Page 26 of Loyalty

It wasn’t his father’s fault. Lucian hadn’t pushed for information beyond what John had been willing to give. John was simply reactive to these kinds of things with his dad.

Taking his focus away from his father and mother, John realized then that someone else was missing from the table.

His littlest sister.

“Where’s Lucia?”

Lucian passed Jordyn a look, but said nothing. John’s mother quickly went back to putting together the dishes for supper.

John’s youngest sister—the one sibling he was closest to for reasons stemming back to his childhood—still lived with their parents at her age. He tried to make time for her since getting out of prison, but shit kept coming up.

“The last time I saw her was last week after my car finally got shipped in,” John said. “I took her out for a drive. She hasn’t tried to get ahold of me since.”

Which was entirely unusual for his little sister.

Lucian cleared his throat, and came to sit at the head of the table. A seat only reserved for him that no one else was ever allowed to sit in. John wasn’t sure if that was something his father demanded, or a rule his mother made up.

It could have been both, knowing his parents.

“Lucia had to work late at the shelter today,” Lucian said.

John raised a brow. “You don’t sound sure.”

“She’s been … different lately.”

All over again, John’s instincts went into overdrive. If it wasn’t anger, then it was anxiety. If not those, then concern or defensiveness. Sometimes he cycled so fast between them, or ran through the entire gamut of them all at once that it was hard to keep up.

“Different how?” he asked.

Lucian shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, John. I think she’s just made a friend, and while I don’t approve of him, it will run its course soon enough.”

Him.

“Who?”

Lucian sighed. “It doesn’t—”

“It does to me. I look out for Lucia. She’s the only one of my sisters that lets me look out for her. So, who is it?”

“Well, you would probably know him better than I do, but I’ve looked in to him. Renzo is his name.”

John stilled in the chair. “Renzo Zulla?”

Lucian nodded. “That would be him.”

Shit.

A foot solider for a crew John controlled as the Capo. Ren, the guy liked to be called. He grew up poor, and followed the footsteps of his father when it came to running the streets. The guy was nineteen, or maybe twenty.

“I don’t know where she would have met him,” Lucian said, sounding both irritated and confused at the same time.

“I do,” John replied.

His mother looked to him, and so did his father.

“How?” Jordyn asked.

“Me,” John said before scrubbing a hand over his face. “We took a drive, and I had some work to do. Ren was one of those things I had to handle. They didn’t even talk, though. She never even got out of the car.”