Page 25 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

Tino reached out, half blind, and grabbed Nova’s ankle. He jerked in a powerful, quick motion, and Nova must’ve been off his game, too, because he went down and landed on the tile. Then he kicked Tino, hard, catching him in the jaw so violently he tasted blood.

That woke him up.

Tino sprang out of the blankets and launched himself at Nova. Tino tried to punch him, but Nova was more awake than him and blocked the punch as he shouted, “That was a reflex!”

“Reflex this!” Tino punched Nova’s shoulder with one hand and used the other to catch Nova the second time. Tino hit his brother in the jaw and growled, “Feel good, motherfucker?”

“Lola never called me back last night,” Carlo mumbled as he ignored their fighting because it wasn’t anything new. “She always calls me before she goes to sleep.”

Carlo hated cell phones, but he had finally caved and gotten one for Lola.

An old-school, pay-by-the-month, practically untraceable burner phone exclusively for Lola to stay in touch.

Even Tino didn’t call him on it. Carlo still had kids in the neighborhood sending Tino texts because of the Sicilian belief that a cell phone in your pocket was like carrying around the government.

Plus, Tino was fairly certain Carlo wouldn’t be able to text even if he wanted to—especially on that thing.

“So call her,” Nova suggested, knocking Tino’s hand away when he reached down to mess up Nova’s hair. “Don’t you fucking dare. I just fixed it.”

Then Nova reached up and messed up Tino’s hair in retaliation, but what did Tino care? He’d just been sleeping, so he knocked Nova’s hand away and did it himself, running both hands through his hair quickly, making the coarse, thick strands stand up. Then he gave Nova a pointed look.

Nova started laughing. “ Minchia , you should see yourself. I hope I don’t look like that.”

“You wish you looked this good.”

Tino crawled off his brother and got to his feet.

Then he stared at his reflection in the mirror and winced.

Nova wasn’t lying. Anyone who saw that would never give a Sicilian shit about using hair products.

He ran his hands through his hair, this time trying to push it back into place, but it didn’t want to agree.

He reached for the gel Carlo had on the dresser.

“No one gives a shit what your hair looks like. It’s just family. The party doesn’t start for another three hours.” Nova took the gel out of his hand and put it down again. “Fix it after breakfast. Your food’s getting cold.”

“Maybe that’ll improve it,” Tino grumbled and looked back to Carlo, who was tugging on a pair of jeans. “You coming?”

“Yeah.” Carlo held his phone to his ear with his shoulder as he buttoned his jeans. He looked at his reflection and winced like Tino had, but he obviously decided to ignore it. “She’s not answering.”

“It’s pretty fucking early,” Nova said as he walked down the hall. “Call her again. I guarantee you she’s sleeping.”

“Just don’t talk to me,” Carlo growled.

“Okay.” Tino held up his hands as they walked down the stairs. “Remind us never to wake you up at six-thirty in the morning.”

“ Never wake me up at six-thirty,” Carlo reminded them.

They got to the bottom of the stairs, and all three of them turned when they heard a phone ringing coming from the front door. It stopped just as Carlo lowered his phone with a grunt.

Nova walked across the foyer. “Gotta be the paper guy.”

“You want me to text her?” Tino asked Carlo in concern.

“Nah, I’ll just call her again. Better chance of her hearing it.”

Nova slammed the door.

Hard.

Carlo was fucking with his phone, calling Lola again, so he didn’t see the look on Nova’s face, but Tino did and said quickly, “What?”

Nova opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked completely frozen in shock and horror.

“Casanova, what?” Tino shouted.

Then the phone started ringing again from outside.

Tino had one of those slow-motion moments in life, where everything in his world turned into frame-by-frame terror.

Every heartbeat.

Every breath.

He turned his head and looked at his zio, just as Carlo pulled his phone away from his ear.

Carlo was staring at the door again while the ringing from outside echoed through the deadly silence of the foyer.

Carlo hung up the call on purpose.

And the ringing stopped again.

Tino just stood there like Nova had, frozen, because he did this shit for a living.

Everyone knew their family gathered on the water for the Fourth of July.

It’s not like the Morettis were subtle about their parties.

The Mills Basin mansion wasn’t guarded with big, tall walls, guard booths, and gated driveways like the Don’s Dyker Heights place.

Mills Basin also happened to be the only property where there weren’t cameras on the outside.

Tino and Carlo used the docks for a lot of things they didn’t want on video feeds, so the cameras ran inside when they were gone to keep the government and other criminals from planting bugs, but not the outside.

It was the perfect recipe for a message job.

They probably waited for months to leave it.

And message jobs were never pretty.

Never.

They were designed to crack an entire crew.

Usually, Tino’s reflexes were fast, but Carlo slipped right by him. Tino’s body hadn’t caught up with his mind. Nova was fucking useless, too, maybe more so because he’d seen what was on the other side of that door.

“Casanova!” Tino screamed at his brother because he was the only barrier between Carlo and the door. “Don’t let him see her!”

Tino spent many times in his life being pissed off that somewhere along the way, he’d become programmed to obey Nova blindly, without question, almost completely on autopilot when things were tense.

It was a defense mechanism, and he never once considered that Nova had the same programming.

That if life threw them in the shit and Tino told Nova to do something, he’d do it, even if he was frozen in terror.

