The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (35 page)

“Did he beat Nova?” Chuito asked curiously, because he noticed Nova wasn’t scarred like Tino was.

“No.” Tino took another drink. “It hurt Nova more to see him beat me. That was the one way my father was a really great gangster. He wasn’t smart like Nova. He wasn’t cunning like the old man, but he knew how to manipulate people. I was never any good at it, but Nova got that from him. He can manipulate better than our father could. Like the tattoos. Ink’s permanent. Seeing it on so many bodies started to make a statement. It was a line, young gangsters versus old gangsters. Fuck with us, and you’ll have a war on your hands you will not win.”

“There’s a lot more young gangsters,” Chuito agreed.

“Yup.” Tino nodded. “Nova does shit like that. Sends little messages to the establishment. I told you, it’s a poker game to him. Still wish I didn’t have the fucking tattoo. I hate it.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Chuito admitted. “I like seeing it. I like reminders.”

“Yeah, well, you’re fucked-up like that.” Tino took another drink. “Did you tell her you killed those motherfuckers for Wyatt?”

“Not exactly. She noticed the ink outside the snake was new. She knew I killed two people since I moved here. She doesn’t know why. I wouldn’t sell out Wyatt.”

“You’ll just sell me out?” Tino observed with an arch of his eyebrow, his gaze flicking to the Vicodin on the table.

“She’s not stupid, Tino,” Chuito pointed out. “I have the same ink as you on my body. She knows your family is mafia.”

“She didn’t know
I
was mafia.” There was a sharp edge to Tino’s voice.

“Everyone knows you’re mafia,” Chuito told him sadly. “Just like everyone knows I was a gangbanger. We just have a very polite ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy here in Garnet. Stop being so fucking defensive. Can you go down for having an Omertá tattoo on your body?”

“Obviously not.”

“I told her I work for the mafia. I’ll admit to telling her that, but I didn’t say who.”

“She knows who!” Tino shouted at him. “She knows it’s Nova!”

“You told her to fuck me,” Chuito shot back. “You set it up! I know that’s what you were doing when you told her I was moving back to Miami.”

“I didn’t know you’d treat her like a fucking priest after you were done,” Tino retaliated. “All you had to say was that it was old ink. That you watched too much
Sopranos
when you were a kid. You could have said anything! I have been making shit up since I was a teenager. Why is this hard for you? Do you tell every woman you fuck about your Los Corredores ink?”

“Every woman I’ve fucked knew what my ink meant,” Chuito said as he shrugged. “I’ve never fucked a woman outside this.” He gestured between them. “All the women I screwed in Miami knew what I was. They fucked me because of what I was. There was a reason I was avoiding this, Tino.”

“Your problem is you don’t fuck enough,” Tino said with conviction. “You just fucking lose your shit when a woman opens her legs for you.”

“Don’t say that about Alaine,” Chuito warned him.

“What’re you gonna do about it?” Tino countered. “You exposed my family. You should be dead right now, motherfucker.”

“I didn’t say it was your family. If she does tell Wyatt. If I do go down, do you honestly think I’m going to sell you out? Anything I told her is hearsay. I’m not Nova, but even I know that. The only way the Feds can get shit on your family is if I tell them. I won’t sell you out. Ever.”

“Yeah?” Tino snorted in disbelief. “I used to believe that. Now, Chu, I dunno. The Feds would probably give you a pretty sweet plea deal. They could make you disappear. You speak Spanish; you’d be easy as fuck to hide in Mexico or Spain or one of the other dozen Spanish-speaking countries, and all you’d have to do is testify. You’ve done hits for us. You could sell us out. You are a fucking liability.”

“You think I’d sell you out?” Chuito was genuinely insulted. “Honestly?”

“Life in prison?” Tino seemed to consider it. “Yeah, I think you might.”

“Fuck you, Tino,” Chuito said with a glare. “Just fuck you.”

“Give me a reason to believe something different.” Tino almost sounded pleading. “Really, I need a reason.”

“This is your reason.” Chuito pointed to the table. “I am here. I told you. I trusted you. I came here to ask for help knowing you’d think this.”

“You didn’t knock.” Tino remembered. “You stood there like you didn’t trust me either.”

Chuito laughed manically. “Can you blame me?”

Tino rubbed a hand over his face and then looked at him again. “Life in prison, Chu. You’re telling me you’d take the time over selling me out? Over selling out Nova? Do you know what the Feds would give you to get him? I guarantee you, they will give you a free pass to sell him out. You’re asking me to risk my brother on the hope that you’re loyal enough to die in prison.”

Chuito considered that, for one moment putting himself in the position of having to choose between life in prison or turning against Tino. He didn’t even hesitate before he met Tino’s gaze. “I’m telling you I’d take life in prison. I wouldn’t sell you out.”

Tino hesitated, staring him down. “You’d do life to protect me? To protect my brother?”

“I would.” Chuito nodded. “Without a doubt. I’d do it.”

“Why?” Tino choked.

“’Cause you’re a better person than me.” Chuito shrugged, thinking of his explanation to Alaine about Marcos. “You did the blow to help you get through it. I did the blow because it made me meaner. It made me more efficient. There’s a difference.”

“You are a self-deprecating motherfucker,” Tino said with a sad shake of his head. “You’re not that bad, Chu. There’s some seriously mean, psychopathic assholes in the world. I know because I’m related to a few of them. Hell, my father was one. That’s not you.”

