The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(77)

He sat at the kitchen table, looking at Tino’s cell phone, seeing Nova’s face flash on the screen for the fourteenth time. Nova looked more like Tino than Romeo did, but there was something hard in his gaze, even in a picture, that kept Chuito from answering.

It stopped ringing.

Then the first texts showed up. Short and to the point, so he could read them all on the screen without having to slide his finger across it and risk them showing as read.

Pick up the phone.

You don’t want me showing up.

Chuito winced and looked back to his bedroom where Tino was currently sleeping like the dead. He was just considering trying to wake him up again, when another text showed up.

I’m talking to you, Garcia.

Oh. Shit.

When the phone rang, Chuito picked that f*cker up before the second ring.

“Where is he?” Nova barked before Chuito could say hello.

“He’s sleeping,” Chuito said before he paused for a second and looked at the phone again. He realized only then they had both been speaking Spanish. “?Hablas espa?ol?”

“Sí, cabrón.” Nova’s voice was harsh as he kept speaking Spanish. “What is going on?”

“Are you—” Chuito started, before he decided he needed to hear Nova speak Spanish some more, because Tino’s brother certainly didn’t sound like an Italian. “He’s, um, partied out. I was just letting him crash here for a couple days.”

“Actually crash there?” Nova asked skeptically. “Or did he find other things to do? I know he probably ran out of snow girls to f*ck. Romeo said you two were out finding a party.”

“He’s just hanging out,” Chuito said as he tried to overlook the fact that this scary * also used the same code words Chuito’s people did. “He’s tired of the snow girls, and he had to tell Romeo something.”

“And why is he hanging with you to get over it?”

“’Cause I used to date snow girls too. I’ve been through a hard breakup.”

Nova was quiet for a long moment before he asked, “How bad is it?”

Chuito looked to the door and considered his options. He didn’t want to sell out Tino. He already had to tell a f*ckload of lies to Alaine about why he had this Italian passed out in his apartment. Narcing on Tino went against everything in Chuito, but he was also starting to suspect the reason Tino was so f*cking spoiled was because of the motherf*cker on the other end of this phone.

Chuito finally admitted, “He’s been sleeping for twenty-four hours.”

“Are you taking care of him?” Nova asked, the pain so vivid over the line. “We know of you, but we don’t know you. I’m inclined to call Romeo even if it sells out Tino.”

“No, it’s fine.” Chuito shook his head, knowing what it was like to hurt for a brother like that. “I got it. He’s safe. The breakup won’t kill him. It’ll just make him wish he was dead.”

“I can’t come. Shit’s been deep.”

Chuito nodded. “I know. He told me.”

“He’s telling you my shit?” Nova asked in disbelief.

“No, he just said it’s complicated. It’s cool. I don’t give a f*ck what you’ve got going on. I didn’t ask for details.”

“Listen to me very closely,” Nova growled at him. “I know what the ink on your arm means. If you do anything to my brother while he’s vulnerable, I won’t just hurt you; I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. I can be very creative about these things.”

“I believe you,” Chuito assured him, because the mafia did some seriously f*cked-up shit to make sure they had the right to cry in public. “I’m just trying to help him. That’s it.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Okay.” Chuito pushed away from the table and walked to his room, finding Tino sprawled out in the middle of the bed where he’d left him, still pale but still breathing. He leaned over and shook him. “Hey, muchacho.”

Tino wasn’t moving, and Chuito punched him once in the arm, hard enough to make Tino suck in a sharp breath and sit up. He blinked at him in shock. “Wha—”

Chuito held out the phone. “It’s your brother.”

Tino rubbed his face and asked, “Which one?”

“Nova.”

Tino groaned and fell back into bed. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

Chuito just stared at him wondering why Nova was the brother he decided was worth dismissing. That was certainly not how Chuito would have played it. Romeo was a big motherf*cker, but at the end of the day he was only a fighter like Chuito. This Nova * had just told him he wasn’t only vindictive, but creative about it.

Chuito put the phone back to his ear and started, “He said—”

“Put him on the phone now,” Nova said slowly in Spanish. “Tell him he’s got two seconds before I call Romeo.”

“He says he’s going to call Romeo.”

“Vai a morire ammazzato!” Tino shouted in Italian before he added in English, “Leave me alone, Casanova!”

“Did you hear that?”

“When he told me to go and die murdered, I heard it,” Nova assured him. “Put that shit on speaker.”