The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (53 page)

“This woman paid you for that?”

“Well, she didn’t pay me. She paid someone.”

“It wasn’t—” Nova started, still looking uncomfortable. “Was it—” Nova looked away and nearly choked when he said, “It wasn’t Mary?”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Tino laughed. “Mary would lose her mind if someone came on her face. In her hair? She’s a freak about her hair. Madonn’, just talking about it makes my stomach hurt.
No.
No one is coming on Mary’s face. Not even Frankie. She’d cut it off in his sleep.”

Nova was silent for a moment before he said, “You never talk about what happened with Mary.”

“That’s by design,” Tino assured him as he took another bite of eggs.

“I know that you probably need therapy, Valentino. It’s unfair to you that you can’t have the same help we’ve gotten for Mei and Carla and the others, but I’ve been reading books, psychology books. So I thought maybe if you started talking to me—”

“No.” Tino cut him off with a stern look. “I’m never telling you what happened with Mary. That is a line we’re never crossing. So forget about it.”

“It’s about privacy. Your fucking hang-up over the shower?” Nova growled at him, making it obvious this was a subject he’d been trying to broach for a while. “You have no one else to talk to, Valentino, and I think you need to get it out. You’re angry. You
should
be angry, but who else do you have to talk to about it? How are you ever gonna heal from that?”

“I appreciate that. Truly,” Tino told him softly, and he did, because Nova gave a shit, and Tino had been stepped on for too long not to genuinely appreciate someone giving a shit enough to talk about something so uncomfortable. “But you couldn’t handle it.”

Tino put his plate in the sink and went to get ready. He had a bedroom in Nova’s place, rarely slept in, but the closets were awesome. High-tech. Like out of a James Bond movie and probably cost Nova millions. Tino pulled out the top drawer to the dresser in his walk-in closet and placed his hand against the hidden panel embedded in the wood.

The wall slid back, showing off his best toys that were, with any luck, very hidden from the next inevitable FBI raid of Nova’s apartment. He’d gotten hit twice, and both times they hadn’t found the weapons.

Fucking government.

Nova came into the closet as Tino worked on putting on his boots. “I
could
handle it. I’d cut off my own arm for you. Of course I could handle it, and I want you to talk to me. To finally get it out.”

“Madonn’.” Tino groaned as he sat on the floor and tied his laces. “Remind me never to knock you out again. It’s fine. I’m great. No harm done. There’s nothing to get out.”

“I can see the harm, though,” Nova argued. “I know it’s there.”

“Well, I can’t help you with that.”

Tino stood and reached for his holster. He slipped it on, all the while feeling Nova’s gaze on him. He put his Beretta in the back of his jeans and the Glock on one side of the holster, and then he stood there looking at his guns, deciding what he wanted to play with today.

“Tell me why you won’t talk to me?” Nova pressed.

Tino was still incredibly on edge from the encounter with Brianna the night before. He didn’t want to, but he turned and shouted, “Because it’s fucking horrible, Casanova!”

Nova flinched like Tino had punched him.

“It was horrible.” Tino shook his head as he repeated himself. He had taken enough steps back and been out of the sex market long enough to know that nothing about what happened was okay, even if he’d convinced himself otherwise at the time. It could’ve been worse, but it was still pretty fucking bad. “Mary is a very cruel person, and you would never wanna know what she did to me. You would never wanna know what she used to say while she was doing it. It would destroy you. It would destroy all this worship you have for Ma. I can’t stand hearing Ma’s name. I can’t stand talking about her. I want to beat my head against the wall every time you or Romeo cross yourselves when you talk about her like she’s some goddamn saint. Hearing my shit would destroy that love, and one of us needs to have it, so just let it go.”

Tino went back to getting ready.

And it wasn’t until he walked out of the closet fully dressed that Nova said, “I should’ve let Carina kill her that night. I’m the one who stopped her, you know?”

“Trust me, what Carina did is punishing Mary worse than God could. Mary is just that fucking vain, and the surgeries keep making her worse.” Tino reached out and grabbed Nova’s shoulder. “Now she doesn’t leave the house. You’re good. It’s all good.” He kissed Nova’s forehead, because now Tino had about an inch on him. “Ti voglio bene.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Nova planted the seed.

