Page 104 of The Slayer
“Yeah.” Tino nodded. “It’s not my fault he screwed the old man. Anyone knows that’s bad for your health.”
“How easy is it for you to believe that off the blow?” Chuito asked curiously.
Tino sighed as he wiped a hand over his face. “I never wanted any part ofCosa Nostra. It just—” He paused as if having a bad memory. “It just turned out like that.”
“What’s Cosa Nostra?” Chuito asked, because he’d heard Tino refer to it before.
Tino gestured to himself. “It’sour thing.”
“Do you like your thing?” Chuito asked, because he got mixed messages from Tino all the fucking time.
“I’d like it if Nova was running it, but he’s still gotta answer to the old man. Nova has this theory that the underworld, organized crime, it’s all unavoidable. It’llalwaysbe there. The key is to do it as efficiently as possible. Like, if it has to be there, you should have a motherfucker with class and real intelligence pulling the strings. I like that idea. I think life in general would be better if Nova were running the underworld.”
“What happens when your grandfather bites it?”
“I dunno.” Tino was quiet for a long time but then shook his head. “I suppose shit will get interesting. There’s a lotta motherfuckers who don’t want my brother in charge. My father included.”
“Why?”
Tino laughed. “Let’s just say my brother’s got a list of people he’s pissed off at, and my father is at the top. I mean, I don’t love my grandfather. I’ve had to kill a lotta motherfuckers ’cause of the old man’s bad deals, but my father, Madonn’, Ihatethat asshole. He really fucked us over when we were young. He’s still fucking us over.”
“You think Nova will actually smoke your father after the old man dies?”
Tino shook his head. “Nova doesn’t want to kill anyone. That’s what people don’t understand about him. To him, shit like that is sloppy. Uncreative. He doesn’t want them dead. He just wants to punish them for the rest of their lives. To make sure they know he won. That’s what it’s all about to him.Winning. Life is a big poker game to my brother.”
Chuito considered that and then nodded. “I could be down with that idea.”
“Yeah, I thought you might be.” Tino laughed. “Sometimes you remind me of him. Only without the bloodlust. I don’t ever see Nova leaving a bloody, dead body in the streets. No friggin’ way.”
“Man, you talk to me after you lose a brother,” Chuito said with a glare. “See how humane and neat you are then.”
“Take it back.” Tino crossed himself. “Nova’s still in deep. You can’t talk about things like that. I’m serious.Take it back.”
“I’m sorry. I take it back.” Chuito went ahead and crossed himself when Tino kept glaring. Then he sat down and looked at Tino from the other bench. “No one’s gonna take him out, Tino. You’re mafia. You never go down.”
“We go down all the time.” Tino looked haunted, as if just the mention of losing a brother terrified him. “I already told you that, especially when he’s stuck dealing with the fucking Russians.”
It turned out the Russians hadn’t been the reason Nova was stressed out.
A week later Jules and Romeo ran away from Garnet because Tino’s father put a hit out on Romeo for flaking on a gambling scheme they wanted to use him for. A scheme Nova tried and failed to talk the family out of.
Romeo ended up with two mafia bullets in him for running, but he lived.
Tino’s father hadn’t been so lucky.
Nova killed him.
Without finesse.
He killed the guy who sold out Romeo and Jules too. There was nothing neat about Nova shoving a gun into his own cousin’s mouth and blowing his brains out.
Even guys with class lost their humanity when they were faced with almost losing a brother. That mob hit nearly killed Jules too, and she just happened to be pregnant with Romeo’s twins at the time.
Nova and Tino’s nephews.
Italians, like Latinos, took that shitveryseriously. One didn’t fuck with women and children and live to tell about it. Nova’s circle of nonexpendables had grown, and that incident nearly took out all but one of them. His response was swift and frightening, especially when he managed to escape going down for it.
Yet he still kept his job as underboss, working for his grandfather, the man whose son he’d just killed. Tino thought it was because they still needed Nova to run things. He was justthatgood.
