The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(107)

They all watched her push the button.

And they knew there was about a thirty-second window before they had company.

Still, Nova said, “Take this bitch.”

Mafia violence, in theory, was something Brianna knew happened. She still screamed when Carina hit her mother with that frying pan. Brianna was almost as shocked as Mary looked right before her head snapped to the side with a spray of blood.

Brianna didn’t know anyone could hit someone that hard.

To say nothing of Carina, who had topped out at five feet nothing, and the doctors told her last year she was done growing.

Brianna had to turn her back. It was an instinct, and she found herself shaking, with her face buried in Carlo’s chest as she listened to the absolutely gruesome act of Carina beating her mother with a fry pan and screaming, “WHERE IS HE?” over and over again. “WHERE’S MY BROTHER?”

Carina’s voice was raw, agonized, as if she was exorcising every demon she had carried with her since birth.

Finally, it was Nova who said, “Stop! Carina!”

And for one minute, the dull, horrible thump of metal against flesh stopped, and Carina growled again, “Where is he? Tell me, or I will cut your eyes out of your skull and leave you alive just for the f*cking fun of it!”

Brianna turned around, even though Carlo grabbed her arm to stop her. She stared in horror at Mary on the floor, her face bloody, her nose smashed. Mary opened her mouth to talk, but most of her teeth were missing. All that came out was an awful gurgling sound.

Carina held the butcher knife on Mary, pressing it close to her right eye, and Brianna realized she was actually going to do it right there in front of all of them.

She was going to cut her mother’s eyes out.

Brianna dry heaved against her will, covering her mouth, and Carlo grabbed her arm and pulled her back against his chest just as she saw Mary point toward her purse on the counter.

Brianna looked away from the horror in the archway, turning her head on Carlo’s chest to see Nova grab the purse and dump out all the contents on the counter. He searched through them with a shaking hand until he found a small planner. He flipped through the pages rapidly, too fast to see anything, except he must’ve, because he said, “It’s the client list.”

The sound of a knife clattering against the tile echoed, and Brianna turned against her better judgment to see Carina stand up over her mother and drop the pan. It should’ve been over, but Carina kicked her one more time, forcing Mary’s cheek to smack against the tile.

Mary stopped moving.

She could be dead for all they knew.

For the first time Brianna noticed the other men in the room.

Moretti soldiers who were here to protect the family.

Soldiers who just watched Carina beat the shit out of her mother and did absolutely nothing to stop her.

“Someone call my nonno!” Carina said to no one in particular. “Right now!”

Brianna had never seen cell phones come out of pockets so fast in her entire life.

“If she’d been raised by a Siciliana, she’d know not to f*ck with one,” Carlo said sadly. “This buttana actually looked surprised.”

“Right? I know who I had my money on,” Nova said as he flipped through the book again. “Fucking with the guineas is bad for anyone’s health.”

Brianna realized Nova wasn’t talking about Mary.

She was just a bleeding afterthought. The first casualty in a full-out mafia war that blew up right in front of them, and Brianna was standing there, watching it happen.

But all she could think about was Tino.

Nothing else really mattered to her.

Please let him be alive.





Chapter Thirty


Tino officially hated basements.

Lorenzo Campelli had a window in his, in the top corner by the stairs, and Tino was fairly certain this was the third time he watched the sun rise.

But he wasn’t totally sure.

The world had gotten a little fuzzy.

He tilted his head, watching the red streak cast a glow across the darkened stairs and, for just a moment, thought he saw Brianna. Sitting there looking at him on those stairs, elbows on her knees, legs covered in dancer spandex, hair tied up in one of those tight ballet buns that made her look like the perfect Dyker Heights girl.

She didn’t say anything; she just waited, all quiet and beautiful.

The longer he stared at her, the less his shoulder hurt, because being handcuffed to a pipe with a jacked-up shoulder got pretty f*cking uncomfortable three days in.

Especially when the motherf*ckers saw the scars on his back and thought a little posttraumatic stress for Tino would help Lorenzo feel better about having to blow his wife’s brains out.

Only they didn’t have quite the talent for ripping someone apart with a belt like Tino’s father did, which was a real f*cking shame. Tino wasn’t going to bleed to death. Even with a hot bullet hole in his thigh, he wasn’t that f*cking lucky.

Lorenzo Campelli came up with a much worse way to kill Tino.

He’d been in that basement for three days, and he hadn’t had anything to drink for at least the last two. At first they came in and let him take a piss, but now it didn’t really matter. He was so f*cking dehydrated there was no need.

They just left him here to die.

Except Sicilians were hard to kill.