Page 14 of Enzo (Redcars #1)

FOURTEEN

Enzo

It was bad enough that Gray was hanging around. Still, when our next arrival this morning was freaking Vinnie in a fake-ass stolen car, I about lost my shit, particularly when he started confronting Robbie, who was shaking.

“This fucking twink won’t take my money,” Vinnie shouted right in Robbie’s face. The bastard was red-faced, fingers jabbing hard enough to leave bruises.

Robbie flinched back with each poke. His face was white, his eyes wide, and his hands shook so badly his notebook nearly slipped to the floor.

“Vinnie, we don’t mod cars. You wanna sell this as a ‘68, and the cops will track it to here,” Logan said, his voice tight with tension. At least he’d come out of his office after hiding in there all day worrying about Tudor, and Cassidy, and that fucking journalist who was up in his space. He was also in pain, favoring his shoulder where a barrier had dropped on him, but the idiot wouldn’t do anything about it.

“It’s not a ‘68,” Gray blurted from the back. “What is it, a ‘69 that you’ve added a… jeez… what did you do to that poor car?”

Logan shot Gray a look so sharp it could have cut steel, subtly shaking his head to silence him. Gray zipped his lips and backed off, but I didn’t have time to wonder about whatever crap was going on between those two. Robbie was still backed into the corner, his chest rising and falling way too fast.

“I tried to explain to Mr. uh… Vinnie, that it was illegal,” Robbie stammered, voice watery. He glanced at his notebook as if the written words might ground him. “I wrote down what I said. I really tried.”

Vinnie turned to pleading, “Come on, Lo, you owe me one. Rio did it before?—”

“Get out,” Logan snapped.

“Then fuck you!” Vinnie snarled and shoved Robbie in the chest, hard enough to send him stumbling back.

I saw red.

I didn’t think—just moved. I crossed the distance in two strides and stepped between Vinnie and Robbie, planting myself in the way. My body blocked Vinnie, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. Robbie let out a shaky breath behind me, and I wasn’t moving until I knew he was safe. Vinnie was trying to stare around me at Robbie, his eyes wide, and I lost my shit.

“Out,” I growled, voice low and dangerous. My pulse roared in my ears, my muscles vibrating with tension. Vinnie squared up to me, and I let him see it—that if he so much as twitched toward Robbie again, I would flatten him.

I don’t know what Vinnie saw in my face, but whatever it was must’ve been enough, because after a few tense seconds, he turned on his heel, stomped to his fake-ass car, and reversed down the alley with a squeal of tires and a cloud of fumes.

Jamie and Rio had joined us at some point, standing as a wall behind me, ensuring he wouldn’t stand a chance if Vinnie thought about turning back.

“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. I turned back to Robbie, with his glassy eyes, tears barely held back. His chest hitched, his notebook still clenched in his trembling fingers.

I gentled my voice. “C’mon, let’s get you outta here for a minute.”

I led him to the kitchen and Rio pulled out a chair for me, and I tugged Robbie onto my lap to hold him and stroked his back until his breathing started to even out.

“You okay?” I asked.

Robbie leaned back, scrubbed at his face with one hand, and gave a shaky nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” His voice wasn’t convincing, and I didn’t believe him for a second.

“You don’t have to be okay right now,” I said. “You were scared. That’s normal.”

“I thought he was gonna hit me,” Robbie whispered.

“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t moving. I had you.”

Robbie blinked rapidly, a tear slipping free.

“I know,” he whispered, letting me sit there with him for a while until his breathing slowed and he stopped shaking. “I thought he saw me and recognized me.”

I stiffened. “Really?”

“The way he stared at me. I didn’t like it, and he had this look. What if he recognized me?”

“Do you know him? Know Vinnie?”

“He wasn’t one of the three. He wasn’t…” He stopped, buried his face against my neck, his fists tangled in my hoodie.

“I’ve got this, Robbie, okay?”

I didn’t have this at all. Had Vinnie recognized Robbie? What even was he doing here with that bastardized car? Why did we suggest it was a good idea for Robbie to be up front, where he could be recognized? This wasn’t a game when I had Robbie trembling in my arms.

“You got cookies?” Jamie’s voice broke through, chipper and innocent as anything.

Robbie stirred in my arms. “In the container,” he rasped.

Jamie made a noise of delight and took off, and Robbie—God—he actually smiled. Small, fleeting, but it lit something in me that hadn’t felt warmth in weeks. “Which one?” Jamie asked, and after a pause, Robbie slid off my lap and headed over. That was when I clocked Rio. Just standing there, still as stone. He didn’t speak. Just a tilt of his head. No urgency, no drama—but I knew that look.

Jamie and the cookies had been a ruse. “Be right back, okay?”

Robbie nodded, eyes following Jamie and I followed Rio instead.

Rio was already moving, leading me around the side of the garage, behind the stack of rusted-out car doors we kept meaning to haul to scrap. No one came here unless they wanted to be invisible. The gravel crunched under our boots. I didn’t ask what this was about.

I already knew it wasn’t good.

Rio didn’t waste time. “Vinnie’s marked.”

The words hit like a gut punch. “You’re sure?” I asked, already fearing the answer.

“He’s got a tattoo,” Rio went on, eyes locked on mine. “Ink. Inside of his wrist. Stylized cross like a grave.”

My world went white. A stone cross?

“… the kind you only get if you’re owned. Flashed it because he wanted me to see it. He brought that car for a reason. He was showing us. Not just doing business—branding it. Branding himself.”

“I didn’t see,” I muttered. Fuck, I wanted to see.

My focus had been all on Robbie. Too busy watching the shadows behind his eyes to catch the one that walked into our space.

“I missed it,” I said.

“I didn’t,” Rio snapped. “I never miss Vinnie, and he was staring at Robbie.”

