Page 74 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

Tino nodded, the ringing in his ears getting louder and louder, and suddenly, he realized the real reason he’d been snorting blow non-stop since seeing his uncle’s picture on the news.

Unexpectedly, like the memory of Nova shaking at their father’s feet in the basement that first time, the image of Carlo in another basement slapped Tino in the face because it was so vivid.

Like it was happening right now, Tino remembered Carlo’s warning the night Tino made the decision to be an enforcer.

“Anyone can come up.” Carlo’s voice cracked.

“Your brother. Your sister. The old man. The one kid you thought was safe from this bullshit. I’ve considered a lotta people.

I’ve spent nights worrying that Nova’s brain would make them too nervous one day, and I’d get a piece of paper with his name on it, but I never thought it would be you.

That’s what sucks. It hits you when you least expect it. It could be anyone, Tino.”

Tino agreed to be an enforcer, even with the dire warning, because if he didn’t, Carlo would’ve had to kill him.

The commission laid it down, and once that happened, there was no changing it.

Either Tino had to be an enforcer, or Carlo had to do his job and kill him because that was how the commission had decided it was going down.

Even if a huge part of Tino had been ready for it to be over, it wasn’t in him to put Carlo through that.

Tino looked at the television again, seeing the bank robbery.

In Washington Heights .

The place where Carlo had grown up, running wild, being a Lost Boy before this horrible life made him a pirate instead.

“Oh shit,” Tino whispered.

He started crying, then, knowing that in Washington Heights, in a bank with a bunch of strangers who thought he was nothing but a murderer, Carlo was about to die, and there wasn’t a fucking thing in the world Tino could do to stop it.

“I would’ve done it for him,” he choked because he didn’t want him to be alone.

What if they did it badly?

What if he suffered like Lola had suffered?

Tony pulled Tino into his arms, hugging him tightly as Tino sobbed on his shoulder and said again, “I would’ve done it.”

“I know.” Tony rubbed his back and kissed his forehead, but none of it helped.

Maria showed back up with the blow.

And Tino shoved it off the table.

He didn’t want to hide from it when he knew his zio was all alone.

So, Tony handed him over to Maria, who sat in Tony’s chair and pulled him into her arms and held him against her chest, which just made him sob harder as he said, “Oh no, mama.”

“I know.” Her whole body was shaking because she was crying with him. “I know.”

Her fingers were soft in his hair, and it didn’t soften anything. Every part of Tino was there with his zio in that bank. He felt it down to his core, how alone he was, how judged he felt, but mostly, Tino spent the last few moments of Carlo’s life knowing just how much his zio loved him.

Enough to die publicly.

In front of a world that thought he was a monster when, he could’ve chosen to die in their world instead, but he didn’t because Tino was the one who would’ve had to do it.

More than Tino, though, it was about Lola.

Carlo could’ve done it alone, just ate a bullet like all of them had thought about doing a million times.

Only he’d been going to mass for years now, sitting in the back row with Nova, and Carlo was superstitious.

He believed the things people told him. Even if others didn’t agree, it was real to Carlo.

And he loved Lola too fucking much to risk it.

There was a big, old-fashioned clock hanging on the wall in the living room. Tino wasn’t present enough to pay attention to the timeline, but luckily, through some unexplained miracle, Nova had found him in Tony and Maria’s apartment that day.

Because the news was way behind.

It took an extra twenty minutes for them to report that the assailant had been killed.

It took a full day for videos to show up of Carlo walking out of the bank, 9mm out, even if he never had any intention of killing anyone in Washington Heights that day.

Tino never watched it. Nova didn’t either, but Tony told them it was quick.

Tino wasn’t sure why she did it right then, but Maria suddenly grabbed Tino’s hand, stood, and told him, “Come over here.”

She pulled him to the living room, and he followed because he couldn’t think to argue.

Tino noticed Nova was flat on his back, sobbing, his entire body quaking, knowing his best friend in the world was dying.

Tony was sitting next to him, cross-legged on the fluffy white rug, because there was nothing else for him to do.

Maria used her hold on Tino’s hand to pull him down to the carpet. Tino stretched out, lying on his side beside Nova, seeing the news anchor warn people to stay away from the area.