Probably some deep-rooted, long-standing problem that caused Tino to naturally believe Nova, even if everything in him was opposed to it.

Plus, Tino hadn’t ever once contemplated the possibility of healing.

He hadn’t considered it an option.

To somehow recover from Mary. To undo all her fucked-up brainwashing. He’d just been rolling with it. Coping. Lying and pretending to be the Tino he should’ve been and giving up on the Tino he was.

Except Nova wasn’t giving up.

This wasn’t the first argument they’d had about it. Nova had been trying different things for a while now. Urging him to go to therapy, even if it was an intense risk to security, but Tino nixed it, and Nova had to agree.

Now this.

And Tino hated seeing Nova miserable. It wasn’t easy being so broken that anytime Tino let himself show, he could see how it gutted his brother. Like the guilt was eating him alive.

Twelve-year-old Tino was angry at Nova.

Adult Tino hurt for his brother, even if the anger had been easier. Now he just ached for all the hours Nova worked. For the demons that tormented him and forced him to jerk awake from nightmares he always denied the next day.

Tino didn’t have nightmares.

He wasn’t haunted like Nova.

Broken—
abso-fucking-lutely
—but not haunted.

Guilt, Tino supposed, was more poisonous than pain and humiliation.

So if all those fucking books said Tino was supposed to talk about it on the slim hope of healing, he was willing to try it.

Not with Nova.

Certainly not with Carina.

He thought of talking to Mei, but that was kind of like the blind leading the blind. Even if she was in school now, studying for some psych degree, and went to all those support groups. She was probably the one nagging at Nova about all this talking shit.

The two of them were tight now.

Nova was tight with a lot of Lost Girls and Boys.

Always trying to fix their problems. He even had a fucking study group on Friday nights. Romeo thought he was out partying; instead he was coaching Lost Kids and setting up mutual funds. Mei helped him, and together they tried to save the world one broken sex slave at a time.

And screw Mei and her stupid psychology shit she was always spewing at Tino, because he was starting to realize Nova spent all his spare time hosting GED study groups to make up for the fact that the one person he wanted to help, he couldn’t.

So this idea started to form while he and Carlo were out.

It was an easy job.

No dead bodies.

No chemicals.

Only a trip to Jersey to “discuss” some financing issues with a casino executive. There was hardly any blood. Tino didn’t even bother with blow, and he noticed Carlo didn’t either.

They were both introspective as they drove back to the hideout in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, where they’d ditched their Ducati motorcycles for the Lexus. They usually did that, dumped the bikes for a car or a car for the bikes. Sometimes they did it three or four times if the feds were putting the squeeze on things, changing cars and bikes in underground garages and hideouts. The government was everywhere, and it made them paranoid as hell. They went through hideouts like water, which was a pain when no one, not even Nova, was supposed to know where they were.

“What if I needed an extra day?” Tino looked at Carlo, who was sitting in the passenger seat while Tino drove. “Would you cover for me?”

“Yeah, sure, man. What’d you need an extra day for?”

Tino’s knee-jerk reaction was to lie.

That was what he always did.

About everything.

But considering what he was trying to work on, he kept his eyes on the road and admitted, “Nova’s on this kick that I should talk about everything that happened with Mary.”

Tino spoke Italian, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Nova’s probably right.” Carlo nodded. “He’s right about most things.”

Carlo followed Tino’s lead by using Italian too. That quick, zip Italian Carlo spoke that had become comforting to Tino over time. Dependable. Like one of the few things that wouldn’t hurt him, and it made Tino realize he spoke Italian to hear Carlo speak it because he was one of the only people who hadn’t damaged him in one way or another.

Tino ran a hand over the steering wheel thoughtfully for one long moment before he glanced back to Carlo. “Does Lola talk to you?

“She doesn’t tell me anything about you,” Carlo started defensively. “She’s not telling me your shit.”

“No, that’s not—” Tino rubbed at the back of his neck, wishing now he’d done blow before they got to Atlantic City. “I was just wondering…can you heal her? By talking to her? Does that work? That’s stupid, right? It doesn’t really help.”

“I don’t know, Tino.” Carlo sighed, like it was something that haunted him too. “Some days I think I’ve made it better. Some days not so much. I want to heal her by killing her fucking father. I want kill everyone who ever hurt her. That’s how I want to do it. She probably doesn’t talk to me like you think she does. I’m a man. She can’t fucking trust me to keep my cool. We’re all Neanderthals, and Lola’s smart. She knows that. She knows it better than anyone.” He looked back to Tino curiously. “Why? Who do you want to talk to?”

