The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (39 page)

“But—” Nova pressed.

“I know some of his clients,” Lola went on. “I can’t tell you who they are, though.”

“Why the fuck not?” Carlo snapped.

“You’re asking me to share the names of people who shop the underground sex market,” Lola said with a hard glare at Carlo. “Very bad things happen to products who do that.”

“Products,” Carlo repeated in horror.

“Products,” Lola confirmed. “Slaves.” She shrugged and looked at Carlo and said with a crack in her voice, “A troia who doesn’t get paid.”

“You’re not a product,” Nova cut in, because Carlo was looking at her completely speechless, stunned silent and horrified. Nova reached over and grasped Lola’s wrist softly, forcing her attention to him. He looked her in the eye and said, “You matter, Lola. I’m not just saying that.
I mean it.
”

She smiled, her light eyes glassy under the fluorescent light. “Grazie.”

“To me you matter,” Nova went on as tears rolled down his cheeks without warning. “Please help me find my brother, and I swear to God I will do anything in my power to help you.”

“You can’t help me.” She gave Nova a sad smile. “I was born a product, but I know your brother wasn’t. I always hoped that meant there was an end for him.”

“How do you know him?” Brianna asked, unable to taper the hitch of pain in her voice.

“We work together sometimes,” Lola said cryptically, giving Brianna a hesitant look. “He talks about you a lot, you know?”

Brianna pulled back, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks too.

Her emotions were shattered in a thousand different directions, but hearing that from this woman, something about it struck her as unbelievably honest.

“How do you work together?” Nova went on. “I don’t know what you know about me, but sometimes just talking and giving me information, any information, can help me piece things together. Just tell me everything you know about Tino, and maybe I can figure it out.”

“I’ve heard about you. I know you have a gift.” Lola looked to Carlo one more time before she sighed with defeat. “I met Tino the first time a few years ago. They wanted us paired together for certain parties. Elite parties. They’re sort of an open house where buyers can shop for highline slaves. He wasn’t born into it, but he was valuable like I am, and they felt we complemented each other.”

“Why are you valuable?” Nova asked, and then tilted his head and looked at her. “Besides the obvious.”

“I have an interesting last name.” Lola shrugged. “Maybe it’s exciting. Maybe it’s a power trip. I don’t know why it’s appealing to sleep with a mafia daughter, but it is, and my father understands that. There are others, children of particularly talented or beautiful slaves who were raised to do what we do. I’ve met a few of them.” She looked to Carina. “You have other cousins.”

“Lola,” Carlo whispered, and Brianna turned to see him physically pale.

“Anyway.” Lola looked back to Nova, deliberately ignoring Carlo. “Your brother also has an interesting last name. It made him valuable, but when I met him, they were trying to decide what to do with him. Obviously, men were the likely choice, except—”

“Tino doesn’t like men,” Brianna said to the entire table.

“No, not at all. He wasn’t going to be able to pretend it was his thing,” Lola assured them. “He was older. It’s not like he was raised to be accustomed to it like others. Plus, he’d never been with a man, but he was fairly adept with women. So they thought maybe, with the right partner, they could make him valuable to a different type of client.”

“I need more information.” Nova waved his hand back. “You said he was older. How old—”

Lola shrugged, clearly thinking back. “Maybe fourteen.”

“That’s older?” Carlo asked her incredulously.

Lola nodded. “It is.”

Carlo glanced away, his face still pale like he might be sick.

“Tino had been with his benefactor for a while. She was pleased with him, but—”

“She—” Carina said with a glare. “I thought you said my Zio Carmine did this.”

Lola just stared at her but didn’t say anything.

Nova looked at his sister too. Then he said, “Maybe you should leave, Carina.”

That stunned the entire table, because they’d never actually heard Nova acknowledge his sister by using her name. It was always some sort of jab, but he sounded so earnest all of a sudden… Like he
cared
.

“Did you know?” Carlo asked Nova in disbelief. “You’ve known the whole time we’ve been sitting here?”

“It’s the only gap of time we can’t account for,” Nova whispered, his gaze still on Carina. “He’s always doing errands for her. Mowing lawns. Shoveling driveways. And I told him to do it. I literally whored him out.” Nova’s voice cracked when he said it. “Because it was easier than pissing her off.”

