The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (33 page)

He used that trick a lot.

Just left the shower running to brush his teeth a few extra times.

Except the fucking dentist noticed and said he was going to screw up his enamel if he continued to brush so hard. So Nova kept replacing all his toothbrushes with these suck-ass soft bristles. Tino bought a highline electric toothbrush four separate times, and they had all disappeared. He was going to bury Nova if he got rid of the next one.

Because Tino was buying it after school tomorrow.

Fucking dentist.

What the hell did the dentist care if he had to keep putting that coating stuff on Tino’s teeth? Didn’t they make money off fuckups like him?

He scrubbed hard, because the soft bristles were a total insult to toothbrushes everywhere. For the first time in a long time, he started to feel sick, like he might actually puke the same way he did that first night in the bathroom when Nova found him standing where he was now.

He was crashing from the drugs, which left him depressed. Usually it wasn’t a big deal; he’d just go to bed and reset the next day.

Tonight was another issue.

So Tino was brushing the enamel off his teeth and wanting to throw up because Brianna was in the bedroom. This was all so fucking unfair, because he wanted Brianna.

Desperately.

Tino was pretty certain he’d been hopelessly in love with her since he was a broken twelve-year-old looking for an excuse not to give in to the void and become an emotionless shell like so many other sex products.

Sometimes he had a hope of being more to Brianna than a dance partner. Even before this past weekend, he’d tried for the impossible. When Romeo’s release date was set, Tino took off the band and threw it at Mary, telling her he’d paid his dues.

So Mary threatened to use Carina instead.

Which was all kinds of fucked up.

But Tino had been in this business too long. He didn’t doubt Mary was fucked up. Most of the sex slaves had parents selling them. That was how it all worked.

In fact, he was almost positive the only reason Mary agreed to have Carina in the first place was to use her like that. To get the Morettis back for stealing her away from her family like a Brambino trophy. Mary probably planned all along to sell the don’s only grandchild.

Except Tino showed up and made life easier for everyone.

So Tino still had the fucking band on, now for Carina instead of Romeo, and the truth was he was probably going to die with it on. Shot in some back alley doing thug work with Nova or by some pissed-off husband who stopped fucking his mistress and came home early.

Tino got back in the shower and washed again, quickly, because he knew he had been in there too long already. When he got out, he dressed with the clothes he’d brought into the bathroom—underwear, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt because there was no heat. As warm as it was this past weekend, the temperature dropped fast, and one of the last cold spells of spring showed up.

Tino and Nova refused to put money into Frankie’s house by installing something permanent, so all they had to combat the cold was a fuckload of space heaters. Nova wasn’t one to complain about temperature, and Tino got the added thrill of Mary freezing her ass off when she was up here during the winter. So he never minded the cold either.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Brianna complained when Tino came out of the bathroom. “I can’t believe you survived winter without heat again.”

“That’s what we do. We survive.” Tino crawled into bed with Brianna and pulled her tight into him. He rolled them both over so that she was curled into his side. She had on sweatpants and one of those cutoff dancer’s shirts, so her midriff was bare. He slid his hand across her smooth, hard stomach and buried his face in her hair. “Tired.”

She reached back and ran a hand through his wet hair. “How tired?”

“I just wanna hold you tonight.” Tino kept his voice low, because he didn’t know if everyone in the other room was listening. “Can you gimme that?”

Brianna was quiet for a long time, suddenly tense in his arms before she whispered, “I thought maybe you’d let me take care of you like you took care of me the other night. Let me repay the favor.”

“You don’t wanna do that,” he argued with her. “Not with me. Not yet.”

Maybe if Mary was out of his life. Maybe if that bitch hadn’t been lying in the same place Brianna was now just a few hours earlier. There were a thousand maybes, but Tino was certain that Brianna didn’t want to jerk him off.

She just didn’t know it yet.

“If you don’t want that, maybe we could do something else. My mother took me to get birth control when I turned sixteen and—”

“Minchia.” Tino groaned and rolled away from her, because fuck if he didn’t want to. It made him hard almost instantly. He really wished she hadn’t told him that, but still he said, “Brianna, no.”

