Page 21 of Contempt

On the other side of the ring, Cree leaned against the ropes, and stretched his neck back and forth as he let the twins shout at one another. Still cool and calm. Still entirely unbothered, and looking like he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Then, all at once, Cree’s gaze drifted to the doorway and landed on Renzo. The dark-eyed man didn’t look the least bit surprised to find Renzo standing there. It was as if he had known the entire time that Renzo was watching the entire fight play out.

He probably did.

Cree was strange that way.

“Finally got a call, did you?” Cree asked.

That drew in the attention of the Guzzi twins as well. Chris nodded to Renzo, and he returned the gesture. Corrado, on the other hand, waved one tapped up fist in a silent hello, but offered nothing more. Renzo didn’t blame the man. He knew what it felt like to be on the mat after getting the air beat out of you from Cree.

It wasn’t a fun experience.

“Guess so,” Renzo replied in response to Cree’s question. “About time, too.”

“What’s it for?”

Renzo shrugged. “I wasn’t told.”

It could be anything. Even though Renzo’s remaining contract had been sold to someone who went by M when he asked for a job to be done, M was also known to allow The League to negotiate the use of Renzo’s skills in other jobs and for teams, too. M didn’t care—as long as he still had his tool to use when the time called for it, and he needed Renzo.

Odd as it was …

“Ah.” Cree nodded at the doorway. “Get going, then. You don’t need to be making him wait when he calls. Likely knows you’re already in the building and pissing around, too, instead of being where you should be.”

He gave the man a look. “You know, for being my handler, you’d think you would loosen up my leash every now and then.”

Cree laughed. “No can do, New York.”

Renzo bristled at the nickname.

Cree still used it when he wanted to differentiate between friends, and the man he was responsible for because of The League.

“Abused dogs never forget where they come from,” Cree said from the corner of his mouth, never taking his gaze off Corrado who was still lying on the mat. “And just when you think they’ve learned enough to listen, and you give them a bit of freedom, they never miss the chance to bite you when they believe they can.”

“Did you just call me a dog?”

Although, Cree wasn’t wrong. Renzo was waiting for his moment—for the second they loosened the chains around his neck, and let him go free again. He was going to bite back, and bite hard. It might be just the fact that he never came back to The League, or it might be something different.

Not that it mattered.

Cree was still right.

The man knew it, too.

Cree looked his way again. “Why are you still standing there?”

Asshole.

• • •

“Is that another fucking tattoo?”

Renzo looked away from the window—which only faced another fucking steel wall of the warehouse across the way—in Dare’s office to see the man glaring at him from the doorway. He didn’t need to ask what Dare was going on about now. He knew.

The intricate start of a tattoo on the back of his neck—all black, beginning with a large rose right above his neckline, and surrounded by different shapes to create a design that disappeared up into the high fade of his hairstyle. The rose was the new part on his back—Dare had made Cree lock Renzo in the quiet room for a week after he’d gotten the bit up under his hairline.

The quiet room being a black room with no light, no noise, and … nothing.