Chapter 2
The second time I saw Renzo Iannelli, I realized who and what he actually was.
For days, the memory of my sandwich stranger stayed with me. Iannelli. His name was whispered around the precinct while I waited for the social worker to finish the paperwork—a mix of power, awe, and disgust all wrapped up in one word.
Almost two weeks later, I heard his name again.
If I’d known more about him, I wouldn’t have focused on that act of kindness for days.
But it was better than thinking about my situation: curled up on a hard-as-stone bunk bed in an emergency placement home, shivering under a constant chill, and with roommates who snored and mumbled in their sleep. Anything else caused numbness.
Everything I knew was gone. My plush memory foam bed. Noah’s horrible cooking. His terrible impressions of other people that always made me laugh. How bad a loser he was at board games. The stories he told about our parents. My school. My friends. All of it. Gone.
For twelve days, kids came and went from that place. Most were gone after one to three days. Those were the young ones, under ten. The remaining few of us lingered—not really at home but not really homeless either. Just in limbo, a constant reminder we were alone in the world.
The caretakers tried to involve us, take care of us, and bring us out of our shells.
It didn’t take, not with everything I was feeling.
Rage, because no one seemed to care that Noah was gone.
Anger, that he was taken from me. Fear, for what was to come.
Worry, I’d forget bits and pieces of him, just like I had my parents.
I wasn’t violent or scared like some kids, but I needed space to deal with everything.
Maybe the quiet was why I got along so well with Little Bee.
Why they called her Little Bee? Beats me.
The fifteen-year-old was a freaking asparagus with legs that went up to my belly button, but she’d been in the system since she was six.
So maybe it was one of those nicknames that stuck and never got unglued.
Or maybe it had to do with her uncanny ability to coil into herself as if she were two feet shorter.
She didn’t look her age either—too skinny, with freckles over every inch of her round face, framed by an odd combination of straight and frizzy red hair.
It made her look younger, less imposing, which for someone her size was surprising.
She rarely spoke with more than one-word answers, if that. Her voice was surprisingly deep, like a guy’s, with a rich brass texture, and she always flinched at the sound of it. It probably didn’t help that people stared when she spoke.
Whatever, I didn’t care how she sounded.
She was good company. Didn’t hurt that the girl was a genius, like Einstein, but with tech.
From what I overheard, she graduated from high school a month ago, just before Christmas.
She could have graduated a year before, but her foster parents held her back on purpose because graduating early made her a burden.
Brains were a bane as much as a gift. Her latest foster parents returned her, like a defective toy, because they didn’t have time to handle her at-home full-time needs, and the state wasn’t going to pay for college tuition.
I vented to my silent roommate about my brother, my parents, and everything in between.
She listened. Sometimes she wrote questions or comments down.
Other times, when we were in our bedroom, she typed whatever she wanted to say on a contraband phone that went against the home’s no-cell-phone policy.
It felt good to talk and get it all out.
“Enough!” she barked at me on the twelfth morning.
My eyes widened at the baritone sound. She slapped a hand over her mouth. Her face flamed like her hair.
“Sorry.” It was barely more than a murmur.
She fetched a pen and paper and began writing.
You’ve got to stop this. It’s not healthy.
“I can’t. I feel like I’m just waiting around when I should be doing something.”
You’re not the only one who feels like all we get to do is sit on our asses when we could be doing something better. Get used to it. This is the system, babe.
“That’s it?”
She stared at me deadpan, then scribbled more words.
Yeah. If those of us who’ve aged out can’t fight it, what hope do those of us in it have?
I read her words over and over, a wave of helplessness hitting me. “I just miss him. I don’t even know if they caught his killer yet.”
Little Bee’s mouth twisted as she pulled me into the far corner behind our bunk beds and pulled out the phone from inside her mattress.
With a few swipes of her thumb and a mischievous grin, she connected it to someone’s Wi-Fi network.
“Look,” she croaked.
It was a news clip about the shooting from the day after Noah died.
I listened to every word, absorbing it all in.
A shoot-out. A turf war, they guessed. Seven dead—two were from a nearby motorcycle club, a businessman and his employees, all with suspected ties to the criminal underworld, and one innocent bystander, for whom they flashed a woman’s face instead of Noah’s.
I frowned but kept watching. Three others injured.
