Page 69 of The Enforcer

Tino just stared at her, because he’d been sort of busy almost dying.

“No,” he finally said, hoping to God the sarcasm didn’t sound in his voice. “Not yet.”

“If we’re letting you stay here, the least you could do is clean it.” She sat down on the couch next to him and looked down to Tino’s place on the floor where he was working on his list in front of the coffee table. “Your mother probably didn’t teach you how to clean.”

Tino turned around and looked at his paper with sightless eyes, because he didn’t need Nova’s brain to figure out they had just stepped into very dangerous territory.

“Was your mother filthy?” she pressed when he didn’t respond.

“My mother was sick,” Tino whispered, because he got the impression she was going to get meaner if he didn’t answer. “She was sick for a long time.”

“I should feel better that God punished her.” She said it like this was something she thought about a lot. “But I don’t feel better. I don’t feel better at all. Now I’m stuck looking at your brother every time he walks into my house. It’s insulting.”

Nova really needed to stop walking into this bitch’s house to help their father with all his financial shit. Why couldn’t they meet at strip clubs or restaurants like the mafia guys in the movies?

She leaned forward and grabbed Tino’s face, sharp nails digging into his cheek, and he jerked away on instinct. He could smell the wine on her, and he didn’t want to piss her off, but he couldn’t help it.

He was in full-on silent, wait-for-Nova mode, but something about the way she grabbed him made every self-defense mechanism he had fire off at once, and he was at a loss as to what to do about it.

This woman was tiny.

It was screwing up all the wires in his brain, because getting away from her was easy, but his father had fucked him up. It made Tino feel like trying to run ended with him in a basement.

She leaned forward again and this time touched him softer, forcing his face to her. “I just want to look at you.”

Tino let her, even though his stomach was churning, because he did not want to end up in that basement again. He closed his eyes when she ran a thumb over his lips and asked, “You don’t look like them. Who do you look like?”

Tino really wished he knew more of his family. That he could just look at this woman and say he looked like some second uncle, but he didn’t know his mother’s family very well. They’d disowned her when she had Romeo as a teenager. She had kept in touch with her brother somewhat before he died, and Romeo was friends with their cousin Angelo, but that was about it. Their little family had been alone in Harlem, and they’d been fine with it.

“You look likeher, don’t you?” she pressed when Tino didn’t answer. “You look like the whore who gave birth to you? The whore who fucked my husband?”

Tino closed his eyes again and just prayed for this woman to go away.

To leave him alone with his no cable and his lists and his cereal bars.

“I want you to answer me, Valentino,” she snapped at him. “Right now.”

“Yes,” he said, even if he didn’t want to. For all he knew, it was a fucking test, and she already knew the answer. “I look like my mother.”

“Well, you’re very attractive,” she decided as she released his face and sat back against the couch. “No one ever accused Frankie of having bad taste. You’re much better looking than your brother. If he was all I had to work with, we’d be in trouble.”

Tino’s stomach was churning worse than ever.

He still had that crazy feeling to just run far away, but he sat there instead.

She set her purse down on the couch and searched in it. She pulled out a videotape and handed it to him. “I brought this for you.”

He took it and looked at it, seeing that it was labeled with numbers and a date. It was technical looking, and he got the impression it wasn’t that she took pity on him with the no-cable issue and rented him something worth watching.

“Put it on.” She gestured to the television.

“I, um—” He looked to the television. “Nova didn’t hook up the player yet.”

“Well, do it. I’ll wait. Frankie’s at his father’s. We got all night, Valentino.” She fished in her purse again and pulled out a crossword puzzle.

Tino got the message.

The longer it took him to hook up the player, the longer he had to deal with her. So he worked on setting the fucker up, even if it was something firmly in Nova’s area of expertise.