“What is wrong with me?” Her voice was choked with emotion.

“Nothing.” He looked at the darkened ceiling to avoid her gaze. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Ever since the E, you’ve been weird. You avoided me all day at school. Do you regret it?”

She leaned in to kiss him, like she was testing her theory, and he couldn’t help but flinch away.

Stupid soft-bristle toothbrush.

Tino was going to beat Nova’s ass tomorrow.

“I bet if I was one of your girlfriends from the raves, you wouldn’t mind kissing me. You probably wouldn’t stop me from touching you either.”

“Probably not,” Tino agreed, because they knew what he was, and Brianna didn’t. It made sense to him, but when Brianna sat up in bed and looked at Tino in horror, he realized it translated really, really badly. “Wait—”

“I’m so stupid,” she whispered as the tears rolled down her face. “I thought this weekend was more than the drugs to you.”

“It was more,” Tino countered. “I wanted to hold you because you matter to me. What’s wrong with that? I wanted to smell your hair and feel you against me. Maybe I’d make you feel good and listen to you fall asleep until you make those little purring sounds.”

“Holy shit,” she snapped at him. “Are you telling me I snore?”

“No, it’s like—” Tino searched his mind for the right word. “A baby bear. A cute baby bear. I like it.”

“I have to go.” Brianna rolled out of bed. “I should’ve never lied to my mother to sleep here with you. You’re obviously not interested.”

“Why don’t you just fucking leave cash on the nightstand if that’s all you want from me?” he growled as he rolled out of bed. “You wanna take from me—you wanna to take it all—you’re gonna have to stand in line, sweetheart!”

“If you want to go fuck your rave girlfriends, go for it! I’m not holding you back. I’m not trying to make this more than one stupid weekend, because if you think I’m the type of girl who’ll put up with my boyfriend whoring around—”

“No, I don’t think you’re that type of girl,” Tino assured her. “And you should fucking appreciate that. I respect you.”

“Fuck you, Tino.” Brianna opened the bedroom door. “Have fun sleeping with your brother!”

She grabbed her jacket off the chair at the table, and at the same time Carina put out a cigarette in the ashtray next to Nova and then glared at Tino with dark, disappointed eyes. “
Testa di cazzo.
”

“I guess.” Tino held up his hands. “Go side with her. That’s fair.”

“
Vai a fanculo.
” Carina flipped him off and then followed Brianna outside.

They left the door open, and the breeze was colder than normal for April, wiping out any warmth from the space heaters Nova had turned on in the living room.

Tino stood there, feeling like the last bit of warmth had been sucked out of his life too. Then he glanced to Nova and Carlo, who were sitting on mattresses in the middle of the living room, looking at Tino like he had just stepped off a spaceship from another planet.

Nova took a long drag off his cigarette and blew out the smoke slowly before he started, “Valentino—”

“Are you gay?” Carlo asked before Nova could finish. “No judgment, but you should probably tell us. That’ll take some serious damage control, and we could definitely find someone better than a pissed-off Dyker Heights teenager to be your cover.”

Tino glared at the two of them, but then he decided he couldn’t be bothered. He turned around, slammed the door, and went back to bed.

Alone.

Except he couldn’t sleep.

So he took another shower.

That didn’t work either.

When he got out, the scent of weed drifted in under the bathroom door. So he took an oxy, brushed his teeth, and followed the trail of pain management. He spent the rest of the night sitting on a mattress, telling the two guys who understood less than anyone in the world that his goddess had walked out the door because he wouldn’t fuck her.

* * * *

Nothing could make a girl ugly cry like a Moretti man.

Brianna wasn’t the first one to sob over one, and she surely wouldn’t be the last, but knowing it didn’t make her feel better.

At all.

“He can’t help it.” Carina rubbed her back as Brianna sobbed into Carina’s pillow. “This is what they do.”

Brianna lifted her head to glare at her friend. “Are you defending him?”

“No.” Carina took a puff off her cigarette and blew it toward the open window in her bedroom. Then she went back to rubbing Brianna’s back. “I’m just pointing it out. It’s ingrained. It’s expected, even. Why do you think I don’t wanna get married? Maybe you should find an Irish boy to fall for.”

