Page 52 of The Enforcer's Revenge

“I’ll help Nova find the drugs and the guns,” Brianna decided, and then turned to Nova. “I’ll help you, okay?”

“Okay.” Nova nodded but reached for Tino, as if he didn’t want to leave him alone. Tino flinched away from him. He didn’t want the blood touching his brother either, and maybe, like Brianna, Nova understood because he just said, “Ti voglio bene.”

They scattered then, using the small window they had to clean the house before the neighbors called the police. Carina came flying down the stairs. She’d pulled the black sheets off Nova’s bed, and even though it was a good choice, since he was the only one who had black, Tino wanted to tell her not to let Nova’s sheets be Lola’s death shroud.

Instead, Tino just sat up and said, “I don’t want you to go out there. I don’t want it to touch you, Rina.”

The thing about Carina was that she didn’t take direction too well.

She was pretty much on her own agenda most of the time.

So she just said, “I’ll be okay,” and opened the door.

She closed it quickly behind her.

Tino didn’t know what she did, but it was quiet. Carlo’s sobbing settled, and then Carina’s voice drifted underneath the door as she sangAve Maria.

Tino closed his eyes, remembering another time he lay sprawled out on tiles covered in blood.

The song was beautiful.

Carina’s voice was still gorgeous.

But it wasn’t the same.

Tino might have thought it was his own cynicism, but Nova had stopped on the stairs. His arms were full of guns. He was likely going to toss them into Jamaica Bay and hoped to God the cops didn’t drag the water under the docks.

His brother looked toward the door, listening for one brief moment. The man who remembered everything would know the difference. Cynicism would have nothing to do with it when every second was ingrained in his brain, and the look of anguish that crossed Nova’s face said it all.

The innocence was gone.

The magic had died.

Carina didn’t believe in miracles any more than the rest of them did. Nova left rather than listen, as if hearing it now hurt him, making Tino feel like God had abandoned them.

And why the hell shouldn’t He?

They could go to mass and pretend, but there was no God for gangsters.

They called themselves Lost Boys, but they’d been pirates for a long time now. It didn’t matter if they failed to notice exactly when it happened—it was still true.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tino had no idea that the biggest favor he had ever done in his life for Brianna and Nova was to freak the fuck out and scream at them rather than let them touch him.

At the time, he looked like a lunatic who’d cracked.

He had—a little—but three hours later, when he was still wearing Lola’s blood and standing in the coroner’s office, naked, being photographed by a detached doctor, it seemed like Tino was the sane one, and the rest of them had cracked.

How did the smartest man alive forget about the chain of evidence?

Nova should’ve known that Carlo, Tino, and Carina were going to end up being forced to strip in that cold, terrible coroner’s office of all places, handing over every single piece of blood-soaked clothing one by one to a gloved man holding out a plastic bag so they could seal it up as evidence. Every drop counted, and they were very serious about it, but that wasn’t the worst part.

Just to be sure they weren’t the ones who killed Lola, the last two guys in the world who could afford to be on the grid were forced to give DNA samples for the sake of the investigation.Tino was still very shaken up over Lola’s death, but he was also sweating over his DNA going into the government’s database.

Sweating hard.

To the point that it felt like he’d snorted three days’ worth of blow.