Dealing with Tennyson took up way more time than Renzo anticipated. Now he was one bartender down. He already had Shay and the others working on getting another one ASAP. He’d been called over to Atta’s place to handle some things with the women they’d rescued from Groves.

Now, he was back at Ȇxtase. There’d been a sighting of Timothy Groves in Alabama, but that turned out to be a dead end. He was also still waiting on the ballistics on the bullet Dax had removed from his shoulder, but not knowing the identity of the people behind his shooting was fucking with his concentration. Didn’t help matters much that he was running on just coffee and pills.

He knew he wasn’t alone the instant he stepped into his darkened office. No sound, except for the definite click of the door shutting behind him. Still, a disturbance clung to air.

Thick.

He froze, hair on his nape at attention, calling the warning. Whoever the people who tried to kill him were, they must really want him six feet under. He dropped his hand slowly, reaching for the gun at his waist.

“I’m hoping we can do without the gun play.”

Before he could put a name to the familiar voice, the lamp atop his desk blinked on. The only reason his knees didn’t hit the floor was because of training.

Reflex.

That was the only thing keeping him upright as he met serious purple eyes. The man seated at his desk leaned back, a small smile curving his mouth.

“Hello…Renzo, is it now?” His eyebrows lifted, fingers drumming on his knee as he waited.

Didn’t matter the amount of time that passed. That gaze still packed the most gut-wrenching punch. He swallowed once. Then twice, because for some reason his mouth was the driest it had ever been. “Syren, right?” He refused to budge from in front the door. “That’s the name you go by nowadays?”

Syren Rua, keeper of secrets, puller of strings. If there was a more well-informed, well-connected or dangerous man in the criminal world, Renzo had never heard of him.

They’d gone by different names, way back when. Renzo had been Mauricio while he’d called the little boy with the purple eyes and weird-colored hair Marco. They weren’t the same people they’d been back then either. But somehow, Syren still had the same effect. And he looked at Renzo the way he did the last they’d been this close.

With sadness and guilt.

“How did you get in?” He’d tripled security at all entrance and exits to the building club after the shooting.

“Your guard at the back door stepped away. Piss break, I think.” Syren smiled. “Figured it was an open invitation.”

Yeah, he would figure that. Nothing stopped Syren when he wanted something, but whoever he’d had posted at back door was fucking finished. “What do you want?” He immediately regretted asking that question. It put him at a disadvantage, and with Syren Rua that was a weakness Renzo couldn’t afford.

Not again.

“What makes you think I want something?” Syren asked.

Renzo scoffed. “Of course you want something, otherwise why would you step out from the shadows to meet face to face?” He leaned back against the door and crossed his ankles, trying for casual so Syren wouldn’t see how much his presence rattled. “I thought you preferred watching me from the shadows?”

“Does that mean you’re not happy to see me?” Syren rose, challenging Renzo with his gaze as he trailed a finger over the edge of the desk. “Because I’m happy to see you.”

“I was happy when you stayed far away,” Renzo told him. “I don’t need you looking out for me.”

“What do you need?”

“Don’t fucking do that,” Renzo snarled. “We’re not them anymore.”

“What are we then?”

Renzo didn’t know the answer to that, but he knew for damn sure they wouldn’t find the answers staring at each other from across his office. He couldn’t describe what it felt like, being so close to Syren after all this time.

The things they’d been through.

Sadness and guilt seemed the correct words for it. But then he remembered the constant interference in his life.

“Admit it,” Syren said. “You hate me a little, don’t you, Renzo?”

Hate. Strong word to describe strong emotion. “I don’t hate you. I want you to stop fucking orchestrating my life.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“What the hell is it then?” Renzo pushed away from the door, took two strides toward him then stopped himself. Because he couldn’t. Damn it, he couldn’t. “Does your husband know I’m the reason you’re always in Atlanta?”

Syren didn’t blink. He didn’t answer either.

“Am I your dirty secret, Syren?” Renzo went to him then, letting all that emotion, untapped for so long, color his words. “Does your man know the lengths you’ll go to in order to keep me in your life? Maybe I should enlighten him.”

