The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (22 page)

Tino let her, even though his stomach was churning, because he did not want to end up in that basement again. He closed his eyes when she ran a thumb over his lips and asked, “You don’t look like them. Who do you look like?”

Tino really wished he knew more of his family. That he could just look at this woman and say he looked like some second uncle, but he didn’t know his mother’s family very well. They’d disowned her when she had Romeo as a teenager. She had kept in touch with her brother somewhat before he died, and Romeo was friends with their cousin Angelo, but that was about it. Their little family had been alone in Harlem, and they’d been fine with it.

“You look like
her
, don’t you?” she pressed when Tino didn’t answer. “You look like the whore who gave birth to you? The whore who fucked my husband?”

Tino closed his eyes again and just prayed for this woman to go away.

To leave him alone with his no cable and his lists and his cereal bars.

“I want you to answer me, Valentino,” she snapped at him. “Right now.”

“Yes,” he said, even if he didn’t want to. For all he knew, it was a fucking test, and she already knew the answer. “I look like my mother.”

“Well, you’re very attractive,” she decided as she released his face and sat back against the couch. “No one ever accused Frankie of having bad taste. You’re much better looking than your brother. If he was all I had to work with, we’d be in trouble.”

Tino’s stomach was churning worse than ever.

He still had that crazy feeling to just run far away, but he sat there instead.

She set her purse down on the couch and searched in it. She pulled out a videotape and handed it to him. “I brought this for you.”

He took it and looked at it, seeing that it was labeled with numbers and a date. It was technical looking, and he got the impression it wasn’t that she took pity on him with the no-cable issue and rented him something worth watching.

“Put it on.” She gestured to the television.

“I, um—” He looked to the television. “Nova didn’t hook up the player yet.”

“Well, do it. I’ll wait. Frankie’s at his father’s. We got all night, Valentino.” She fished in her purse again and pulled out a crossword puzzle.

Tino got the message.

The longer it took him to hook up the player, the longer he had to deal with her. So he worked on setting the fucker up, even if it was something firmly in Nova’s area of expertise.

He screwed up the sound somehow, which he figured out by testing it with the DVD they had left in the player when they brought it over from East Harlem, but Mary told him they didn’t need sound.

So he put the VHS tape into the slot and then fucked with the controls to switch from DVD. He was so focused on just getting the technical stuff right he actually shouted when he saw the grainy black-and-white footage of a jail cell on the television.

That by itself wasn’t shocking.

But seeing Romeo was.

Tino had just been crying over wanting to see him, but he didn’t want it to be like this. Through cell bars, sleeping on a tiny bed that was too small for his big frame.

Tino turned back to Mary in confusion. “Wha—”

“Watch.” She gestured to the screen. “You’ll miss the good part.”

Tino watched, even if he didn’t want to. When the guards came in and pulled out the clubs at their sides, Romeo sat up in bed.

Tino didn’t think he was ever going find out what Nova felt like that night in the basement, when he watched their father take a belt to Tino. Not until Carina’s mother forced Tino to put in a video that showed Romeo getting the shit beat out of him by two jail guards.

They didn’t hit his face, but they got him just about everywhere else.

And Romeo didn’t fight back.

He couldn’t.

Not when he was up for attempted murder on a police officer.

The footage was so grainy.

It was hard to tell how badly he was hurt.

All Tino could do was squint at the screen through his tears.

Then the guards left, and Tino found himself on his knees, holding on to the television as he watched Romeo pull himself off the floor and sit there with his head in his hands for a long time.

“He’ll be fine. Bruises heal,” Mary said dismissively. “They were just making an example.”

“Why?” Tino asked as he turned back to her, because he couldn’t understand why on earth they would do this to Romeo.

Romeo was a rule follower.

It was Tino and Nova who broke them.

“I can have him killed, Valentino,” she said simply, like she was talking about the weather. “I can have him tortured every day that he’s in there. I can sell him inside the prison system. As a matter of fact, I may anyway. It’s the least your whore of a mother owes me. Maybe I’ll use both of you.”

