Page 123 of The Enforcer's Revenge
That warm, soft, toasty feeling of being loved just for being Tino.
“Jesus fucking Christ, she’s unconscious. God, maybe he just knocked her out on accident. Please, ma, fuck,” Nova cursed, his fingersinBrianna’s arm, still packing the grizzly injury with something white and gauzy that Carmen had handed him. “Bella, listen to her chest, make sure she’s breathing. Check her heart rate. Try to see if it’s normal or—” Nova stopped like he couldn’t finish the thought.
Tino grabbed the gun out of the back of his jeans where he had shoved it after killing the guy in the garage rather thanfuck with his shoulder harness. He really wished he had more weapons, but there were fifteen bullets in a standard clip for his 9mm Beretta.
He lost one in the garage.
Fourteen was a good number for five or six guys.
As Tino pushed past Tony and ran up the stairs without looking back, he heard Carmen say, “She’s breathing,” but he wasn’t paying too much attention.
He couldn’t do the coroner’s office.
Or a fucking funeral.
Definitely not prison.
Nothing else mattered but getting rid of the threat, which was why he took a moment to actually listen at the door rather than bust out of the basement like he wanted to. He could hear feet pounding in the hallway, down from the kitchen. Tino closed his eyes and speculated there were four of them while trying to grasp exactly how far away they were. It was just a guess, but he was usually pretty good at these things.
From the basement, Nova barked, “What’s he doing? Minchia, Tony, grab him before?—”
Tino opened the door before he could hear the rest. He couldn’t blow up the organization like he wanted to, but he could take out a little chunk of the Brambino Borgata before he went down.
Tino saw their faces, guns already out, wide-eyed and terrified as he pointed his 9mm down the hallway. Maybe they would’ve shot him back, but they weren’t fast enough. They became nothing more than lost bullets under the tsunami of Tino’s terror that blocked out all rational thought like a storm that covered the sun.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Fired in rapid succession, causing three bodies to fall, but at the same time, the door seemed to explode in his face when someone else’s bullet missed its mark. Even wired out of his mind on fear and coke, Tino turned automatically, knowing in that split millisecond there had to be another shooter. His intuition paid off, and he lost three more bullets when he fired at the guy standing behind him. One hit its mark, and that was all it took.
Tino headed toward the kitchen, stepping over the bodies as he went, looking for the other intruders. He stood in the foyer listening, never once thinking about Nova, abandoned with the responsibility of saving Brianna, while still dealing with the terror of knowing Tino was facing down a small Brambino army upstairs—that came a lot later.
Right then, Tino was too busy daring the world to end it for him.
This was too fucking difficult. He didn’t want to play anymore.
He started searching the first floor and found the fifth guy in the Don’s closet, hiding in the corner. When he saw Tino, he pleaded desperately, “Please?—”
“Yeah, okay.” Tino pointed toward the section of the Don’s closet where his most expensive suits were. “Get up.”
When the guy complied by standing up and stepping to the side, Tino shot him in the head, completely wrecking the Don’s closet—on purpose. He shot him again in the chest, wasting a bullet since this motherfucker was already dead. It was the coldest thing Tino had done in his life, and he’d done a lot of ice-cold shit.
He felt it stain his brain almost instantly, making him think of Nova, with all those horrible memories right there at the front—all the time.
He looked down at the body, bleeding all over the Don’s closet, with brains all over his best suits, and truly believed it couldn’t get worse.
Except it could… It always did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tino turned around to find Tony standing there watching him.
Tony had seen the whole thing.
