The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(59)

“Have you talked to Romeo?” Tino couldn’t help but ask. “Is he okay? Since you’re so great at protecting him.”

“Yeah, he’s okay.”

“I wanna see him,” Tino decided, and he was insistent about it as he remembered the video Mary took with her. “When can I see him?”

“Tino,” Nova started with a wince. “You’re still recovering.”

“I want to see him,” Tino growled at his brother in Italian to make his point. “I need to see him!” Tino’s breathing became hard and uneven, because he was still on the verge of falling apart no matter how badly Nova needed him to keep his shit together. “You keep stopping me, and it’s f*cking bullshit! Why do you get to see him, and I don’t?”

“Are you gonna tell him?” Nova asked, his voice still choked with emotion. “Are you gonna tell him about the basement?”

“So what if I do?” Tino shouted at him. “I thought we were us? I thought we were a f*cking family. I want to tell him. I want to see him. I want him to hug me and tell me that this merda is gonna end. I just need to know there’s an end.”

Nova hugged him instead.

It wasn’t quite the same, but Tino let him do it.

Just hug him tight like Romeo would and promise, “Finirà.”

There was this very stupid part of Tino that still believed Nova’s promises even if there wasn’t an end in sight.

So he finished his food and did the dishes despite the f*cking crutches when he remembered the way Mary called him filthy. Called his mother filthy when their apartment in East Harlem had always been clean and nothing about his mother had been dirty. The memories of her before she got sick were starting to fade for him, but she’d always been this beautiful woman everyone in their neighborhood loved. He knew that for certain. No one in East Harlem gave a shit about her being a single mother with kids from two different men. She was kind. She was loving. She was a good mother. Tino lay there staring at the darkened ceiling for hours after Nova passed out next to him. He couldn’t sleep, so he tried to remember all the good things about his ma before Mary stole that from him too.





Chapter Eighteen


The C train into Bed-Stuy wasn’t the greatest.

For being a Dyker Heights girl, Brianna used public transportation quite a bit. Even if there were only a few train stops in their neighborhood, she rode the bus constantly, and it was enough to get her where she needed to go without asking her mother for help.

So Brianna liked to think she had a pretty good feel for Brooklyn. She knew how to stay safe, but she would be really nervous about this trip if Tino weren’t with them.

She studied him for a long moment, with his head tossed back against the seat. His eyes were closed. His hand rested on his crutches that he had leaning against the seat next to him. His Yankees hat was pulled low. His East Harlem Martial Arts Center shirt was faded, but the black basketball shorts he wore were clearly new.

He looked like any other twelve-year-old boy, more handsome, definitely, with those full lips and defined cheekbones, but still fairly ordinary in a New York Italian sort of way.

There really wasn’t anything about him to make her feel protected.

He wasn’t thick and muscular like his brother, whom Brianna had caught glimpses of throughout the week while she and Carina made up for a summer apart. Tino was wirier, still looking more like a kid, but she could see the corded muscles of his biceps. It was obvious he was extremely athletic, and it made her wonder what he was going to look like in two years when he was Nova’s age.

His cast was silly and ridiculous and had Carina written all over it.

Literally.

Any other boy wouldn’t leave the house with it, but Tino didn’t seem to care. Just like he didn’t seem worried on the C train. He was chewing gum, popping it in a way Brianna’s mother would have had a fit about. He blew one big bubble, eyes still closed, before he popped it, turned his head on the seat, and asked, “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Why do you keep staring at me?”

“I just—” She shrugged, feeling her cheeks heat as she looked to Carina sitting on her other side. Carina was chewing the same watermelon bubblegum and smiling as if she was wondering the same thing Tino was. “I was curious why you aren’t nervous on the train,” she admitted and resisted the urge to cup her cheeks. It was bad enough dealing with Carina, who was very good at embarrassing Brianna. Now there was a whole collection of Moretti kids, and they all seemed to be missing that filter most people had. “Why aren’t you worried about what someone will think of your cast? I mean, I don’t care. I think it’s kinda funny, but most boys would care, and I was wondering why you don’t.”

“You think that’s what I have to worry about? A cast?” Tino asked her. “I got bigger f*cking problems.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s the difference,” she agreed, but she didn’t think that was totally it.

“Am I being an *?” Tino asked her like he wasn’t sure.

“Sorta,” Carina answered before Brianna could assure him that he wasn’t. “What’s up?”

Tino was quiet for a long time before he said, “I didn’t sleep last night. Tired.”