“Tino was different. He was my friend—”

“Okay,” Carina said with dry cynicism before Brianna could finish. “It doesn’t change who he is. I’ve been telling you this. Italian men, they’ll crush you, sweetheart. Look at my mother. She’s fucking crazy. She’s
been
crazy.”

Brianna started really sobbing, to the point that her face hurt, and her heart felt cracked in two. Yet even as she cried, she couldn’t find a way to accept that she was somehow expendable to Tino when they’d been so close for so long. It was like her heart and mind were waging this war against each other, what she heard with her ears and what she intuitively knew to be true.

Or maybe she was just a stupid girl who couldn’t believe the boy she adored was able to hurt her this intensely.

Brianna couldn’t do this.

Everyone liked him, and everything he did always seemed so easy for him.

It only took him one night to ruin her forever. She’d practically thrown herself at him because she hadn’t been able to think about anything but what he made her feel in that bunk bed. Even as incredible as it was, this wasn’t worth it. The fall was too spectacular, too crushing when she realized he probably had a whole collection of girls he made feel like that.

But still, it didn’t make total sense to her.

“He’s not after sex, though,” she finally whispered into the darkness. “That’s not—”

“All boys are after sex.”

“That’s just it, though; he’s not. I was the one asking. Both times it was me. He could’ve fucked me in Harlem, but he didn’t.” Brianna sat up and brushed the tears off her swollen face. “And that was the whole argument tonight. I wanted to touch him and—”

“You just went there,” Carina said with wide eyes. “Gross, Bri. He’s my brother. I do not want to hear anything—ever—about his dick or you touching it.”

“But listen—”

“No.” Carina shook her head. “Shhh. I can’t hear you.”

Carina got up and ran to the window. She grabbed a chair and set herself up right there, flicking into the ashtray on her lap and doing a very good job of trying to ignore Brianna as she blew smoke out into the cool night air.

“Can I—” Brianna started again.

“No,” Carina cut her off. “You cannot.”

Brianna rubbed at her face again and huffed as more tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”

“Don’t do that.” Carina pointed at Brianna with the cigarette between her fingers. “Do not use that sad, puppy look. It won’t work.”

“Fine.” Brianna threw up her hands in defeat and fell back against the bed. She tugged on the blue silk comforter on Carina’s king-size bed and pulled it over her head. “I’m going to sleep.”

She rolled over under the blanket, trying to get warm because the window was still open. What was it with Morettis and the cold? It was like they loved the misery. Nova bought himself a Porsche but slept in that freezing apartment all winter when he could easily invest in a heater.

Brianna was starting to think they weren’t human, and she told Carina as much, mumbling it through the fabric of the comforter as she stayed hidden.

Then she lay there, trying to forget that Tino would rather have those rave girls touch him instead of her. She sniffed and covered her eyes with her hands when more tears showed up without her permission.

The doorknob turned, jerking Brianna out of her thoughts.

“Get out!” Carina shouted before the door even creaked open.

“Carina Maria—”

“Get out! Get out!” Carina repeated it like a chant. “Get out, Ma!”

“I can smell that horrible shit all the way in my bedroom!” Her mother’s voice was slurred with too much wine. “It’s stinking up the whole fucking house. You’re ruining my furniture.”

“Figlio di puttana!” Carina snapped, clearly unapologetic. “Get out!”

“They make you disgusting. Is that what you want to be? Completely disgusting. More disgusting than you already are.”

“Yeah,” Carina said without hesitation. “I wanna be disgusting. I love it. Get out!”

“Who is that under the covers?”

“It’s the gardener.”

The blanket was jerked off Brianna so that she was blinking up at the icy-cold stare of Mary Moretti.

“You think it’s funny to help my daughter mock me?” Carina’s mother arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow at Brianna. “Is that fun for you?” She kept staring down at Brianna like she completely forgot seeing her when Brianna got there earlier this evening. “I could destroy you.”

“Your crazy is showing,” Carina said harshly. “Big-time.”

“I’m sorry,” Brianna said before things could get tenser. “I was already under the covers. I wasn’t trying to trick you. I would never—”