Page 74 of The Enforcer's Revenge
“Oh my God.” Carmen covered her face with her hands. “My sister cannot be dead. This can’t be happening. This can’t be how it’s going down.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Tino choked when he said it.
“We could end it,” Nova reminded them again, sounding serious. “This will unequivocally be a shitshow, I’m sure of it, and I’m a professional at these things.”
Carmen huffed at that. “So, it can be my fault that you die, and everyone can hate me for it until the end of time? The circle is the only family I have left, and I’m not going down like that. No thanks.”
“I agree with her.” Tino winced when he thought of how far away New York was and growled at Nova, “Tell us how to fix you. I know you fucking know how, you suicidal stronzo. I see what you read.”
Nova was silent, as if he were still entertaining the idea of drowning them instead.
“Casanova!”
Nova sighed in defeat and looked down at his chest.
He pushed his shirt aside and rubbed the blood away with his open palm as though really studying the injury for the first time. Tino had to give Carmen props for not freaking the fuck out because only Nova could analyze a bullet hole in his own body that clinically. Tino had been shot before. He knew how blindingly painful it was.
“I guess if someone called me with this problem, I’d tell them to use towels, shirts, anything to stop bleeding. Press and hold, don’t lift up until they can get to a store and buy supplies. It’s not a sucking wound. There’s no exit point. I’m still talking, so it’s obviously not a lung injury.” Nova’s breathing was still raspy, like he was trying to push past all the other issues to determine what they should do. “Then, uh…” He swallowed hard, losing some of his hard veneer. “I’d probably tell them to give the guy something—pills, weed, something.”
“Why?” Tino was already pulling at the buttons of his shirt. “Why the drugs? Besides the big, gushing hole in your chest.”
“I guess, if you wanted to keep the guy alive all the way to New York…” Nova tilted his head like he was considering the problem as Zu instead of the guy with the hole in his chest. “You’d have to pack the wound as sanitarily as possible.” He grunted when he said it. “And that has the potential to be exceedingly, mind-numbingly painful for a very long duration of time. That’ll hurt anyone, even me.”
“Do what you said.” Tino tossed his shirt at Nova. “Press and hold.”
“I don’t forget shit,” Nova reminded him. “You do remember that, right? No one wants the resentment this will cause to exist in the world.”
Tino didn’t pay attention to him. Any boss suffering from lead poisoning automatically loses all decision-making power. That wasn’t even Tino’s rule. It was an enforcer rule.
Bosses were dramatic as fuck without the bullet.
Tino popped the trunk and jumped out of the car, desperate for clothes because the three of them were running a little thin on acceptable, non-bloody attire for a stop at the drugstore.
He opened the trunk and then stood there staring for one stunned second. He lowered the lid and looked behind him, making sure they were hidden in the darkness as cars whizzed by from the bridge.
A bullet didn’t stop Nova from being Zu.
With a hole in his chest and Tino knocked unconscious, Nova still managed to load up the body of Sammy, the Brambino bodyguard, rather than leave it in the parking lot.
As an added bonus, Desi, the guy Tino shot in the hand, was stuffed in there, too, thanks to the Bentley’s massive trunk.
Tino only briefly glanced at the two men, but he knew his business well enough to be certain they were both very dead.
Nova’s dry cleaning was still in the corner, lying under Sammy’s designer shoes. Tino opened the trunk once more andgrabbed the clothes before he slammed the lid shut quickly. He glanced back to the road, but the cars were still going by, none the wiser.
“I guess I should’ve told you about the surprises in the trunk.” Nova still sat in the front seat with his eyes closed, like the pain was catching up to him. The massive adrenaline rush from killing the bouncer was obviously wearing off. “Sorry, Valentino.”
“We’ll worry about it later,” Carmen said before Tino could respond. “We have worse problems.”
Carmen started helping Nova hold Tino’s shirt to the wound. Something about it looked a little too real and way too deadly under the dome light. Seeing his brother sitting there bleeding, Tino instantly forgot about the dead bouncers in the trunk. Nova was an asshole, but Tino was pretty sure he would lose his mind if his brother died.
Literally lose his fucking mind.
Since the day Tino first started breathing, Nova had been right next to him. Hell, there were times when Tino still ended up sleeping in Nova’s bed if the girls were busy and Romeo was training late. Tino would hang with Nova, watching television in his bedroom downstairs, and just pass out there.
That was how fucked up they were.
Tino was twenty years old and couldn’t sleep well alone—and he knew Nova didn’t either. Nova had his own very expensive apartment downstairs, and he slept on Romeo’s couch most nights.
