The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (46 page)

“I think the don’s gonna write his name on a piece of paper,” Carlo warned.

“Please don’t let him do that.” Nova raised his gaze to Carlo on the other side of the bed. “I’ll chill Romeo out. I’ll rein him in. Just let him be pissed for a little while. His baby brother has a bullet hole in him, and his back is torn to shreds. Trust me, that’s not an easy thing to deal with. He’s justified.”

“Thank God he doesn’t know all of it,” Carlo whispered, like he didn’t dare say it out loud, but did anyway because he was Carlo. “Can you imagine what kinda fucking bear he’d be if he found out all the Mary shit?”

Tino grunted at that, feeling all his defenses go up. He rolled over, turning away from Carlo and rubbing his wrist where his band used to be. Tino felt naked without it, but he couldn’t tell them that. He couldn’t rage at Nova for taking away the network he’d used to survive for so long. He couldn’t explain that as fucked-up as it was, a part of Tino mourned the loss of his band. With it, he knew there were people out there who cared about his pain. Even if they were strangers, he always knew there would be someone who could find him and understand.

He’d never hear that he mattered again, and it left him feeling lost and alone.

He closed his eyes to hide from Nova, the same way he’d learned to hide from Romeo when he was hovering over him, never fully buying the story they’d fed him that Tino nearly died for fucking a made man’s wife. Maybe some part of Romeo knew the real story was too much to bear, and since the lies closest to the truth were always the best ones to tell, they’d left out the underground-sex-slave situation.

Just Tino being a typical Siciliano, starting young and making mistakes for pussy. And the Savios took it out on Tino, beating him, whipping him, covering up the marks of Tino’s father with marks of their own.

How nice and neat.

Now all that shit that happened when he was twelve never needed to come up. Just like the Mary shit never needed to come up. Romeo could live out the rest of his fucking life and never know what going to prison caused.

He could be part-the-Red-Sea pissed at Nova and Tino instead.

For being their father’s sons. For choosing this life instead of something different.

“I know you’re mad.” Nova caressed Tino’s hair, pushing it away from his forehead. “I’m gonna make it up to you—”

“Don’t,” Tino growled before he could finish.

“Yeah, don’t,” Carlo agreed.

“Now both of yous are pissed at me too?” Nova snapped. “You think I wanted this? You think this is my fucking fault? So you make me the fucking bad guy? Is that what you’re doing?”

“You could’ve thought of something else.” Carlo said it in a furious whisper, because this was the first time the three of them were truly alone without doctors or Romeo or the don lingering in the basement. “That was a charts-and-graphs accountant decision. That’s bottom-line shit. As long as he’s alive, that’s all that fucking matters to you. There’s worse things than dying, Nova, but you don’t know that. You’re not out there digging shallow graves. You want your brother to have to pull the trigger on you one day? ’Cause that’s what you signed him up for.”

“No one’s pulling the trigger on me. Not yet.” Nova leaned in and grabbed Tino’s face, but he looked at Carlo. “I want you two to listen to me, listen real close, ’cause I’m only saying this once.” His voice was barely a whisper, forcing Tino to listen. “The hand we were dealt was shit. It’s always been shit, and if they have it their way, it’ll be shit until the day they stick us in the fucking ground, but I’m tired of bleeding for them. I’m tired of hurting for them. I’m tired of puking my guts up ’cause they rape my fucking soul over and over again.”

“I’m sorry it’s so hard for you in the organization,
Zu
.” Tino glared at his brother as he said it. “Must be really difficult to deal with all the paper cuts the don dishes out.” Then, just because he needed to say it out loud, he pointed at his brother. “Don’t you
ever
talk about them raping your soul again. I don’t wanna hear it leave your mouth, ’cause you have no fucking idea.”

“You’re pissed at me, Valentino. Your brother. The guy who would cut off his own friggin’ arm for you. That’s what they want from you, and you’re handing it to them. Be pissed at them instead. You two are letting them divide us. They want you to blame me. To blame each other. To blame Romeo. It’s a control tactic, and it’s bullshit. It keeps us eating outta their hands instead of fighting against them.” Nova’s voice was shaking now. “They gave us shit hands, so we’ll bluff until we win, but we
are
gonna fucking win. Lost Boys stick together. We do not let those old-school motherfuckers divide us. They want us in. They want us in so they can use us and shit on us for being bastardi. Fine. We’re in. We’re in like a motherfucker, and we’re never getting out. This organization is our fucking life. This ship is our reason to live and breathe, ’cause it’s our fucking ship. I don’t want to just survive Cosa Nostra anymore. That’s not my motivation. Not after this shit. I want to
own
Cosa Nostra, and I want you two to own it with me.”

