Page 18 of The Enforcer's Revenge
They spent the rest of the day at the range. It was one of those front businesses Nova had set up to funnel all the illegal Borgata money through. Nova liked businesses without inventory, where there was no way to prove how many people were actually walking through the door as paying customers. Car repair shops. Restaurants. Motels. Bars. Tattoo parlors. Coffee shops. Anything where a lot of cash flowed through without a lot of ways for the government to track exactly how many customers were forking over the cash.
The range likely reported about ten times more business than they actually did in this place, and Nova used all that fictional income to clean the illegal money.
Nova was also practical, so he bought places they could use.
This gun range.
Carlo’s gym.
The dojo Romeo trained at.
The list was endless, and Tino suspected the poor kid Nova once was got a little thrill out of knowing he could use these places to funnel money and save forty bucks a month on a gym membership. There was a time when they were young when a forty-dollar gym membership or a free cup of coffee would’ve meant everything.
Tino and Romeo forgot the survival mode they’d been in when they lived on the bad side of East Harlem. They took things for granted nowadays, but Nova didn’t.
He never forgot.
“We should start working on moving targets,” Tino mused as he pushed the button to bring Brianna’s silhouette back. “Open air, moving targets, not in a controlled environment.”
Brianna snorted and looked back to him. “Where are we going to do that?”
“We’d have to get out of Manhattan. I practiced at the Don’s Scarsdale place.”
“We’ll take the boat,” Carlo suggested from his spot behind Carina as he pushed the button to bring her silhouette forward. He stared at it with his hand over his mouth for a moment and then mumbled, “Definitely the boat.”
Tino understood that Carlo didn’t want the Don to know how bad a shot Carina was. It’d make all their lives miserable—especially Carina’s. She’d been carrying a gun she clearly couldn’t shoot since she was eighteen. Their nonno would freak if he knew about this and double her security.
Carina let out a sob of frustration, which was completely out of character for her. “Fuck this!” She picked up the gun and threw it past the silhouette.
Carlo and Tino instinctively ducked. Tino pulled Brianna down with him, but it didn’t fire. Then he jumped to his feet and shouted at his sister, “You just fucking throw it with the safety off? It only takes one bullet to kill someone! I’m taking that 9mm away from you! It’s my job to protect you, and you scare the fuck outta me with that weapon in your purse.”
“Might as well. I can’t hit anything with it!” Carina gestured to the target. “Take the fucking gun! I’m too stupid to use it anyway!”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s not true.” Brianna glared at Tino and then ran after Carina when she stomped off.
Brianna didn’t look back at him, so it was obvious he was in deep shit with both of them.
“It has to be her eyes.” Carlo took the target off the silhouette and studied it. He turned to Tino, looking dazed. “This isn’t just being a bad shot. It’s something else.”
“I made her go to the eye doctor. You think I’m bullshitting about that?”
“We need a second opinion.” Carlo kept staring at the target. “We need someone we can talk to specifically about this issue.”
“Oh, yeah, we’ll just go to the eye doctor and say, ‘Hey, doc, you think you could fix her bad aim so the other families don’t stick her in a basement?’”
Carlo lifted his head and looked at Tino. “I wasn’t talking about a doctor.”
“No.” Tino shook his head in understanding. “No way.”
Carlo completely ignored him and finished his suggestion, “Let’s just ask Nova.”
“No, they just started kinda getting along. He signed over the Mills Basin place to her last month, and they’re on good terms,” Tino argued with near-manic desperation. “You don’t know them like I do. The second one of them shows a weakness, the other homes in on it like a fucking snake. He’s going to make her feel stupid, and she’s going to lash back and make him feel inferior in the Borgata and to Nonno like he’s a fucking employee instead of family, and it’ll all go to hell.”
“The only motherfucker making her feel inferior and stupid”—Carlo gave Tino a harsh glare—“is you.”
Tino shifted and looked to where the girls had run away, then he folded his arms like Carina had earlier and suddenly didn’t feel like talking.
“I understand you’re scared. I know where the fear is coming from, and it’s justified. I think we should talk to Nova.”