And since he had Nova with him, Tino was able to ask him later what they were doing at precisely four-fourteen in the afternoon while the NYPD was pumping twelve bullets into their zio.

“He’ll be okay,” Maria whispered, tears heavy in her voice as she sat with Tino in the rays of afternoon sunshine that glimmered in through the windows. “She’s there with him.”

“She is?” Tino rested his head on her knee. “How do you know?”

“I just do,” Maria choked as she said it.

“She’s been waiting for him to see her again, and now he can.

It’s like waking up. God just shook him a little, and he realized it was all just a bad dream.

Now he’s with Lola, and everything’s so much brighter and more beautiful. He wants to tell you about it?—”

“But he can’t.” Tino’s shoulders shook, too; he could barely talk but still had to say, “I’m stuck here.”

“One day,” she promised him. “But you’re not done yet, baby boy. The world needs you here. We all need you here with us.”

Tino knew it was true.

Nova and his stupid co-dependency bullshit.

They were still lying there twenty minutes later when the afternoon anchor told the world that everyone was safe again.

The assailant had been killed. It took a full forty-five minutes after that for the news to start speculating on what Nova knew the moment he heard that a bank robbery was going down in Washington Heights.

“We’re receiving word now that the deceased Washington Heights bank robber is possibly Carlo Moretti, who has been the subject of a massive manhunt since this morning.

The NYPD considers him the prime suspect for the brutal murders of eight Brooklyn residents.

As of right now, there are no reports of any injuries or fatalities in Washington Heights, but we will know more after the new conference at the top of the hour. ”

Tino had crawled over to the dining room table by then, found the amber glass vial from the car that Maria had gotten him earlier, and snorted blow. It cut the pain a little, just enough for him to remember Nova was recovering from being shot.

“Nova needs weed,” Tino told Maria, who had followed and was sitting quietly on the floor by the table with him. “He has a nervous stomach, and he’s gonna start throwing up soon if we don’t help him. He needs real weed, not those fucking cigarettes he smokes.”

“Our neighbor downstairs smokes,” Maria suggested.

“I will pay him ten thousand dollars if he’ll share.” Tino wasn’t exaggerating. “He really needs it, like right now. It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long.”

Tony was already opening the front door because he was the kind of guy who liked something to do when shit got deep.

Tino got to his feet after that and went over to Nova, who was still on his back. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was staring at the ceiling, listening to the news spout off information about why they believed Carlo was the bank robber suspect who had just been killed.

Tino turned off the television.

It was over.

They knew it was Carlo.

Tino looked down at his brother, who had a hand resting over the Brambino bullet hole from Tampa. He was pale, now more than earlier, and as Tino stared down at him, more tears rolled from the corners of Nova’s eyes down the side of his face.

He looked so defeated.

So very broken.

Tino understood; he felt it bone-deep, too.

“You want to quit?” Tino asked him softly in Italian, knowing Maria didn’t speak it.

It wasn’t sarcastic.

And it wasn’t an attempt to jolt him back to life.

It was an honest-to-god question ’cause if Nova wanted to give up, Tino was right there with him.

Nova closed his eyes, took a few long, deep breaths, and then asked, “What about Romeo?”

“He’s probably better off without us.”

“Tino,” Maria barked at him. “What are you talking about?”

Tino looked over, seeing that Maria was still sitting on the floor next to the dining room table. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, but she looked very alert and suspicious, even though she didn’t speak a word of Italian.

He was starting to think that Maria might be a little bit psychic, that it was part of her Lost Girl magic that God gave her to survive all the bullshit, ’cause he believed it, what she told him about Carlo finding Lola.

It was very real to him.

The idea that God just shook his zio a little, and he woke up in a place with Lola in it, far away from the shitshow of their reality. Maybe Carlo found the real Neverland. The place where lost boys fly, and Tino wanted to go with him. He was done, but not without Nova.

Tino might be a little co-dependent, too.

“It’s okay, mama.” Tino held up a hand to Maria and then looked back to his brother as he switched to Italian. “Seriously, you want to give up?”

