Page 135 of The Enforcer

They all watched her push the button.

And they knew there was about a thirty-second window before they had company.

Still, Nova said, “Take this bitch.”

Mafia violence, in theory, was something Brianna knew happened. She still screamed when Carina hit her mother with that frying pan. Brianna was almost as shocked as Mary looked right before her head snapped to the side with a spray of blood.

Brianna didn’t know anyone could hit someone that hard.

To say nothing of Carina, who had topped out at five feet nothing, and the doctors told her last year she was done growing.

Brianna had to turn her back. It was an instinct, and she found herself shaking, with her face buried in Carlo’s chest as she listened to the absolutely gruesome act of Carina beating her mother with a fry pan and screaming, “WHERE IS HE?” over and over again. “WHERE’S MY BROTHER?”

Carina’s voice was raw, agonized, as if she was exorcising every demon she had carried with her since birth.

Finally, it was Nova who said, “Stop! Carina!”

And for one minute, the dull, horrible thump of metal against flesh stopped, and Carina growled again, “Where is he? Tell me, or I will cut your eyes out of your skull and leave you alive just for the fucking fun of it!”

Brianna turned around, even though Carlo grabbed her arm to stop her. She stared in horror at Mary on the floor, her face bloody, her nose smashed. Mary opened her mouth to talk, but most of her teeth were missing. All that came out was an awful gurgling sound.

Carina held the butcher knife on Mary, pressing it close to her right eye, and Brianna realized she was actually going to do it right there in front of all of them.

She was going to cut her mother’s eyes out.

Brianna dry heaved against her will, covering her mouth, and Carlo grabbed her arm and pulled her back against his chest just as she saw Mary point toward her purse on the counter.

Brianna looked away from the horror in the archway, turning her head on Carlo’s chest to see Nova grab the purse and dump out all the contents on the counter. He searched through them with a shaking hand until he found a small planner. He flipped through the pages rapidly, too fast to see anything, except he must’ve, because he said, “It’s the client list.”

The sound of a knife clattering against the tile echoed, and Brianna turned against her better judgment to see Carina stand up over her mother and drop the pan. It should’ve been over, but Carina kicked her one more time, forcing Mary’s cheek to smack against the tile.

Mary stopped moving.

She could be dead for all they knew.

For the first time Brianna noticed the other men in the room.

Moretti soldiers who were here to protect the family.

Soldiers who just watched Carina beat the shit out of her mother and did absolutely nothing to stop her.

“Someone call my nonno!” Carina said to no one in particular. “Right now!”

Brianna had never seen cell phones come out of pockets so fast in her entire life.

“If she’d been raised by aSiciliana, she’d know not to fuck with one,” Carlo said sadly. “This buttana actually looked surprised.”

“Right? I know who I had my money on,” Nova said as he flipped through the book again. “Fucking with the guineas is bad for anyone’s health.”

Brianna realized Nova wasn’t talking about Mary.

She was just a bleeding afterthought. The first casualty in a full-out mafia war that blew up right in front of them, and Brianna was standing there, watching it happen.

But all she could think about was Tino.

Nothing else really mattered to her.

Please let him be alive.