Page 26 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T ino 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.

No wonder Nova was so paranoid about bullets and constantly reminding both of them to cover their tracks.

If they were this intense about the evidence, collecting every single drop of blood, studying every microscopic fiber, talking about looking under Lola’s fingernails for skin, and entering all that shit into the database to be stored forever… Tino was fucked.

When it was over, the medical examiner’s assistant handed Tino a new set of his own clothes, and Tino looked at them in surprise because he hadn’t left with them.

“We have clothes here, but your brother brought yours. Lucky you,” the assistant offered, making it obvious Nova remembered at some point what was going to happen to Tino for wearing Lola’s blood. “He’s waiting for you in the lobby.”

Tino was the first one out to the lobby, probably because he hadn’t been wearing many clothes to begin with, just jeans and underwear that he handed over to the medical examiner.

Dollars for doughnuts, he was also far more cooperative than Carlo and Carina about stripping down and being photographed.

He was still vibrating with fury over the DNA thing, but when he got to the lobby, every drop of anger at his brother dissipated.

Tino forgot things, too, in the aftermath.

Really important things. Lola’s death was just that horrendous, and Nova looked completely dazed, like he didn’t know what problem to solve first, because Carlo, Tino, and Carina losing their clothes at the coroner’s and giving up DNA samples wasn’t his only huge problem.

The Don got arrested.

And they’d done such a great job cleaning the house, too. Nova, Brianna, and the soldiers threw a small fortune in firearms into Jamaica Bay. There weren’t many drugs, even though they had been at the Mills Basin mansion to party.

Carina was off weed and benzos.

Tino was off blow.

Nova’s weed-laced cigarettes slipped by—again.

The Don didn’t do drugs—that often.

The soldiers were working.

And no one else had gotten there for the party yet.

’Cept they hadn’t known about Carlo’s boots.

The only one who knew about the secret compartment was Tino, and he fucking forgot to tell them. The dogs found those motherfuckers in about five minutes, and thanks to the labels on the doors left over from Carina’s party, they knew they belonged to Carlo.

For a heart-stopping few minutes, they all truly believed the cops were going to take Carlo, who was out of his mind with grief, to lock-up. Then, without fucking hesitating, the Don stepped up.

Those labels on the doors were old, left over from December.

The Don was staying in that room because he liked the view of the bay.

The boots were his.

He even cried a little, which didn’t look that hard under the circumstances, saying he didn’t want his grandchildren to know he did blow. He was worried they were going to be disappointed in him. He let them down by setting a bad example.

Yeah, the head of the largest drug ring in North America was actually selling that bullshit.

The cops fucking bought it, though, and the boots happened to be his size. It turns out locking up a don was much more appealing than dragging in the devastated boyfriend of the dead woman lying on the doorstep. They had the Don in handcuffs in a heartbeat.

In the end, the Don went in one cruiser to the station.

And Carina, Carlo, and Tino went in another set of cruisers to the coroner’s office, but it wasn’t easy to pull off.

Lola was still on the doorstep, and Carlo wasn’t fully understanding that leaving her wouldn’t make much of a difference now.

He didn’t want to go, and it was only Nova, cursing him out in Italian, that got Carlo to play along.

At that point, it was a fucking miracle Carlo wasn’t going to jail instead.

So, Nova stopped being his friend and turned into his boss.

It kicked Carlo’s well-honed survival instincts into gear against his will.

None of them were safe from that shit.

They left Nova and Brianna standing there behind the crime scene tape in a sea of cops—the only two left unscathed.

It had been a really long day, but when Nova jumped up and hugged him, Tino let him. He clung to his brother harder, needing the comfort desperately. Hours later, they were both still shaking. Nova squeezed his bicep under the sleeve of his shirt and pulled back, looking at him in concern.

“What’d they do?” he asked in Italian.

“They, just um…” Tino shrugged and resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. He was sure to be careful of what he said, despite speaking in Italian. “You know, took my clothes. Took my picture.” He stared at Nova with wide eyes. “Swabbed the inside of my mouth.”

Nova looked like he was going to throw up.

Tino wasn’t sure whether Nova had done that part or not, but history told him it was coming, and Tino was praying his brother didn’t end up losing his shit in this stark, terrible office.

“Tino!”

He turned around, and Brianna ran at him.

She must’ve been in the bathroom. Her face was white in fear, but he caught her when she jumped into his arms. She was shaking, too, and he held her tight and whispered in her ear, “Amore mio. My baby.” A fresh surge of tears stung his eyes, and he leaned back to brush some of the hair off her face.

“Ti amo,” he said and then repeated himself in English even though he knew she understood. “I love you.”

He pulled her to him again, tighter this time when he remembered Lola’s light eyes staring at him sightlessly in death. It all felt too close, like it could’ve just as easily been Brianna’s wide green eyes and her blood sticky on his skin.

He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in, realizing only then that all he’d been smelling for hours was Lola’s blood.

He still felt it on him, even if the doctor let him clean up a little after they were done taking pictures.

They gave him wipes to get it all off, and it was amazing he still had skin with the fierceness he had attacked the project, but there weren’t enough disinfecting wipes in the universe to make him feel clean after that.

“I need a shower.”

“We’re going to the Don’s Dyker Heights place,” Nova cut in. “Rome’s meeting us there.”

“You told him?” Tino asked as he looked back to Nova, still refusing to let Brianna go. “And they know he’s coming? They’re looking out for him? They’ll let him in if he beats us there?”

“Yeah, they know. He’s not coming until later, but trust me, everyone knows,” Nova said in Italian, his eyes wide in silent communication of one single, horrifying word.

War.

“I hope they fucking enjoy those pictures.” Carina’s voice carried down the hallway. “I know you’re sharing it with your friends. I don’t care. You think I care? I’ll stand out on Fifth Avenue and show my girls. I got nothing to be ashamed of. I even waxed last week.”

Nova groaned and looked to Tino as he asked in Italian, “Did they give you anything to cover with when they took the pictures?”

Tino shook his head, wondering if this was one of those social things he was supposed to know but didn’t because life had fucked him up. “No. Was I supposed to ask for something?”

“They took photos of you completely naked?”

“Sì,” Tino said slowly and went on in Italian, “Is that a problem?”

“Well, it’s violating. I don’t think that was necessary,” Nova growled.

“Oh.” Tino rolled his eyes. Being violated wasn’t real high on his list of concerns at the moment. “I thought I got lucky when they didn’t ask me to jack off for them.”

“Are you joking right now?” Nova looked even more pale.

Actually, Tino wasn’t joking.

They kept talking about evidence; he figured that was the next step.

Not that he had anything to hide there, and he would’ve done it without too much bother.

His DNA was already on the grid. It couldn’t get worse than that, so Tino just arched an eyebrow rather than say anything.

Then Carina showed up, still pissed off, and he didn’t have to.

“These puttane made me get naked for them,” Carina announced as she appeared in the lobby. “And they didn’t even buy me a drink first.”

“ Stai zitta,” Nova warned her, making it clear not just with his words but his tone that she needed to shut up, and went on in Italian, “I don’t like that they took pictures either, but we’ll deal with it later.”

Carina folded her arms rather than say anything. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she avoided looking at all of them as she glanced at the ceiling.