I knew there was more behind what Rio said—more than a grudge. There was blood in that voice, and betrayal. Rio never said much about the fights or the man he’d killed, but Vinnie? That name cracked something raw in him. I saw this wasn’t only business. This was old rot rising to the surface, and it was going to explode. Maybe not now. But soon.

There it was. The edge in his voice. The history bleeding through.

“There’s something else,” he murmured, and tilted his head for me to follow him through yard, which was littered with rusted-out engine parts, half-finished projects, and the smell of oil and burnt toast from next door.

He didn’t say anything as we ducked into the narrow alley that led from Redcars to Carters Bakery. The air was cooler there, the shadows deeper. He stopped halfway down and pointed to the brick wall on the right.

“It’s the same as what Vinnie had on his hand, and there was paint on his jacket. It was him.

Graffiti. A slanted cross, spray-painted in deep black with white parts. The moment I saw it, something ancient and ugly uncurled in my gut. I blinked, but the world didn’t blur—it sharpened. Too much. The red of the bricks. The oily stink from Carters back vent. The way the paint still glistened in the morning light, tacky and fresh. And in my head, I was a kid again. Blood on my knuckles. The slip of a blade in my palm as it carved into flesh. The last time I’d seen this symbol, there’d been a fight—no, not a fight. A fucking maelstrom when my life had changed forever.

I’d seen too many of those slanted crosses in my time, back when I was younger and dumber and spent more nights on the street than in a bed. Hell, I’d had one on my back now covered in crude prison tattoos blocking out any kind of loyalty to a gang I’d once been prepared to die for. It was territorial. A warning. A claim. My brother had a similar mark inked into my skin when I was too young and angry to understand what permanence meant. This symbol, this close to my place, was a message. A reminder for me? Why? I’d made a deal, sacrificed five years behind bars to get away from that life, and I hated how seeing this shook me.

“You see that?” Rio said, voice low. “This fucks me off.”

Rio didn’t know my backstory—my connection with the people who wore this mark, but this was evidence of gang activity edging closer. Encroaching. What with fires over on the mobile home park where I had a place, where Tudor and Logan lived, I was about done with this shit. And now we had Robbie.

“Gang sign for Stone Cross, my old neighborhood.”

Rio side-eyed me. “You know them?”

“I was in,” I admitted, and anger flared hot in my gut.

“I know,” Rio said, quiet, his gaze fixed on me. I didn’t ask how he knew—Rio had contacts from his days as a fighter, and he was still part of that circle.

“Mateo Delgardo runs the crew now,” I murmured.

I knew the Delgardo family, and not in a six-degrees-of-separation way. Mateo was my childhood best friend, the only son of SC’s head, Sonny Delgardo. There were summers as kids when we’d shared ice pops and stole cigarettes from my older brother, and as soon as he’d turned thirteen and the SC stole him from anything like innocence, there were years where we didn’t speak at all, not without an undertone of threats and a knife in his hand.

Seeing this mark here—this slanted cross not ten steps from Redcars—felt like a betrayal wrapped in gasoline. Delgardo senior was dead now, Mateo stepping up to take over, and I’d made that deal for five years of my life for the SC to stay well away from me. I’d done time for Mateo, and he owed me.

“You wanna expand on your connection now?”

“I don’t have one. I was in, now I’m not, that’s all you need to know.”

Rio crossed his arms, his expression unreadable. There was a tightness in his jaw, the kind he got when he was angry but trying not to show it, but his gaze was fixed on the graffiti as though it had insulted him, and it wasn’t focused on me not telling him anything. “Thought you should see it before Logan does. You know he’s worried about Cass.” We exchanged glances—we were worried about Logan’s daughter—she was family.

“Keep this between ourselves for now, okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll cover, but?—”

“We need to get extra cameras pointing this way.”

“Sure, but you think this is connected to Robbie? Why is Vinnie doing this shit?”

“That’s a stretch it has anything to do with Robbie. SC is mid-level—drugs, guns.” They strutted around like some knock-off Mafia, all swagger and intimidation, but the SC kept their focus narrow. Controlled. Confined to the shit they could sell or threaten. But prisoners? Human trafficking? That was a different game. That wasn’t their remit. Not before. If they were branching out into that kind of depravity now, either Mateo—the boy I knew—had rotted from his core, Vinnie was working off-plan, or new players were calling the shots. None of those options sat well with me.

“You think Vinnie’s back to settle something with you?”

Rio laughed, sharp and humorless. “Vinnie has nothing to settle. It was me in the cage, fighting. Him behind the curtain, counting cash, playing big man. I broke my hands for him. I kept my mouth shut and I owe him nothing.” Rio’s jaw tightened. “But, I see his face around here, and I feel it in my bones—he’s after something and it’s not me or cars. He’s claimed by a gang marking up our wall space, carrying that SC mark like it’s nothing, and fuck, he stared at Robbie like he knew something, watching, looking for weaknesses. I know him Enzo, and I don’t like his face around here. He’s always been small time y’know, only this time, he’s got backup. This Mateo you know might run the SC, but Vinnie’s doing his errands. Lighting fires. And if he knows anything about Robbie, if he has any idea…”

“You think he knows who Robbie is?” My world shifted, and Rio’s silence was answer enough.

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find him and then I’ll find out,” Rio snarled.

“I need to go higher.”

“You’re going to front the SC.”

For my family? For my home? For Robbie? “Yeah.”

“I’ll get Jamie to stay over, and fuck, that journalist, Gray… we need to keep this away from him. And Logan, away from him and Cassidy.”

“She’s visiting today.”

“I know. No Tudor. No, Robbie. Tonight.”

“Just us,” Rio said, and we nodded.

Just us.

If it all went to hell, it’d be on us to bleed first.

To keep Robbie safe.