Page 26 of Vega

“And you keep saying the same thing like repeating it makes it true.”

“He’s disappeared for eighteen years. What else would you call that? He never contacted his son.”

“My brother loved that boy.”

Denise slightly rolled her eyes. “Then where is he?”

My father’s expression always held so much grief whenever his brother came up in conversation. They were as close as I am to Wise and Prodigy and were also best friends like my mother and Aunt Denise.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But Renzo wouldn’t walk away from his child without a reason.”

Prodigy watched him closely, as if hearing those words again gave him the power to keep searching for Renzo.

Aunt Denise shook her head as if she felt sorry for Sal. “You remember the brother you wanted him to be.”

“No. I remember the man he was.”

Marcus placed a hand over Aunt Denise’s, but she continued looking at my father. “He left me to raise Prodigy alone.”

“And I am telling you, he would never do that. Something happened. Did you ever consider that his disappearance could have been connected to Vittorio Carbone?”

Before he disappeared, Renzo had worked as an electrician at a commercial property owned by Vittorio Carbone. Renzo so happened to be inside the building when two men came to kill Vittorio. Renzo could’ve hidden and let it happen. Instead, he pulled the fire alarm, got Vittorio out through a service corridor, and took a bullet protecting him before security arrived.

“How could that be if he saved Vittorio’s life?” Denise asked.

“The men trying to kill him could have came after my father.”

“Why? He was just an electrician and they knew that. Besides, there would have been evidence of that somewhere.”

“You cannot know that,” Prodigy argued.

“Neither can you.”

The room stayed quiet for several seconds.

I respected my father for many reasons, but his loyalty had always been near the top of the list. Eighteen years had passed. Renzo hadn’t called, written, or appeared at a funeral. Most people had accepted the easiest explanation. But my father refused to. He believed, despite their brotherly bond, that his brother loved Prodigy too much to disappear by choice, and he stood on that belief even when it made things uncomfortable.

Prodigy cleared his throat. “I found another possible address.”

Aunt Denise closed her eyes briefly. “Where?”

“I’m not comfortable saying, especially since I don’t know why he left.”

My father nodded. “Tell me when you’re going.”

“I can handle it.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said tell me. You’ll need support.”

Prodigy stared at him before nodding once.

Aunt Denise looked as though she wanted to argue, but Marcus squeezed her hand, and she complied with a weak smile.

RENEE MORETTI

I sat against the headboard with the comforter gathered over my legs, staring at the bathroom door. The shower had stopped running several minutes ago, but my thoughts hadn’t. Prodigy’s voice kept replaying in my head. The confidence he had when he spoke about finding his father had been giving me a panic attack that I’d forced myself to hide during dinner, until we left Denise and Marcus’s house.

The bathroom door opened, and Sal stepped into the bedroom with a white towel wrapped low around his waist. His dark hair was still damp, pushed away from his face, and drops of water clung to the thick hair covering his chest.