“Why would you do that to my brother?” he asked in disbelief. “Nova’s doing what the don said! We’re following the rules!”

“Why do I give a shit what the don wants?” she growled at him. “This is about me. It’s about the retribution owed to me. It’s about you two living in my house and going to school with my daughter, and everyone knowing where you came from. Your whore mother screwed my husband and humiliated me in the process. I’m owed something for that. Since she’s fucking dead, someone else has to pay the debt.”

“Nova’s paying it,” Tino assured her as he gestured to the door. “He’s paying it like a motherfucker.”

“Are you stupid? I already told you I’m not interested in Nova. I want you.” She pointed at Tino with one perfectly manicured nail. “You’re bankable. You’re usable. You look like your whore of a mother because you
are
a whore. Aren’t you?”

Tino’s mind blanked.

For one long minute, he just looked at this tiny woman who had given birth to his sister, and tried to understand.

It would take him years to recognize that the reason he didn’t understand was because it was something too horrible to comprehend, so for a short time, his brain tried to protect him.

Mary sighed in annoyance and put her crossword puzzle back in her purse. “Look, Valentino, you’re a little slow, but that’s okay. You don’t need to be smart. There’s room for everyone in this business as long as you’re pretty, and you are
very pretty
.” She leaned back and looked at him. “So I’ll make it simple. You do what I tell you, and your brother doesn’t get fucked by every guard in that jail and sold to every inmate when he gets convicted and sent to prison. You don’t do what I tell you—your brother’s life will be a living hell, and I’ll still find a way to sell you. There’s always a way.”

“Sell me to who?” Tino whispered when his brain decided to start working again.

“Well, that depends on you.” She shrugged. “It depends on how good a learner you are, but if I were you, I’d wipe that dumb look off my face and be a
very fast
learner. You might not like me, but I’m a lot better than a trucker in the men’s bathroom at a rest stop.”

* * * *

When Nova got back, he found Tino in the bathroom naked, brushing his teeth. Hair still wet, dripping into his eyes as he leaned over the sink and tried to brush away the taste of wine that he could still feel sticking to his tongue.

“Did you take a shower? You know what the doctors said,” Nova barked at him. “Why didn’t you just take a whore bath?”

Tino gagged, hearing that word in Mary’s voice, which made a sheen of icy-cold nausea wash over him. He tried to remind himself that it was just a term his mother used to say. For those times when a shower wasn’t possible, like when someone had a cast and a back full of stitches, instead they would wash all the vitals in the sink.

Except he wasn’t ready to think about his mother.

He gagged again, leaning over the sink to spit up toothpaste, feeling the sour taste in the back of his throat. He was going to puke in front of Nova, and he really needed to find a way to hold it together.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the threat of a men’s bathroom, and Mary made it very clear that telling Nova wasn’t an option.

It wasn’t like Tino was the same guy he was when they brought him here. He believed the threats now. There wasn’t an ounce of him that doubted Mary would absolutely love to sell him to truckers.

It was pretty fucking obvious she hated him.

So very obvious.

So horribly, terribly obvious after he heard a thousand times that he was a whore, even while he did all the things she told him to and…

Tino dropped his toothbrush and did what he’d been fighting against since Mary left. He puked his guts up, right there in front Nova. Still naked and dripping, he fell down and hugged the toilet and completely lost his shit.

“What the fuck?” Nova whispered as he stood behind him. “Did you take those pills without eating?”

Tino nodded, wishing he
had
taken a fistful of those pills as he retched again. He was definitely taking them next time. He had a big-ass bottle in the cabinet.

“Why didn’t you just smoke?” Nova sighed. “I brought you food. Good Italiano. Not the merda I make.”

Tino tried to laugh at Nova’s attempt at a joke. It came out more like a sob as he knelt there and rested his head in his hand and willed the world to stop spinning and the horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach to go away.

Mary was gone.

It was over.

He was okay.

But she was coming back.

He lived in her fucking house.

He tried to throw up again, but he felt empty instead. The feeling fell over him like a veil. Just this hollow version of the Tino he’d left behind in East Harlem. Instead of shoving it away, he latched on to it. The void, the blankness, recognizing it for what it was.

