Page 37 of The Enforcer's Revenge
“Is it his worst problem, Carina?” Brianna threw up her hands. “Is it really his biggest issue in life? Why don’t you tell your nonno to pick a different job for him? Then I’ll give him shit about the coke. You want to know when it happens? When he’s gone for three days doing whatever the fuck he has to do for the Borgata. It’s always after the long jobs that I lose him. So, if you’d like to go in there and give him shit about it, be my guest ’cause I’m not doing it.”
Brianna left Carina there and walked into the kitchen. She had tea she bought from a healer in Chinatown. The man behind the counter told her it was calming but wouldn’t interact with street drugs. She wasn’t real sure why she was taking medical advice from a shop owner in Chinatown, but she had been desperate for something to help him on nights like this. Thus far, it didn’t seem to hurt him, but she wasn’t so sure it helped either.
She stood there silently making tea while Carina disappeared into her bedroom. Brianna was steeping the leaves with the metal diffuser when Carina reappeared.
It wasn’t until Brianna heard a strangethump, thump, thumpbehind her that she turned around and acknowledged Carina’s presence in the kitchen because she was still angry with her. Brianna wasn’t even surewhyshe was angry with her. It wasn’t like Tino’s reality was his sister’s fault, but at that moment, Carina represented the Borgata in Brianna’s mind, and it was enough.
She frowned as she watched Carina work on crushing a pill against a bowl, using a spoon and a lot of repressed anger. It was amazing Carina wasn’t breaking that bowl with the amount of abuse she was leveling at it.
“What’re you doing?”
“They’re benzos. I stole them outta my mother’s medicine cabinet. She has bottles and bottles of them. She must be hoarding them for the apocalypse.” Carina scrunched her faceup as she worked on pressing that spoon against the edge of the bowl as hard as she could, completely pulverizing the pill. “Gimme the teacup.”
“You wanna give him more drugs?” Brianna asked in disbelief. She lifted the teacup to her chest, holding onto it protectively despite spilling some on her robe. “No.”
“They’re downers, and it’s only half a pill. It’ll help him come down and go to sleep.”
“Time fixes it.” Brianna shook her head frantically. “I’m not drugging him.”
Carina dropped her head back and rubbed a hand over her face. “Bri, it’s a thing. Everyone takes benzos after coke.”
“Not everyone,” Brianna assured her. “Obviously.”
“He needs to come down before he has a heart attack.” Carina held up her hands. “He’s been gone for four days on this job. Do you know how long he’s been strung out? It could be the entire time. This is gonna help him sleep. That’s it.”
Brianna clutched her cup, looking at the little pile of white powder in the bowl that had once been a pill, and felt herself relenting. Sort of like taking advice from a shop owner in Chinatown, this felt like an act of desperation. A gamble Brianna didn’t want to have to make with Tino’s health.
Fortunately, Tino was one of those people who could do just about anything to his body and show no wear and tear. He could eat whatever he wanted and never gain weight. Get drunk or high and wake up the next morning like hangovers didn’t exist in his world. All the Morettis had constitutions like that. It made them seem almost inhuman, like God knew they’d have to have far thicker skin than a normal person to survive the life they were cursed with.
Anyone else, and Brianna wouldn’t do it, but Tino could bounce back from just about anything. She handed the cup toCarina, watching as she put the crushed pill in and stirred the tea.
Brianna went back to her bedroom, cup in hand, without saying anything.
Carina went back to bed, too.
It took Tino a long time to get out of the shower. Brianna waited and gave him space instead of following him in. The shower water must’ve turned icy long ago, and the tea was cold by the time Tino got out with a towel wrapped around his waist.
Brianna picked up the tea off the nightstand next to where she sat up in bed and held it out. “I made this for you.”
Tino took it and looked at it. There was a scowl etched on his forehead that said he really didn’t want to drink it.
Brianna was flushed and sweating from the nerves. Giving Tino a strange herbal tea, crushed-up prescription drugs from Carina’s mother’s medicine cabinet, and mixing it all with whatever had Tino practically vibrating where he stood made her feel like she was the one who was going to drop dead from a heart attack.
Tino drank it rather than complain, telling her he was still not in the room with her because he was usually picky. He would’ve asked for coffee instead of tea like he had the last time she made it for him. If he were even remotely in his right mind, he would’ve asked for sugar if he had agreed to the tea. This time, he just gulped it down and set the cup on the nightstand.
Brianna untied her robe when she saw him look at his clothes on the ground, as if he were going to try to leave. She knew he wanted to head home to his brothers, high as hell, which would cause even more problems.
She suspected there was a very real reason why Tino always landed in her bed when he lost touch with reality. It was a safe place, one where it was okay for him to be fractured andvulnerable in a way it wasn’t when he was around Romeo and Nova.
A part of him knew he was okay here.
Brianna needed him to have that, even if her heartbeat was thundering as she rolled over to slip out of her robe and tossed it to the ground. Tino raised his eyebrows as he stared at her naked body. Then he got into bed with her, like she knew he would. She opened herself up to him, thighs spread, arms wide. He crawled to her and sucked one pert, pink nipple into his mouth. He laved his tongue over it one last time before he sucked on the other one.
Brianna fell against the pillows she had stacked against the headboard as she sat in bed waiting for him. She let him kiss and lick her skin until he was nipping at her hipbone and pushing her thighs apart wider.
She wasn’t in the mood—not even a little.
The heart attack bomb Carina dropped was scaring Brianna to death, so she said, “Tino, no.”