“Nova.” Carlo stared at him with wide eyes and then looked to the stairs in paranoia. “You can’t say
medda
like that.”

“This is our ship,” Nova repeated rather than back down. “The northern motherfuckers and suburban zip gangsters upstairs who forgot what made them. They don’t know it yet, but Cosa Nostra is ours. We’re doing it for every Lost Boy they shit on and every Lost Girl they hurt because no one stood up and fought for them. We’re taking it back, or we’re gonna die trying.”

Tino and Carlo were stunned silent. Both of them looked to the stairs again, because that was a speech worthy not just of a mafia bullet, but a shallow grave to go with it. No priest, no casket, just a hole in the ground and a family who would never know what happened.

“I’d take a bullet for both of yous. You know that,” Nova said solemnly, his voice still hushed as he confessed the greatest of sins in the don’s basement. “But this isn’t about that. It’s about all the others out there. It’s about Mei. It’s about Bobby.” Nova turned and looked at Carlo. “It’s about Lola. We’re taking it because we’re the ones who can, and we’re not gonna let them be fucking stepping stools anymore.”

So, there it was.

Mutiny to the highest degree, because they’d pushed Nova too far and reduced him to puking his guts up one too many times.

But Nova knew how to sell it.

All the anger Tino carried around for years evaporated and was replaced with something much easier to swallow. A revolution. An underground battle for all the Lost Kids who put the suburban gangsters in these mansions and paid for the country-club memberships with their blood, sweat, and tears.

The suits thought the war was over, but it was only starting.

They just didn’t know it.

Carlo glanced back to the stairs before he said, “Fine. You be the brains, and we’ll dig the graves. For Lola. Sounds great, but how the fuck do you know the power won’t get you too? You’re not special. You’re not different from the old man. He had good intentions too.”

“I
don’t
know.” Nova shrugged. “It’s gotten to me before. The drugs. The women. I ignored a lotta shit for the high.” He reached over and grabbed Tino’s good shoulder, squeezing tightly. “You can’t lie to me again, Valentino. I’m not blaming you, but you have to promise me the next time shit gets deep, you’ll tell me. If not for me, for the greater good. We can’t let them come between us. We can’t let them tear us away from Romeo either. They don’t fucking get that from us. They’ve taken enough.”

Tino was silent rather than answer, not knowing why he felt as guilty as he did. He had good reasons not to tell Nova, but it all felt sort of cracked in the aftermath.

Finally he sighed and said, “Okay,” because how could he not?

“Like the fucking pope.” Carlo shook his head, and oddly enough Tino remembered what he was talking about. Only this time the dark pope was sitting right there, and he wasn’t born to rule the underworld like the don was. He was taking it by force instead. “You’re gonna get yourself killed, Nova, and for all you know, Tino or me is gonna have to pull the fucking trigger to save your goddamn ship.”

“At least it’s something worth going down for. At least my ma doesn’t have to roll over in her grave and be ashamed she gave birth to me.” Nova ran his hand over the sheet of Tino’s bed and whispered, “At least I won’t be Frankie. You gotta kill me, do it, but don’t stop fighting to take our ship back.”

Carlo didn’t respond for a long time. Then he nodded and said, “Lost Boys gotta fly.”

“We gotta be stronger than them,” Tino agreed.

“We protect the ship,” Nova reminded them. “It’s ours. We don’t flip. We don’t run to the fucking government. We play their game, and we make them think we love it. We don’t do anything to jeopardize the organization. Someone tries to hurt it, we put them down ’cause it’s a fucking war, and if you need help digging graves, I’ll help you dig ’em. I’m all in. I’m taking Cosa Nostra, even if it takes me fifty fucking years to do it.”

Tino got his first ink a week later.

Omertà
branded into the muscles on his stomach.