Nova blinked at him as he thought about it and then said something that surprised him, “It’s too late now. We’d be leaving Carmen behind.”

Tino shrugged. “So?”

“We would’ve put her through all that for nothing?” Nova gave him a long look. “That’s not cool.”

Tino raised his eyebrows at that because he had to admit it would be decidedly uncool to bounce on this life after she worked so fucking hard to keep Nova here.

“And we can’t let them win like that. Even if he took out their administration, there’s still plenty more Brambinos,” Nova whispered, looking past Tino to the ceiling above them.

“Can you imagine how fucking happy they’d be if we made it easy for them and took each other out?

I’m sure they’re already thrilled over…” He swallowed hard like he might be sick and closed his eyes against it. “Dio.”

More than anything else, that made Tino really think.

What would the Brambinos be if there weren’t Morettis around to constantly fuck with their agenda?

He couldn’t imagine the power they might have built without his Borgata constantly throwing down roadblocks because this shit had been going on for a hundred years or more, and it wasn’t just about the Brambinos.

It was all of it, generations of Cosa Nostra bullshit.

Just like Tino believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lola was there to catch Carlo on the other side, he had a renewed sense of knowing the world still needed Nova.

Like maybe God made him a Moretti on purpose.

He gave him that mind and made sure there was at least one guy on this planet who would always have his back—no matter what.

“Unfortunately, you’re not wrong,” Tino admitted softly, even if he was done. “Carlo wouldn’t want us to give up.”

It was way too soon.

Just saying Carlo’s name made Nova recoil.

Nova put a hand over his eyes as Tony came in through the front door and announced, “I got the weed.”

Tino leaned over and held out a hand. “Come on, Zu.”

Nova reached up, grabbed his hand, and let Tino pull him up. He was half dead weight, but Tino was pretty fucking strong and stable when he needed to be.

He hugged his brother once he got him to his feet and caressed Nova’s hair when he buried his face against Tino’s shoulder. “I love you, Casanova.”

“I love you too,” Nova whispered as he stood there, still shaking and hard to move, reminding Tino of their zio at the medical examiner’s office not that long ago.

And Tino got it.

Neverland represented something much different now that they lived in a world without Carlo, and moving forward meant leaving behind who they were before the end.

Tino tightened his hold on Nova and just said, “Let’s go smoke a little, and then we’ll take you back home. Carmen’s still there. She likes taking care of you. Maybe it’ll help a little.”

“No, she doesn’t need my bullshit. She’s already done too much. It would’ve been easier to drown in Tampa. Lola was all she had left, but she chose this instead,” Nova said in Italian and took a shuddering breath. “Just think about what she’s going through? This hurts worse than Ma.”

“I know.” Tino sighed because it was probably going to get worse before it got better. “But, I’m still here. You’re still here. That’s the deal, right? That’s what the boss decided. We’re treading water instead of going down.”

Nova swallowed hard. “I guess.”

“If we’re going to out-pirate the pirates, we gotta tread water.

That’s the only choice we got,” Tino decided for both of them, switching to English so Tony and Maria understood as he started pulling Nova towards the door.

Nova was still heavy, reluctant to move forward when they were leaving behind so much.

“How do we get through this, Casanova? You gotta big brain. I’m sure you know the answer. ”

“Not this time.” Nova opened the door to the roof when Tino stopped in front of it. “Really, I don’t have any fucking idea.”

“One step at a time,” Maria offered softly.

“That’s it.” Tino pushed Nova towards the stairs. “You just have to take the first step. I’m right behind you. Tony is, too. Either we get there, or we go down fighting, but you have to keep moving, even if it’s hard.”

Nova turned back on the second stair and arched an eyebrow. “Are you quoting Lao Tzu?”

“No, motherfucker, I’m quoting Tony De Luca.” Tino looked over his shoulder to meet Tony’s gaze behind him before he started walking up the stairs, pushing at Nova’s back to keep him moving forward. “Maybe he learned it from Lao Tzu.”

“I dunno who the fuck Lao Tzu is,” Tony said as he and Maria followed them up the stairs. “I just gotta enough common sense to figure out one step at a time is the only way to get shit done.”