Nova jerked out of his shock and downed Carlo like a fucking linebacker. The two of them hit the tile so hard, it’d be amazing if they escaped without broken bones, but Tino didn’t stop to see the fallout.

He wasn’t real sure why he did it.

Why, when his feet started moving, he left his brother to deal with Carlo and went for the door.

Maybe a very stupid part of him thought he could fix it.

That he could rewind time and make it not be Lola sprawled out on their doorstep, naked, with her phone lying at her feet like they’d cut her clothes off right there and hadn’t noticed it.

Her long, curly black hair hid her face.

Tino pulled the door closed and fell to his knees in pools of blood.

So much fucking blood.

They’d bled her out completely.

Her body was cold in the middle of summer. Tino ignored it and did what he didn’t want Carlo to have to do. He shoved Lola’s hair away from her face. He let out a sob when he saw her, and the absolutely horrific part? It was a sob of relief that burst out of Tino.

They hadn’t shot her in the face, which was honestly what he was expecting.

Her light eyes were wide, glazed with death. Whoever did it had duct-taped a sock in her mouth to keep her silent. It was obvious they slit her throat on the doorstep and left her there to bleed to death. They wanted Carlo to know how close he was to Lola when she died.

Tino took the tape off her mouth, being careful not to rip her skin, and threw the sock into the bushes.

Then he closed Lola’s eyes gently with shaking hands.

Her wrists were bound behind her back with a zip tie, and he was working on trying to get it off, but with no knife, it was almost impossible.

He wished he had a shirt on so he could cover her, maybe wipe some of the blood off her face, do more to make her look a little less brutalized when Carlo won the battle and pulled the door open.

He had dragged both the Don and Nova with him.

Like a fucking bear, Carlo had managed to make it to that doorknob with Nova draped over his back, holding him in a chokehold.

The Don had both big, thick arms wrapped around Carlo’s waist. The Don had spread his legs wide to get leverage and stop Carlo from walking forward, but in the end, these two powerful men, feared above all others, were nothing under the weight of Carlo’s determination to get to Lola.

The world blurred out for Tino, just completely hazed white behind the rush of tears that blinded him when he heard the scream burst out of Carlo.

He couldn’t cover Lola before Carlo saw her.

He couldn’t wipe away some of the blood.

He had to just hand her cold body over to him when Carlo’s grief had him falling down next to them.

The Don and Nova let him go.

Carlo yanked her away from Tino and shouted when he felt her, so cold and lifeless in his arms. “ Piccola mia .” He brushed her hair away from her face and started sobbing. “Amuri, no.”

“I’m sorry,” Tino whispered as he sobbed with him. “I’m so sorry.”

“ Andate via! ” Carlo screamed at Tino, making it clear he wanted him to leave. Then he turned around and shouted in English at the Don, Nova, and anyone else who was listening, “Don’t fucking look at her! None of you look at her!”

“I’ll get something to cover her,” Tino offered, because what the hell else could he offer him?

“No, I’m tired of men looking at her! I’m tired of men hurting her!” Carlo sobbed in Italian as he gathered Lola tighter against him and leaned over her in a protective gesture. “I didn’t take care of her. Miu àncilu .”

Tino wanted to respect Carlo’s wishes, so he crawled past them rather than risk slipping.

The Don and Nova both backed up, and together, the three of them fell back into the foyer.

It was the Don who closed the door, letting Carlo have what he wanted.

Tino just collapsed on the tile, leaving blood everywhere because he was covered in it.

He lay there, sobbing, shaking from head to toe.

“We gotta get rid of the drugs and guns, Tino,” the Don reminded him. “Or we are all going down. I don’t give a shit about me, but you can’t let him go to lock-up like that.”

Tino lifted his head and looked at the Don, realizing he expected Tino to work. That was Tino’s job. He was supposed to protect the family when shit got deep.

“She was my friend first,” Tino rasped. “I dunno if you fucking know that, but she was my friend, too, Don.”

“I’ll find the stuff.” Nova’s voice was shaking. “And someone’s gotta take him something to cover her. I don’t think it can be one of us. It’s gotta be one of the girls.”

“I’ll do it.”

Tino turned to see that the Don’s soldiers were holding Carina and Brianna back. Both girls’ faces were red, tears streaming down their faces, but still, Carina elbowed the guy holding her again and said, “I’ll do it. I’ll take it to him.”

The thing was, aside from Carina seeing the horror that was on the other end of that door, none of them could think of a good argument against it.

“Niputina mia ,” the Don whispered, even as Carlo’s sobbing from outside washed over them. He looked lost, like he didn’t know who to protect, his son or his granddaughter. “No.”

“I’ll do it, Nonno,” Carina said, this time more firmly.

The Don nodded and waved a hand for the soldiers to let them go.

Carina took off up the stairs at the same time Brianna ran toward Tino, but he rolled on his side to dodge her before she could fall down next to him. “Don’t touch me!”

He did not want Lola’s blood on her. It felt like a terrible omen. How many throats had Carlo cut, and look at where he was now, sitting in a pool of Lola’s blood, holding her lifeless body?

How many throats had Tino cut?

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Tino screamed it at her. “I don’t want it to touch you! Don’t let it touch you!”

Brianna stopped and pulled back, her hands held up like she could somehow stop all this from happening. Her breathing was sharp, labored like she didn’t know what to do, but she had obviously dealt with enough of Tino’s nervous breakdowns to understand that touching him would break him.

“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 sang Ave 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.