“Are you saying it’s my ma?” Carina asked all of them and then turned on Lola. “Is it my ma?”

Lola was silent, looking back to Nova hesitantly.

“You said his benefactor was happy with him,” Carina went on, her voice shaking in fury. “Are you saying that my ma—” She pointed to the door. “
With Tino?
”

“Carina—” Nova started.

“It means your brother loves you very much,” Lola said before Nova could go on. “You
also
have a very interesting last name, Carina.”

“What does that mean?” Carina shouted. “What are you saying to me?”

“Your mother’s very angry at the Morettis,” Lola went on, remarkably poised under the circumstances. “Some of us were made for money. Some of us were made for revenge,” she whispered sadly. “Brambinos don’t make babies for nothing, Carina, but lucky for you—”

“A different Moretti showed up.” Nova choked as he said it. “Why didn’t she pick me?”

Lola tilted her head and looked at Nova. “You’re very handsome, but—”

“You’re not Tino,” Brianna interjected as she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Tino’s—”

“He’s beautiful,” Lola said with the first radiant smile they’d seen from her, and it made it obvious why she lived on the Upper East Side. “And he’s kind when he’s supposed to be kind, and he’s strong when he’s supposed to be strong. He’s the only slave I’ve ever met with lines of women wanting to be with him.”

“No men?” Nova asked, like it was something that had been weighing on him. “They didn’t force him?”

“No.” Lola shook her head. “Not yet. Eventually we all end up where we don’t want to be. We lose our value, but right now, he’s unique. It’s not the easiest thing to sell to women, but sometimes someone special shows up. Someone handsome. And talented. And strong, with the right last name that gives the right kind of thrill. And there are certain women who don’t have the luxury of cheating on their husbands. They can’t afford an emotional entanglement showing up, but someone paid works well. It makes what Tino does very dangerous, but he earns Mary a lot of money, and I guess that was a risk she was willing to take.”

“Wives,” Nova whispered. “Cosa Nostra wives.”

“I already said more than I should,” Lola said fearfully. “Please tell me if you find him, and I promise if I hear anything—”

“Wait, you said you knew his clients.” Nova stopped her when she went to slide out of the booth. “Can you—”

“I can’t.” Lola looked miserable to say it. “I’m sorry. It’s common knowledge that he’s my partner for the exhibitions. I’m the only other one who knows some of the names. If I tell you—”

“They’ll know it was you. I understand, but we could help you.” Nova sounded frantic. “You could come over to our Borgata. We could protect you. We don’t deal in flesh.”

“I can’t come over to your Borgata. I appreciate that, but I can’t.” Lola sighed. “It would start a war.”

“They already started a war,” Carlo assured her. “They took a kid and sold him for the don’s last name. That’s a fucking war, Lola. Come to our Borgata. Let us protect you.”

Lola smiled at Carlo, her eyes swimming pools of light blue before the tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t.”

“Let me protect you.” Carlo gestured to himself wildly. “I don’t care, baby. I don’t. I swear. You don’t have to do this anymore. I can make it better.”

“I have strangers tell me I matter all the time,” she told him with another sad smile. “I have men tell me I’m beautiful, that they’ll do anything for me if only I’d let them take care of me, but you’re the only one who ever made me believe it. I know you don’t understand how much that means to someone like me, but you already saved me.”

“Then come with me.” Carlo jumped out of the booth when she went to leave. “I’ll marry you. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” Lola said as she looked up at him with tears running down her beautiful face. “Tino was protecting his brother in prison from being sold. He was protecting pretty Carina from knowing what it’s like to have a parent who made her to hurt her. I’m protecting people too, Carlo. I can’t come to your Borgata. I’m risking them just by being here, but I love you. I want you to know that, and I want you to find Tino. Maybe—” She shrugged and looked to Brianna. “Maybe it’ll work out for him. I hope it does.” More tears rolled down her cheeks. “He talked about you all the time, Brianna. You think he betrayed you for touching other women, but you were with him. I know it’s so hard for someone on the outside to understand, but he never saw me. He never saw any of them. I know he didn’t. He only sees you.”

Brianna let out a sob and covered her eyes.

Brianna heard Carlo call after Lola, and Nova tell him, “You’re gonna put her in danger. Let her go. Let’s find Tino, and we’ll get her later.”

