand out of it, that wasn’t going to leave him very much left.

“They’re not nice people,” his father added quieter, “a lot like the people who you work for, I’d say.”

Renzo stiffened.

That sealed the deal, really.

“Fine. I’ve got it at the apartment. Keep the fuck up, Charlie.”

That was all Renzo said before he turned around, and walked off. He made sure to keep a good ten strides between him and his father, though.

He didn’t even want to share that man’s air.

Renzo wished the couple of blocks it took to get to the apartment went by faster than it did. Instead, it felt like they crawled the entire way. All the while, his father chatted on behind him like Renzo was listening, or gave a damn.

Neither of which he was doing.

Charlie closed the distance between them as Renzo climbed the entrance steps to the run-down apartment building. Maybe it was because of the people sitting on the steps that eyed Charlie, but not Renzo. Charlie hadn’t visited this particular apartment since Renzo started renting it, so no one who usually loitered around the front would recognize his face.

New faces typically meant trouble around here.

“Yo, Ren!”

Renzo, having just grabbed for the handle on the door, leaned back to see who was shouting at him from a window higher up. The man leaning out the window with a blunt between his fingertips and white smoke trailing higher gave him a nod.

“Had a girl asking about you a while ago—that’s her car, yeah? Pretty thing, but she shouldn’t be around here, you know?”