Page 60 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

T ino turned around to find Tony standing there watching him.

Tony had seen the whole thing.

“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 the results 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.

“I mean, we heard things, Maria and I, and we’d talk about it.

Honestly, we figured it was bullshit. You know how Borgatas hype their shit up,” he went on, looking at the dead Brambino over Tino’s shoulder.

“Because we knew you, a different you, I guess, and it never seemed right, you being this intimidating enforcer—now, I see it. For being such a nice guy, you’re a scary motherfucker with that 9mm in your hand.

If anything, the rumors didn’t do you justice. ”

“Been doing this job since I was seventeen,” Tino reminded him. “And sucking at it isn’t really an option.”

“You think you could teach me how to shoot like that?” Tony asked him seriously as he walked up and held out his hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I can fire a gun. I wasn’t lying to you. I’ve put some motherfuckers down, but nowhere near as efficiently as that.”

“Yeah, sure.” He let Tony help him up. “Least I could do. You taught me a few things once upon a time.”

Tony snorted and agreed, “Just a few.”

“More than a few,” Tino had to admit, and walked past him. He took a breath with the reminder that he used to put so much trust in this man. “You’re sure she’s okay?”

“I’m sure.” Tony sounded confident. “I heard the Zu say it with my own two ears. She’ll live.”

Tino nodded and walked out of Carlo’s room to look for any other threats. Tony didn’t say anything else, but he did follow close at Tino’s heels as Tino prowled the house, looking for more Brambinos.

Back and forth, over the huge mansion, because there were so many places a gangster could hide—it was like playing fucked up hide and seek, with a really unhappy ending.

“Tino, I think you got them all,” Tony said, not for the first time, as Tino checked in the cabinet under the sink, which was probably too small for a human.

He looked anyway.

“We should go check on your brother,” Tony went on cautiously. “There’s no one else, and don’t you want to see how your girl is? The ambulance took off. Let’s find out what happened.”

Tino didn’t want to go back to the basement.

He fucking hated basements.

And he didn’t want to hear that Brianna was gone.

So, he kept looking.

Under all the beds, in all the rooms, even though he had already checked them twice. He needed just one more Brambino, and then he’d feel better.

The world would be a little safer.

No one’s girls needed to die, and no one’s children needed to be abused for something as absolutely hideous as money.

Or arrogance. Or needing to feel stronger or more desirable than someone else on this horrible planet—even if that someone was twelve and he never once fucking asked to be his father’s son.

Tino couldn’t let it go.

He kept looking, wondering where the rest of the family was. The Don didn’t have Nova protected while Tino was gone? He found four of the guards dead outside when he and Tony got there, but still. No other Morettis, dead or alive, in this big fucking place?

Something occurred to him, and Tino left Tony standing there as he dashed back to the staircase. He was quick but quiet, being sure to keep his footsteps light this time as he followed the familiar path back to Nova’s room, even though he checked it twice—but he’d forgotten one spot.

He made the long step from the doorway to the decorative carpet beneath Nova’s bed, avoiding the wood floor as he crept around to the spot closest to Nova’s bathroom and listened.

There was a faint whisper of, “I hear something again.”

Followed by a quick, “Shut up.”

Tino arched an eyebrow and looked to the side, seeing Tony standing in the hallway with his gun out. Tino shook his head slightly in warning, hoping that was enough to keep him quiet until Tino made his move.

All his muscles pulsed with that familiar bolt of adrenaline right before he jumped forward, shoving his way into the bathroom. After one quick, instinctual shot… a body thumped against the bathroom tile.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Gino shouted.

Tino spun around, gun level at his cousin’s head. He blinked, seeing two people standing in the bathtub.

“Tino!” Gino said more pointedly, hands in the air like it was a reflex. “Hey, it’s us! Just me and Monte! That guy was the one watching us. There’s no one else in here.”

Tino looked from Gino Moretti to Monte, who was the Don’s nephew and next in charge behind Nova. Both of them were standing in the old-fashioned, claw-foot bathtub. Gino still had his hands in the air like a dumbass.

Tino glanced down at the dead man bleeding on the tile in front of them, the one he shot blindly, when it could’ve easily been Gino or Monte standing there instead.

And Tino was pretty sure they knew it, too.

Nothing but sheer dumb luck saved them because Tino had taken a leaf out of Gino’s book tonight and wasn’t paying attention to faces in the dark.

“Why didn’t you shout when I came here looking three fucking times before? Gimme some hint you’re in here,” Tino asked them suspiciously. “Maybe you’re working with them, huh? Maybe you’re just trying to take down Nova—playing both sides against all of us.”

Tino thought about his last three bullets in his clip—two for Gino and Monte, one left for his headache.