“I was thinking of talking to Bri.” Tino shifted uncomfortably after he said it. “Or maybe I just want her to catch a fucking clue. Maybe I want to scare her away before it’s too late. I don’t know why I want to do it, but I feel like I need a day. One day with no work. No brothers breathing down my neck. I want to disappear.”

“Ehi, I could take a day. Run away with my girl and hide from the world. Sounds good to me. They don’t need to know Atlantic City took twenty minutes.” Carlo held up his hands. “Where the fuck is our vacation package? Enforcer job benefits suck.”

Tino laughed. “We should form a union.”

“We should.” Carlo laughed harder. “We need to talk to Nova about that.”

“Yeah, go call Zu. He’s the one you’d be fighting for the benefits.”

“Then forget it.” Carlo shook his head. “We’d lose. Nobody wins against Nova.”

“Nope,” Tino agreed, not knowing why he thought of his father’s basement. Why did it flash back at him at the worst possible times? “Not usually.”

* * * *

“Holy Mother of God, I would have a dozen of his babies.”

Brianna laughed as she flipped the page of her choreography book and took a bite of her banana. She’d started grazing more instead of eating big meals, trying to get the most nutrition she could out of each bite to keep her body strong, because she couldn’t afford to get injured.

“Forget dancing.” Miranda, one of the girls Brianna had met at dance camp over the summer, sighed. “I wanna be his full-time love slave.”

“Yeah, you’ll probably have competition for that.” Aaron nudged Brianna’s shoulder as they sat in the cafeteria. “Hey, your boy’s here.”

Brianna looked up at Aaron. “Huh?”

He pointed across the cafeteria. “Might wanna save him before Miranda pounces.”

Brianna followed his gaze and then ended gaping like Miranda was, banana paused midair as Tino made his way across the cafeteria. His motorcycle helmet was in his hand, sunglasses hid his eyes, and he was wearing the black-leather-jacket-jeans-and-boots combo she was starting to suspect was as much an enforcer uniform as suits and ties were for the rest of Cosa Nostra.

His shoulders appeared even broader than usual,
too broad
, making her realize he’d come to her school packing heat. She gave him a wide-eyed look as he stopped in front of her. “Hi.”

Tino flinched, making it obvious he understood her shock. Then he pulled off his sunglasses and hooked them on his shirt.

“Introduce your friend, Bri.” Miranda slid down in her chair and used her long dancer legs to kick out the empty one on the other side of Brianna. “Take a load off.”

“This is Tino. Tino, this is Miranda. She’s a first-year dance major like me. You know Aaron.” Brianna pulled the chair out farther and gestured to it. “Sit. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Hi, Miranda.” Tino nodded in greeting at Miranda and sat, looking a little disoriented, which wasn’t like him. He glanced for half a second at Aaron and said, “Hey,” before he turned back to Brianna. “I was actually hoping you could take off for the rest of the day.”

“Is everything okay?” Brianna gave him another wide-eyed look, because Tino showing up in full-on enforcer mode, antisocial and intimidating, was scary to her in a way it wasn’t to the rest of the table. For all she knew, some sort of mafia war had broken out, and he was here to pull her underground. “Where’s Carina?”

“Oh, shit, she’s fine.” Tino looked down at himself and flinched again. “Everything’s okay.”

“You know Bri’s friend Carina?” Miranda asked from across the table, completely oblivious to their real conversation.

“Yeah.” Tino gave Miranda a look, like she was annoying white noise. “She’s my sister.”

“No shit,” Miranda mumbled, raising her eyebrows as she let her gaze run over Tino. “So it’s Tino
Moretti
, then?”

“That’s what my driver’s license says.” Tino said it lightly, but there was a tenseness to him that made Brianna defensive.

“Exciting,” Miranda decided for the table.

“Excuse you,” Brianna snapped with a look of disgust. “You said that out loud.”

“It’s okay.” Tino still sounded haunted, out of place, an enforcer who wasn’t supposed to be social, rather than the fun-loving guy he was for clubs and parties. “She’s not the only one to think that.”