The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(40)

It was a street thing.

Not to acknowledge it. To give him the space so they could pretend later Tino didn’t see it, but looking away meant he saw his back.

Oh f*ck.

Screw street cred.

Tino’s father was going to beat him to death.

There was something about that buckle and the way he did it that was cutting Nova. There weren’t welts on Nova’s back. There was blood. Lots of it. Tino didn’t know if Nova was sobbing from the pain, or from the knowledge that Tino was going to die from this shit.

What sort of candy-coated, edited-for-television world had Tino been living in that let him survive without considering what went into his father being underboss of the largest crime family in the country?

What the f*ck was Nova thinking to throat punch him?

And what the hell had Romeo been thinking to keep them in New York?

They should’ve all run to f*cking Siberia to avoid this motherf*cker. He was second in charge of the f*cking mafia.

The rip-people-apart-with-blowtorches mafia.

Not like they had some golden seal of approval from the church like Carina that made Frankie f*cking obligated by God to keep her alive.

They were bastards.

They were expendable.

Tino in particular.

But Romeo had been so worried about Nova.

So f*cking bothered over the idea of him getting involved with something criminal.

And Nova had been so caught up in saving Romeo once he did go down. So mad his brother had gone to jail he throat punched a mafia underboss.

Tino wanted to run; he really did and it must have shown, because one of the guys behind him said, “Don’t. It’ll make it worse.”

Worse?

Was he f*cking joking?

Tino was already willing to sign up for the third option.

The put-a-bullet-in-Tino’s-brain option.

“Come on, Frankie.” The same guy groaned, as if he was taking personal offense. “It’s Sunday. I don’t wanna kill a kid on Sunday. Can we get it over with?”

“Fine. Hold him.” Frankie stopped hitting Nova and fisted his hair, jerking his head back again. “You move. You take that shirt out of your mouth. You do anything but lie there and watch, I’ll double it. Got it, champ?”

Tino would end up having a very close relationship with death. He would touch it from all sides too many times, and there was something morbidly serene about it. When it got close enough, people often froze rather than run. They would stand there and let it slam right into them.

Other hit men didn’t understand it.

But Tino did, that slowing of the world around him as they forced his shirt off. When his father jerked his head back, his voice sounded far away as he asked, “Tell me how many?”

Tino considered lying, but at this point, he was pretty sure that wouldn’t help. They’d have to be stupid not to know Tino had been counting.

So he used his kick-ass math skill and whispered, “A h-hundred and twenty,” before they shoved his shirt in his mouth and showed him firsthand why Nova’s eyes had gone wide.





Chapter Thirteen


Their ma was dead.

Nova cried for a long time. This soul-wrenching, broken sobbing after he’d gotten done destroying anything remotely breakable in the apartment. Truth was, he made a bad day unnecessarily worse, because it wasn’t like it was a f*cking shock.

Their ma had been sick for a few years.

She’d been a shell of a person for the past three weeks.

She hadn’t talked for days.

There was a part of Tino that was relieved she wasn’t hurting anymore, but Nova came unglued. There was no calming him down. He just freaked. So Romeo crawled into the bottom bunk with Tino, and the two of them let Nova cry.

Romeo stroked his hair, pushing it away from his forehead in the same long, sweeping gesture their mother once used, and whispered, “Va tutto bene, piccolo. Andrà tutto bene,” until Tino fell asleep to the sound of Nova’s sobs.

It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be okay.

It was the fingers in his hair.

He wanted to pretend they were his mother’s, maybe Romeo’s, but they were shaking, frantic, grossly sticky when they caressed his face.

“Open your eyes. Come on. Please, God. Please. Please. Please.” One hard, desperate kiss was pressed against Tino’s hairline, before Nova went back to begging in Italian, “Madonn’, Ma. Please. Make him open his eyes. Open your eyes, piccolo. Cazzo, Ma. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

There was just this raw desperation to the prayer.

It made him feel like Nova was reaching in and jerking him back. Tino really wished he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to come back. He did not want to open his eyes. He did not want to remember the way Nova had kept his face buried against the cement, elbows tucked tight to his ears, hands in his own hair as he hid from watching them beat Tino.

The whole time as Tino lay on the basement floor, choking on his screams he reached out to Nova, believing in some strange way that Nova was going to save him. That something would click in Nova’s brain, and he would figure out a way to stop their father from hitting him over and over and over again until Tino was lying in a pool of his own blood.

Maybe Nova thought he wouldn’t have to look Tino in the face again.

Maybe Nova wouldn’t have to, because Tino passed out when they stopped with his back and jerked his pants off to tear into his thighs instead. When the basement finally faded out, Tino thought he was going to see his ma again.