Page 1 of Harbor

PROLOGUE

har·bor

/ˈhärbər/

verb

1. keep (a thought or feeling, typically a negative one) in one’s mind, especially secretly.

2. give a home or shelter to.

There’s got to be more to life than this.

Even as the old man landlord bitched in the apartment doorway, Renzo Zulla’s mind was on something else entirely. Somewhere that bills weren’t a problem, and rent wasn’t due. Somewhere that a newborn didn’t cry harder than other newborns, and he didn’t have to stay up all night just to watch the baby shake in his sleep because the drugs their mother had pumped into her body during his pregnancy hadn’t left his blood yet.

Somewhere that was better than here.

He’d not found it yet.

“Where is your mother?” the landlord demanded.

Renzo came out of his thoughts to stare the man head-on. What should he say?

I don’t know.

She left the night we brought Diego home.

Probably shooting up somewhere.

Renzo figured none of those things would help his case here. If only because, well, the man might call someone on Renzo. It was just him and Rose, and two-week-old Diego in the apartment. He wasn’t even fucking seventeen yet, either.

“She’s out,” Renzo lied.

The bitterness that festered in his chest whenever he lied for his mother grew each time he had to do it. Mostly because he didn’t want to have to lie for her at all. It wasn’t like she deserved it. She couldn’t even do the bare minimum for the three kids she brought into the world, but here he was protecting her time and time again.

Even if it wasn’t really for her.

Still pissed him off.

“When is she gonna be back?” the landlord demanded.

Renzo swallowed the thickness in his throat, replying, “Later, maybe.”

Days was more like it.

If not weeks.

Carmen was harder to predict than the weather, and Renzo had stopped trying. Besides, he didn’t have the time or patience anymore. He had other things to worry about—the two-week-old in his arms, for example. Diego needed to eat, and Renzo was running low on that powder formula. Or even the girl in the living room trying to get her brush stroke just right with paint brushes he’d lifted from an art store, and a canvas her teacher let her take from school.

He couldn’t worry about where the fuck his mother was right now, or when she was going to get back. Frankly, a part of him wished she would never come back because honestly, life might be easier.

It would certainly be better.

“Well,” the landlord grunted, pushing his heavy body away from the door finally, “I am gonna need that rent before the end of the day, Renzo, or a notice is going up on the door. Do you hear me?”

Renzo wished his throat didn’t feel so fucking tight, so he could tell this man where he should shove his goddamn rent money. “You’ll get your money.”

“Make sure of it.” The man’s beady eyes dropped to the swaddled—the lady next door showed Renzo how to do it for Diego—baby tucked into Renzo’s arms. “Cute kid—having them younger and younger, huh?”