Then they zoomed in on a thumbnail of a man in his mid-twenties, tall and imposing, clean-shaven to perfection, like he used a razor just before this was filmed. Those eyes, that face. It was my sandwich stranger. I’d recognize him anywhere. I glanced up at Bee in confusion.
He strode along a sidewalk past glass windows, surrounded by men in suits as overpriced as his own.
His eyes were narrowed in irritation, as if being in the presence of others was an inconvenience, even though the rest of the hard angles of his face were smoothed out.
It did nothing to lessen his good looks.
Reporters ambushed him, and they volleyed questions and requests for comments. A line of bodyguards held the press back. Renzo Iannelli, they called him. It rolled off the tongue with a rise and fall. The name suited him: strong, mysterious, rich.
“Son of victim, Elio Iannelli, the real estate tycoon suspected of mafia ties…CEO of PREI Group Inc, Renzo Iannelli, has been called in for questioning…his blood found at the scene…evidence of recent firearm discharge…currently the only suspect…”
A sob caught in my throat. My eyes burned. What? No. He couldn’t have taken my brother from me and then stood there, in the police precinct, like nothing happened. He gave me his food like it was all easy. Like anything could be thrown away. A sandwich. A life.
Oh god, I was so stupid. I was going to be sick.
I hated this guy’s stupid, angelically handsome face.
I hated the way he walked without a care in the world, one arm stiff while the other swayed slightly.
I hated how tall he was and how he seemed to look down on everyone around him.
I hated that I’d met him and thought him remotely kind.
And that sandwich—I hated it too. It was long gone, but I wished I could purge it from my system.
I hated everything it stood for. How cared for, it made me feel.
How normal. How much I’d enjoyed it. How often I thought about the murdering asshole who’d given it to me.
My ears rang as I watched Renzo Iannelli disappear through a pair of double doors. When they zoomed out, my heart thumped harder. Part of the building sign read Police Department. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. They were going to arrest him. It wasn’t enough, but at least it was something.
“Sorry, Ainsley.” Little Bee’s raspy whisper seemed to take up the entire space.
“Why? They’re going to get him.”
She typed. They never get the rich guys.
“No.” I refused to accept that as I scrolled through the news feed. “There’s got to be something else. Something more recent.”
Bee rolled her eyes and quickly punched in some rapid-fire code on a pop-up bar. The phone screen flashed with several new internet tabs. She scrolled through them.
“From today,” she mouthed.
She tapped the screen, and a new video popped up.
Renzo Iannelli was in another swanky suit, gray compared to the previous blue, looking just as rigid and impenetrable as he did the day I met him in the police station. He shook the police chief’s hand under the flash of cameras as the reporter broadcast:
“After further investigation…has dropped all charges and issued a formal apology. We wish him our sincere condolences as he grieves the loss of his father. At this time, there are no new leads, but the…”
My eyes watered. My chest tightened. I was boiling within my own skin. The room was suddenly too small, too stifling. I couldn’t breathe.
That didn’t look like a grieving person.
It wasn’t possible for someone as coldhearted as Renzo Iannelli to grieve.
Conniving. Evil. Psychopath. That was all he was.
People couldn’t simply take away other people’s loved ones and be able to grieve themselves.
I refused to believe the world was that cruel.
I scrambled out into the hallway, my face wet, my hands shaking, my teeth chattering, not caring who I crashed into.
Not listening to their reprimanding tones as I scampered back upright and bolted for the door.
Not feeling the press of rain against my face as I barged past the front door and climbed over the fence.
I ran and ran toward what used to be my home, what used to be my safe space, what used to be the place Noah, Mom, and Dad came home to.
I didn’t make it even halfway across town before I collapsed, my lungs burning and my legs cramping.
I shivered, drenched to the bone, and huddled beneath a bus shelter as I waited for the inevitable—for someone to take me back to foster care, where dreams went to die.
The rain poured. Thunder snapped above. Lightning flashed through the shadows of my thoughts.
Even if I had reached home, I had no key. At fourteen, I had nothing. No rights, no money, no job, no family, no one to help me, except myself. What I did have in droves was my hate. I would feed it—let it drive me, warm me, and keep me company until I burned with it.
I might have been the reason Noah was out on the streets that day, applying for another job, instead of being safe in a hospital in the middle of a residency program, but Renzo Iannelli was the reason he died.
I knew that in my bones. One day, no matter how long it took me, I was going to make him regret it.