Page 59 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

W hen Tino was twelve, a deep-seated, long-brewing anger at his brother was born in a basement. Nova made a bad choice, and Tino paid the worst kind of price for it.

After that first beating with their father, Tino had to constantly remind himself that his love for his brother was stronger than the anger, and still, the two of them barely survived it.

Five years later, when Tino was seventeen, Nova was forced to buy Tino out of another basement by signing him up to be an enforcer, and the payment scarred worse than his body. The basement got his soul in the second round, and Tino got angry all over again—but that time, he buried it.

He didn’t have time for it.

Only sometimes, late at night, when the cocaine wore off, Tino would look at the anger just long enough to wish it would go away. The burden of it was too heavy. He was tired of it.

Then at twenty, totally unexpectedly, it died forever.

In an instant, all that fury was gone.

And Tino got to watch it happen.

He felt it gushing past his fingers as he fought to stop it.

The horror of it stained the Don’s basement floor bright red, a physical manifestation of every sin Tino had dumped on Brianna night after night.

She became the lamb of understanding that killed Tino’s anger.

And this was how it was going down.

Brianna bleeding out in a motherfucking basement, and it was all his fault. Holding her down felt like the darkest, most evil deed he’d ever committed. Physical pain he could take. He’d been dealing with that merda his whole life—but this?

It was too much.

The powerlessness that had haunted Tino since the day he was tossed on his father’s doorstep sucked inward, morphing into a raging inferno of anger between one breath and the next.

Tino knew he was going to crack before he heard the footsteps above them. Nova or Carmen didn’t notice, maybe because they weren’t desperate for an outlet like Tino.

Carina had already gone back up the elevator to call 911, which meant she was going to discover the guy he killed in the garages, but Tino didn’t give a fuck.

It just didn’t matter anymore.

He looked toward the basement stairs, listening intently, every cell in his body pulsing with a cataclysmic flood of dangerous energy.

Hungry, like a predator stalking prey, he hoped they would come down.

All he needed was the excuse, something, anything, to get him away from actually watching Brianna die.

It was Lola all over again. He was sure of it. In his mind, it already happened. The blood, the coroner, and the naked pictures for evidence.

“Tino, you’re not paying attention. You can’t hold her that hard,” Nova said frantically in Italian, like he knew the moment Tino checked out. “You gotta make sure she’s still breathing.”

Before Tino had to answer, Tony came down the basement stairs and said in a hushed, frantic whisper, “I hear them coming. I’m gonna try to hold them back as long as I can, but be ready.”

“Cazzo,” Nova groaned, pausing for a moment like he was at a loss about what to do. “We gotta make a run for it and follow Carina to the garages. Tino can carry her, and we’ll back him up.”

Rather than listen to the Zu, Tino looked to Carmen and said, “Switch with me.”

Brianna was limp when he pulled away, pale in a pool of her own blood, the marks of Tino’s fingers on her cheeks. Flashes of Lola washed over him again, torn skin, the way the blood stained her neck and forehead. Her prone form next to Nova.

Tino knew this was the moment when all his crimes finally caught up with him—just like they caught up with Carlo—and God didn’t care that Tino was forced into it. In the end, the excuses meant jack fucking shit, just like they did to his real father. There was no forgiveness. There was no mercy.

Life took Brianna from him anyway.

Just like Lola.

And his mother.

All that beauty, passion, and talent.

That warm, soft, toasty feeling of being loved just for being Tino.

“Jesus fucking Christ, she’s unconscious.

God, maybe he just knocked her out on accident.

Please, ma, fuck,” Nova cursed, his fingers in Brianna’s arm, still packing the grizzly injury with something white and gauzy that Carmen had handed him.

“Bella, listen to her chest, make sure she’s breathing.

Check her heart rate. Try to see if it’s normal or—” Nova stopped like he couldn’t finish the thought.

Tino grabbed the gun out of the back of his jeans where he had shoved it after killing the guy in the garage rather than fuck with his shoulder harness. He really wished he had more weapons, but there were fifteen bullets in a standard clip for his 9mm Beretta.

He lost one in the garage.

Fourteen was a good number for five or six guys.

As Tino pushed past Tony and ran up the stairs without looking back, he heard Carmen say, “She’s breathing,” but he wasn’t paying too much attention.

He couldn’t do the coroner’s office.

Or a fucking funeral.

Definitely not prison.

Nothing else mattered but getting rid of the threat, which was why he took a moment to actually listen at the door rather than bust out of the basement like he wanted to.

He could hear feet pounding in the hallway, down from the kitchen.

Tino closed his eyes and speculated there were four of them while trying to grasp exactly how far away they were.

It was just a guess, but he was usually pretty good at these things.

From the basement, Nova barked, “What’s he doing? Minchia, Tony, grab him before?—”

Tino opened the door before he could hear the rest. He couldn’t blow up the organization like he wanted to, but he could take out a little chunk of the Brambino Borgata before he went down.

Tino saw their faces, guns already out, wide-eyed and terrified as he pointed his 9mm down the hallway.

Maybe they would’ve shot him back, but they weren’t fast enough.

They became nothing more than lost bullets under the tsunami of Tino’s terror that blocked out all rational thought like a storm that covered the sun.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Fired in rapid succession, causing three bodies to fall, but at the same time, the door seemed to explode in his face when someone else’s bullet missed its mark.

Even wired out of his mind on fear and coke, Tino turned automatically, knowing in that split millisecond there had to be another shooter.

His intuition paid off, and he lost three more bullets when he fired at the guy standing behind him.

One hit its mark, and that was all it took.

Tino headed toward the kitchen, stepping over the bodies as he went, looking for the other intruders.

He stood in the foyer listening, never once thinking about Nova, abandoned with the responsibility of saving Brianna, while still dealing with the terror of knowing Tino was facing down a small Brambino army upstairs—that came a lot later.

Right then, Tino was too busy daring the world to end it for him.

This was too fucking difficult. He didn’t want to play anymore.

He started searching the first floor and found the fifth guy in the Don’s closet, hiding in the corner. When he saw Tino, he pleaded desperately, “Please?—”

“Yeah, okay.” Tino pointed toward the section of the Don’s closet where his most expensive suits were. “Get up.”

When the guy complied by standing up and stepping to the side, Tino shot him in the head, completely wrecking the Don’s closet—on purpose.

He shot him again in the chest, wasting a bullet since this motherfucker was already dead.

It was the coldest thing Tino had done in his life, and he’d done a lot of ice-cold shit.

He felt it stain his brain almost instantly, making him think of Nova, with all those horrible memories right there at the front—all the time.

He looked down at the body, bleeding all over the Don’s closet, with brains all over his best suits, and truly believed it couldn’t get worse.

Except it could… It always did.