Page 124 of The Enforcer's Revenge

“Zu told me to find you,” Tony started in a slow, cautious voice. “Guess you don’t like your don that much, huh?” He said it conversationally, as though he was looking for a topic besides Tino being an ice-cold murderer. He tilted his head to look at the inside of the closet. “About as much as I like my father.”

Tino didn’t say anything. He just stood there, the rivers of blood staining his boots.

“You know I can’t do that no communication thing,” Tony said warningly. “You’re the talker. I can’t do it without you. I don’t give a fuck if you got Brambino all over your grandfather’s shit, but you have to talk to me. You turn off, and I will too.”

Tino looked to the closet as he stepped out into the bedroom, feeling the need to explain the mess if nothing else. “They killed my girl.”

“She’s not dead.” Tony gestured toward the window as the wail of an ambulance siren sounded in the distance. “Do they send rescue for dead girls? No, she’s alive, man. I saw your brother take her up the elevator.”

Tino blinked as the siren got louder, recalling the coroner’s van when Lola died, and the memory felt like a glitch somehow. It confused him, and he started feeling the headache again, excruciating, blinding behind his eyes. The experience was too intense to bear. It made him feel seventeen again, back in the early days when Carlo used to pull over and let him hide in a corner down the street to throw up after a hit.

His first thought was to just put the gun to his throbbing head and use the next bullet in his clip to end it all.

Like an aspirin, only more permanent.

Tony put an arm around him, pulling him farther away from the bloody closet. “Come on, let’s check the rest of the house, then we’ll deal with the fallout. You lead this time, and I’ll follow.”

Tino nodded as he stood with Tony in the Don’s bedroom, reminding himself that there were probably still more Brambinos in the house.

That he could do; the rest was still too hard.

Tino stood there and took the time to listen once more, but the wail of an ambulance siren made it more difficult. He tried to ignore it, thinking about the other problems rather than Brianna bleeding all over the Don’s basement, dying in the worst fucking place possible. She was the last person he wanted to end up in a basement, the same place that stole his soul, and yet…

The house was old.

It gave people away.

He heard a creak on the floorboards from above, and Tino looked up to the mirrored ceiling above the Don’s bed.

“Carlo’s bedroom,” he said out loud, but that was the only warning Tony got.

Tino raced upstairs. In his haste, he wasn’t nearly as quiet as he should’ve been when he forced the damaged door to Carlo’s room open farther. With his gun out, he peered in, seeing theresults from the Brambino’s raid. He kept his steps soft on purpose, being careful to walk on the edges of the rug around Carlo’s bed as he peered into the closet that was riddled with bullet holes. The door was hanging off the hinge, like someone had kicked it open.

That’s when the sixth gangster played his hand first, pumping a fuckton of bullets through Carlo’s bathroom door. For one second, Tino thought he was dead, but then he realized the dumbass decided to empty his clip and hope upon hope that Tino just happened to be standing in front of a closed door.

Quite the gamble when raiding a house full of known Sicilian gangsters, and Tino decided to go along with it. He fell to the floor hard enough to be heard, and then crawled on his hands and knees, using the rug to cushion his movements. He peered around the bed, pointing the 9mm at the door, and waited.

Nothing.

Tino coughed.

And choked a little.

Then he was deathly quiet, patiently waiting as the ambulance siren suddenly died.

And that scared him worse than anything.

Tino tried to ignore it and kept his gun leveled at the bathroom door.

The creak of a hinge reverberated through the now quiet room, and Tino’s muscles all tensed at once. He met the other man’s gaze through the cracked bathroom door.

“Ciao,” Tino said casually, looking down the barrel of his 9mm at his target.

He shot him in the chest, slightly to the left. The guy was dead before he hit the ground. Tino just lay there, looking at him after he fell, but he knew there could still be more.

He rolled over, seeing Tony standing at the doorway, gun drawn, one dark eyebrow arched. “You’re a pretty fucking good shot, Tino.”

“Yeah, I do alright.” Not like Tino could argue it.