Pure survival.

Nova brought him a glass of water, and he rinsed his mouth, spitting it into the toilet.

“You need to eat. Those pills on an empty stomach don’t work for you,” Nova said as he pushed Tino’s hair back from his forehead as if he was using the gesture to secretly feel for a fever. “You’ll feel better after you eat.”

Tino turned to look at him. “I will?”

“Yeah,” Nova assured him with the confidence of a guy who knew the answer to everything. “I promise.”

There was this stupid part of Tino that still believed Nova’s promises.

So he ate.

Nova set him up in bed, with a tray table they’d found a few days ago in the corner. He did it up too, with the silverware instead of plastic. He put the food on one of the plates they’d brought from home, and it was good, very expensive Italiano they probably couldn’t afford.

Tino really wished it didn’t taste like cardboard to him.

He stared at his plate as the replay of what happened earlier kept going in his mind, flashing over and over again behind the strange void that was trying to wash him away. He tried to focus on something happy, but that was fucking impossible. Instead he tried to think about something equally horrible, like the basement, but even that didn’t push Mary out of his mind.

“Are you okay?” Nova asked as he sat next to Tino in bed, reading.

“No.” Tino shook his head, still staring at his plate, fighting to remember every moment of his father almost killing him so he could forget about Mary. “I’m not okay.”

“Please pull your shit together.” Nova tossed his book aside and turned to him. “You can’t fall apart, Valentino.”

“Why not?” Tino asked him distantly, feeling himself slip further into that void that was trying to fall over him.

It sort of reminded him of bleeding to death.

Nova was quiet, as if he was trying to think of a good reason Tino wasn’t allowed to completely fall apart. That was when Tino realized that Mary sucking the life out of him was far worse than anything his father could do.

“’Cause I need you,” Nova finally whispered, as if it was a confession he didn’t want to make. “’Cause in this shithole, being your brother is the only fucking thing I have to keep breathing for.” Nova took a long, shuddering breath and choked out, “If you fall apart, I will too, and I can’t protect us if that happens.”

Tino turned and stared at him for a long time. “
Us.
Like, me, you, and Romeo? That us? That’s who you’re protecting.”

“Is there any other us?”

“Have you talked to Romeo?” Tino couldn’t help but ask. “Is he okay? Since you’re so great at protecting him.”

“Yeah, he’s okay.”

“I wanna see him,” Tino decided, and he was insistent about it as he remembered the video Mary took with her. “When can I see him?”

“Tino,” Nova started with a wince. “You’re still recovering.”

“I want to see him,” Tino growled at his brother in Italian to make his point. “I
need
to see him!” Tino’s breathing became hard and uneven, because he was still on the verge of falling apart no matter how badly Nova needed him to keep his shit together. “You keep stopping me, and it’s fucking bullshit! Why do you get to see him, and I don’t?”

“Are you gonna tell him?” Nova asked, his voice still choked with emotion. “Are you gonna tell him about the basement?”

“So what if I do?” Tino shouted at him. “I thought we were us? I thought we were a fucking family. I want to tell him. I want to see him. I want him to hug me and tell me that this merda is gonna end. I just need to know there’s an end.”

Nova hugged him instead.

It wasn’t quite the same, but Tino let him do it.

Just hug him tight like Romeo would and promise, “
Finirà.
”

There was this very stupid part of Tino that still believed Nova’s promises even if there wasn’t an end in sight.

So he finished his food and did the dishes despite the fucking crutches when he remembered the way Mary called him filthy. Called his mother filthy when their apartment in East Harlem had always been clean and nothing about his mother had been dirty. The memories of her before she got sick were starting to fade for him, but she’d always been this beautiful woman everyone in their neighborhood loved. He knew that for certain. No one in East Harlem gave a shit about her being a single mother with kids from two different men. She was kind. She was loving. She was a good mother. Tino lay there staring at the darkened ceiling for hours after Nova passed out next to him. He couldn’t sleep, so he tried to remember all the good things about his ma before Mary stole that from him too.