“I don’t want them to touch her,” Carlo growled at him. “You’re asking me to let those sick fuckers have her.”

“She’s gonna be fucking dead if you keep making a scene. No one’s gonna touch her again,” Nova whispered back at him. “I will help you get her out later. We’ll buy her out if we have to. I promise.”

“I’ll get her out, and I’m not paying him to do it,” Carlo assured all of them. “My hand to God, Carmine Brambino’s already dead.”

“Carlo!” Nova snapped and threw up his hands. “
Sei pazzo?
”

“Fine.” Carlo took a long, hard breath and then said, “But we let her go, and we still don’t know where the hell Tino is. Think about that one, genius?”

“I can think of someone who knows where he is,” Carina said darkly, reminding them all that she was still there, because she had fallen strangely silent. “We’re going back to Brooklyn.
Right now.
”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

What Carina remembered, and Brianna hadn’t, was her mother’s threat the night of Tino and Brianna’s fight.

“She got weird when I told her Brianna and Tino were fucking.”

“Which was a lie,” Brianna reminded her.

“She was jealous! Do you understand how fucking sick that is? Now she’s done something to him,” Carina went on as Nova drove thirty miles over the speed limit. Her voice was shaking, but she wasn’t crying. It was like she was past tears and into something much more dangerous. “I know that’s what it is! She told me she was going to! And she made this
my fault
! She’s hurting him to get back at me! She’s turned her fucked-up, twisted Brambino shit into something I gotta slit my wrists over. If I hadn’t told her about Brianna, he’d still be here!”

No one could say anything to that.

Only Carina could admit something so horrendous. That it was her words that pushed her mother over the edge. Others would hide it. Even Nova seemed to be hiding his guilt, with cracks of it showing when they least expected it. Carlo was silent and tormented in the front seat. Brianna was definitely hiding it as she sat there next to a raging Carina, remembering the night she and Tino got into that fight.

Remembering that she’d called him a whore, not knowing how true it was.

It was her tears that drove Carina to say what she did to her mother, and it was very hard for Brianna to do anything but replay that night over and over again in her mind.

But Carina was the only one owning her guilt completely, admitting that one stupid fight with her mother might have been the catalyst that led to Tino disappearing. It was like watching Carina’s world shatter in the background while everyone was too caught up to notice.

“If he’s dead, I’m going to prison.” Carina said it with certainty, making Brianna think it wasn’t an idle threat.

“If he’s dead, I’ll help you hide her body,” Nova assured her from the front seat as they all finally acknowledged the very real possibility that Tino wasn’t alive anymore. “And we’re not going to prison for it. I’ll eat a fucking bullet before I go to prison for a goddamn Brambino, and I’ll make you eat one too. They don’t get that from us.”

It was such a horrific thing to say.

That Nova would kill his sister rather than let her go to jail for the Brambinos, but all Carina said in response was, “You won’t have to make me do it. I’d help you pull the trigger. We’ve been fucked by those puttane for the last time.”

So the Brambinos had this big hang-up over Sicilians.

They considered them dirty, angry versions of Italians who thought with their dicks instead of their brains.

They thought the Sicilians were beneath them socially…far beneath them.

And it wasn’t just the Brambinos. There were other families who considered themselves more “northern,” though they’d all been in America forever.

Most of them weren’t even full Italian anymore.

Brianna never paid much attention to it. It was an old, stupid Cosa Nostra thing that went back probably a hundred years or more and really shouldn’t exist, but it did for some reason, because the Brambinos let it, and the others helped.

They took power in an archaic stereotype, because no one could deny the Moretti Borgata was one of the strongest families, so they made them out to be hotheaded, uncivil animals who had no place in their society instead.

Brianna never believed Sicilians were any different from other Italians until the night they skidded into the driveway in Carlo’s black Lexus, and Carina flew out of the car before it had fully stopped.

She didn’t wait for the men.

She didn’t stop to ask her Zio Carlo for help, even though he was the strongest enforcer in the Borgata. She didn’t wait for her brother who’d just offered to help her hide the body. The men ran after her, and by the time they caught up to Carina in the kitchen, she had grabbed a pan off one of the hooks hanging over the island.