Page 94 of Harbor

This was his greatest fear.

It happened.

Diego was taken away.

He couldn’t help him.

Rose was out of reach.

He couldn’t save her, either.

“You’re eighteen,” Renzo told his sister, “so that means it’s time for you to step up, Rose. You know what I mean? I’ve looked after you for your whole life—did whatever you needed, made sure you had whatever to get you where you deserved to go. It’s your turn now. He’s gonna need you, okay? Because he can’t depend on me anymore. You gotta look after him; make sure she can’t touch him. Be his harbor, all right? Be that safe place. He’s really gonna need it now.”

Because yeah, Renzo’s fears came true, but he wasn’t the only one. Diego had fears, too.

That kid was living them.

“He’s gonna need someone again, Rose.”

It just wouldn’t be him.

That killed him.

But did it really matter when he already felt dead?

• • •

The tacky Halloween decorations lining the corridors of the prison felt like a joke to Renzo. Even the jail hadn’t had that shit plastered up all over the place. He seriously considered ripping some of it down as he was directed through a body scanner before he would be taken to the meeting with his lawyer, but he knew better.

The guards here were not like the guards at the jail. He’d learned that his first night in the prison when a guard who was checking the block stood at the door of Renzo’s cell as his new bunkmate tried to beat the shit out of him because he dared to sit on the one stool their cell had attached to the small table.

Here, a guard’s loyalty to a prisoner was determined by what that prisoner could do for said guard. It depended on a prisoner’s behavior, too, and how much trouble they were on any given day. It depended on a lot of shit, and the only thing Renzo had going for him at the moment with the guards was the fact he was quiet and didn’t try to start problems.

Except that caused him a whole other problem.

With the inmates, that was.

They took his quietness and loner nature to mean he was easy prey. They picked up on the fact he was young just by looking at him and figured … there was nothing to him. Every single day in this place was like stepping inside a boxing ring against the best boxer in the world, and hoping he would make it out alive.

He didn’t let anyone get away with a single fucking thing, either. He just couldn’t afford to. If someone came at him whether it was outside during yard time, or in line at the cafeteria, he had to answer them back twice as hard. Prison was a culture in and of itself, Renzo had come to learn.

That culture had rules, and factors that determined a person’s worth or standing in the eyes of the other inmates. If they thought for one second that Renzo was a weak fuck, they could and would eat him up and spit him out because of it.

He couldn’t let them do that.

He wouldn’t.

“All right,” the guard said, stopping in front of the room their block used for private interviews with lawyers. Sometimes, they were held right in the visitation area, but if the lawyer put a request in, they would make a special effort to give them better privacy. Lucky for Renzo that today was his day. “Behave, we’ll be watching from the other side of the glass in case you step out of line. You will be checked before you’re returned to your cell. Do you hear me?”

Renzo nodded. “I hear you.”

The cuffs on his wrists were loosened, and he was given a bit more chain. The shackles on his ankles, though? The guard didn’t even look at those. The man waved at the camera overhead, and the door to the room opened. Renzo didn’t even look inside before heading in—he just wanted to get as far away from his cell and block as he could. If that meant the safety and sanctity of a private chat for an hour or less with his lawyer who couldn’t do fuck all for him at the end of the day, then that’s what it meant.

It was better than getting the shit beat out of him. Better than eating the crap they tried to call food in the cafeteria. Better than having to watch his back in the showers because he swore it was like a game for some of these fucks to try and rape the new kid on the block. Never going to happen. He’d add another kill to his list, first. Hell, he already made a shank out of a toothbrush and a razor he traded for an illegal pack of prison rip—tobacco.

The man sitting at the table facing the doorway made Renzo turn into a block of ice just beyond the doorway. He seriously considered turning around and leaving the room as soon as his gaze met the man’s cold, hazel eyes, but he had nowhere to go. The door closed the second he stepped inside, and he heard the loud locks close him in.

Fuck.