Page 131 of Vega

Marcus stood near the island when I came in. “Wait.”

“I’m not in the mood,” I barked.

“I said wait.”

I stopped near the entryway.

“You think this search is only opening something in you, but it’s opening everything your mother had to survive. Every question you ask her drags her back to a version of herself she barely made it out of.”

“I’m not trying to hurt her.”

“I believe you. But hurt don’t always care about intention.”

His words conjured up the guilt I’d been trying to ignore, because I knew my search wasn’t only hurting me. It was forcing my mother to bleed from a wound she had spent eighteen years covering.

“I’m not doing this to hurt Ma.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why does it feel like everybody wants me to leave it alone?”

“Because your mother had to force herself to move on,” Marcus said. “That don’t mean she got over it. It means she had a son to raise and a life to rebuild. Every time you bring Renzo up, it takes her back to losing him all over again. She never stopped loving him.”

“That bother you?”

“No, it humbles me. Because I knew when I married her that I wasn’t replacing some man she hated. I was loving a woman who had already been broken by a man she lost.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“That’s why I’m telling you to be careful with her,” Marcus went on. “Not because you’re wrong for wanting answers. You’re his son. You deserve to know. But this isn’t just about you; it’s about your mother too. Every answer you find is going to affect her too. Don’t forget she’s human while you’re chasing the truth. She’s your mother, but she was his woman first. If you find him, whatever reason he gives you, she’s going to have to live with it too.”

The anger in me shifted into guilt. Not enough to stop me, but enough to remind me that I wasn’t the only person hurting over Renzo. I looked at the man who had raised me and felt the unfairness of loving him while needing answers about Renzo.

“I appreciate you,” I said.

His expression changed from defensive to being touched.

“You raised me. You showed up. You loved me as your son, not some step kid you had to tolerate because you married my mama. I know what you did for me.”

He looked down for half a second before his eyes came back to mine.

“But I still gotta know,” I said. “It’s something in me that won’t rest until I know why he left. Or if he left at all.”

“I understand,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody else does.”

“More people understand than you think.”

Just then, the alarm notification started to go off on my phone. I fished it out of my pocket, swiped at the notification and unlocked the phone. I saw that the alarm was going off at the location Novi was staying.

“I gotta go.” When Marcus looked disappointed, I added. “We’ll talk later. I gotta check on something.”

I left the kitchen before he could say anything else.

I opened the door and stepped back into the heat with my thoughts louder than they had been when I came in.

I still needed to find Renzo. But now I couldn’t pretend the truth was only going to affect me.