A lifetime loyalty pledged to Cosa Nostra before he even took the oath.

Carlo got his ink down the long line of his spine, from the base of his neck all the way to the curve of his back.

Nova’s was on his right side, the oath staining the most vulnerable part of any fighter, from under his arm to the curve of his hip, though their people considered themselves above ink.

And these weren’t pretty tattoos.

They were done in big black street-gangster lettering. Dirty, his father told them later when he beat the fuck out of Tino despite the fact that Tino was still recovering. Making Nova watch while he did it.

It made them look like trash. Tattooed like street thugs. Like the Russians and the cartel. He called them every fucked-up thing in the book, and it took him a long time to notice that Tino wasn’t crying, and Nova wasn’t flinching, because watching Tino bleed for the greater good obviously didn’t hurt him.

Frankie stopped then, as Nova knelt there in the basement and glared at their father like he was fantasizing about killing him.

“Get the fuck outta here.” Frankie kicked Tino as he said it.

Tino turned and looked at him, even if his back was on fire and his shoulder was hurting like a motherfucker. He’d cheated a little and did blow before he got down here, but he wasn’t too high to miss the flash of fear in Frankie’s dark gaze.

For that one long moment Frankie saw what he’d created.

Then the moment passed, and he kicked Tino again, forcing him to get to his feet despite his injured thigh that wanted to give out. Tino didn’t let it; he stood his ground as he turned around and gave his father the same glare Nova had.

They were both taller than Frankie now.

Stronger.

More cut and disciplined, with black belts and a vendetta.

It was the last time Frankie hit Tino.

No one hit him, not anymore.

Even when Tino started doing the don’s dirty work, no one was able to get the edge on him.

He was done bleeding in basements.

And he would put a motherfucker in a shallow grave in a New York fucking minute if they tried to take them down, because Tino had a ship to fight for and a dark pope to protect, and he took that shit very seriously.

Chapter Thirty-Four

East Harlem, New York

Late November 2008

“Are you very high? No.”

“Oh, come on,” Carina said in a singsong voice as she looked up at Brianna from her spot on the tattoo table. Ass in the air, Carina rested her chin in her hand and said, “Just a little one.”

Brianna shook her head. “No.”

“Chicken,” Tino added from the table next to his sister, with his ass also in the air. “Get a four-leaf clover. ’Cause your ass is good luck.”

She laughed. “No. I’m not getting a leprechaun or a four-leaf clover or anything else tattooed on my ass. Just no. You can’t make me. My mother taught me to resist peer pressure.”

Tino snorted. “Oh yeah, that worked out great for you.”

Brianna let them say what they wanted, but stood steadfast against a wall covered in tattoo pictures and watched Tino and Carina get matching tattoos on their asses to celebrate being out of Brooklyn.

100% Grade A Italian

A gigantic fuck-you to all the Northern Italian families who didn’t consider Sicilians real Italians. Some Sicilians didn’t consider themselves Italian either. They were their own special breed of Mediterranean badasses, who apparently held grudges they wanted to last forever.

So there it was, stamped right on their asses until the end of time.

According to the Morettis, Sicilians weren’t just Italian, but top-shelf, grade A Italians at that.

Brianna had to admit, standing there looking down at the two of them, the tattoos made a good argument. Tino’s shirt was pulled up, his jeans were pushed low, showing off the rounded, muscular curve of his ass, and he couldn’t care less.

Brianna held Tino’s leather jacket tighter against her chest, unconsciously smelling his cologne that clung to it. Usually he wouldn’t take it off, because it exposed his gun holster and the Glock it held, but the tattoo parlor was one of the many businesses in the Moretti network.

The owners knew what Tino was, and they had him and Carina in a private room because of it. Which was probably a good thing, considering the ass issue. Carina’s was hanging out too, the tan line from her too-small bikini vibrant under the fluorescent lights.

The heavyset, bearded tattoo artist working on her tattoo appeared to notice, but Tino didn’t seem too worried about it. Instead he rested his chin in his hand and stared at Brianna as he asked, “Are you checking me out?”

Her cheeks heated, because she and Tino had been on hold in the friend zone for a long time. It had been manageable because Tino had been largely gone until recently. Now he was around all the time, and the tension was slowly starting to drive her insane.