“This is about me making Dutch give you this job, isn’t it?” It was as if he hadn’t heard anything Renzo said at all. All of five feet nothing, with purple eyes and white-blond hair, Syren was the most beautiful person Renzo ever laid eyes on.

Most stubborn, too.

When they’d known each other, back when they’d meant something to each other, he’d been the deadliest. That part hadn’t changed. Syren remained a master strategist.

Renzo used to love that.

“You didn’t need to come here,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you in my life.”

“That’s too bad.” Syren touched him, his jaw.

Renzo closed his eyes on a shudder. The memories flashed. Too much, too fast. He couldn’t catch his breath, limbs locked. He’d cry out, but the words refused to form. Sound died in his throat. Stifled. If he could make himself move he’d knock Syren’s touch away, but he was trapped in that place where they’d both been.

Lost, cold and traumatized.

“I am in your life. I will remain in your life. The choice is out of your hands.” Syren’s hand went away. “When you’re ready to claim what’s always been yours…”

Renzo opened his eyes just in time to catch Syren’s smile.

“I’ll be here.”

He remembered a familiar promise, made so long ago. He also remembered the shocking, breath-freezing pain when that knife sliced into his side. “I loved you.”

“I know.” Syren nodded, face serious. “And my feelings for you will never be past tense. Even as I decimated your affections for me, mine never wavered.” His eyes conveyed sincerity, but Renzo had been fooled once before. “Mauricio.”

Renzo jerked when Syren touched his shoulder. The one with the still healing bullet wound.

“My love for you has always ever been present. Never past. Always now,” Syren said hoarsely. “No matter where I was, or where you went. No matter the year. Always in the now.”

Renzo didn’t believe him. He couldn’t. In this space, the one where they shared the same air, he realized he never truly knew the person who spent that time with him in the cold, dark cell. He didn’t know the man standing in front of him now. They were both strangers.

The boy and the man.

“You never apologized.” For killing any hope Mauricio had. For taking him away from what had at long last, finally become the familiar. For showing him that it was the ones you loved you had to be most fearful of. That had been his first lesson.

He never forgot it.

“Do you want me to?” Syren asked.

“Leave.”

After raking his gaze over Renzo one last time, Syren left soundlessly. Renzo remembered that about him. The smaller man’s ability to be so light on his feet had come in handy back in the dark days. When Syren disappeared across the threshold, Renzo closed the door and collapsed against it.

Mind trapped.

Entombed in days long gone by, where the nightmares lived during daylight hours and the night offered no escape from monsters.

“Papai!”

His knees gave out and he crumbled to the floor, hands wrapped around himself, trying so hard to escape the cold that seeped inside in thick tendrils, curling around his ankles and quickly moving upward to envelope him completely. The smooth wall at his back became sharp, exposed brick cutting into his skin.

Blood dripping.

A whimper forced its way past his throat. Soft, faint as first. Then louder. Louder. Until he was screaming, pleading. Bargaining for a light to pierce the black his eyes couldn’t penetrate.

“Por favor! Por favor!” He choked the words off when he remembered Monster didn’t want him speaking Portuguese. He’d get punished extra for that. Extra punishment meant Monster’s friends. “Please. Please.”

A hand touched him, tentative on his shoulder. Warm. He jerked backward, the back of his head banging against the wall. Not Monster, his touch was always cold and moist. This one made him want to lean into it. He opened eyes he’d long squeezed shut and stared up into a hazel gaze turned dark with worry.

“Renzo.” That warm touch settled on his jaw.

He blinked. Blinked some more. It took more than a couple ticks of the clock for him to understand he wasn’t in Monster’s cage, and that Low was with him, hands wrapped around Renzo’s neck.

Watching him lose his shit.

Comforting him.

Jesus. He shifted, but Low’s hold tightened so Renzo settled into him, eyes closing again, a soft sigh falling from his lips. Not the way he’d have preferred Low ever seeing him, but he wouldn’t pass on this, Low on his lap, legs and arms wrapped around him.

Renzo hugged him, burying his face in Low’s neck, inhaling sweet citrus and body heat. Anchored in the safety of Low’s arms, he let himself go.

Into the fog.