“What am I, then?”

“Loyal to the point of stupidity,” Tino suggested and then thought about it more. “You’re”—he held out a hand to Chuito and smiled—“you’re a fucking warrior, man. You need a cause. The right cause, and you do shit that’s fucking beautiful.”

Chuito snorted. “Murder is beautiful?”

“Yeah.” Tino grinned. “The right kinda murder is beautiful. Bleeding for a cause is beautiful. Dying for a cause is beautiful. Killing for a cause is beautiful.”

“Sounds like an Italian mentality if ever I heard one.” Chuito laughed at him. “You’re drunk.”

Tino nodded and filled up his glass. “Drunk enough to risk my brother going down to help you. What do you need from me?”

“I guess I need to disappear.” Chuito sighed. “I need you to be kind to Alaine. To watch her. To make sure the Mexican doesn’t try anything with her.”

“You gonna go back to Miami?”

Chuito nodded. “Yup.”

“I think that’s a bad idea,” Tino said as he glanced up. “You’ll be in deep in five minutes. You’ll be back on the blow faster than that.”

“You don’t think I can go back and not do blow?” Chuito asked him honestly, ’cause he wasn’t sure either.

Tino shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think you can. I think if you go back, no fighting to worry about, you’ll be on blow so fucking fast it’ll make your head spin, and I think you’ll snort it until it kills you.”

“There’s worse things to die from.” Chuito took another drink. “Alcoholism, for example. It’s such a sloppy, shitty addiction. I accomplish shit on cocaine. What the hell do I accomplish with this?”

“Everything is very cut-and-dried with you,” Tino observed, looking sad as he studied Chuito. “Your whole world is black or white. You can’t just be in a little. It’s all or nothing. Either you fuck the chick and tell her everything, or you don’t fuck her at all. Same with the blow. If you are doing the shit you used to do when you snorted blow, you will start snorting the blow again. Do you get it?”

Chuito shrugged. “Yeah, I get it. The question is, why do you give a shit if I snort the blow?”

“I give a shit because I love you,” Tino said so passionately it stunned Chuito. “You’re my brother. I wouldn’t want Nova to do the blow. Just like I don’t want you to do it. I don’t want you to go and get shot in Miami either. Who has your back there? Your cousin? After everything you did to get him out? You probably won’t even tell him you’re there. You think you can just go in solo.”

“Yeah, I think I can go in solo.”

“You can’t,” Tino assured him. “If you could, you wouldn’t have come to me. You need a crew. You need backup. That’s who you are. If it’s just you, then you have nothing to live for, and if you have nothing to live for, you will find a way to take yourself out.”

“Maybe I should take myself out.” Chuito raised his eyebrows at that. “What the fuck am I clinging to? I’ve been living for Alaine for a long fucking time. Now I fucked that up. The last really good thing in my life. So I go to Miami. Fix the Angel situation for Marcos, because obviously being diplomatic and bringing Nova into the picture wasn’t enough to make my fucking point. I should’ve smoked him six months ago. That’s my fucking fault. Garnet’s made me soft.”

“So you think she’s gonna tell Wyatt?” Tino asked in concern.

“I don’t know.” Chuito sighed. “But I don’t feel like finding out. That shit would kill me.”

Tino looked at his glass and then glanced to Chuito’s. “Man, we gotta stop drinking.”

“Why?” Chuito asked, because he was sort of enjoying the fuzzy blur the whiskey was putting on his reality.

“’Cause we gotta go to Miami.” Tino gestured to his door pointedly. “We gotta get lost before you end up in handcuffs. I appreciate that you think you’d go down to protect my family, but I don’t want to test it. Do you?”

Chuito shook his head. “Not particularly.”

Tino got up and dumped his drink in the sink. Then he jerked Chuito’s out of his hand and did the same thing. “You get the couch. We’re gonna sleep it off; then we’re gonna leave.”

Chuito frowned at him. “You’re coming with me?”

“Of course I’m coming with you,” Tino said as if it were obvious. “If you tell me we got to whack this motherfucker Angel, I’ll help you whack him. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“That’s it?” Chuito was shocked. “I didn’t even tell you why I need to whack him.”

“Do I need to know why?” Tino shrugged. “You say he needs to die. I believe you.”

“No details?”

Tino shook his head. “No details.”

“Wow.” Chuito pulled back at that. “I’d need details. Even for you, I’d need details.”

“Let me tell you something,” Tino said cynically. “The first thing I learned about Cosa Nostra is not to ask for details. If a motherfucker’s gonna die, they’re gonna die. If the old man put out the hit, they’re already dead. Why do I need to get my ass beaten asking questions? If I didn’t do it, someone else would.”

“Can we thank your father for that?” Chuito asked sadly.

“You can thank my father for most of my baggage,” Tino agreed. “At least someone’s benefiting from it.”

“I don’t want you to come.” Chuito winced at the idea of Tino being brainwashed by pain like that. “I wish I could’ve killed your father. He sounds as bad as the motherfucker who made me, and that’s saying something.”

“Yeah, take a number, but if it makes you feel better, no one wanted to kill him more than Nova did. He deserved that honor.” Tino rolled his eyes. “Couch, now, asshole. I’m going to bed.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Alaine cried for a long time after Chuito left. Just really sobbed her heart out for so many different reasons, but mostly because he left and she let him.

It felt like a death.

She could feel it, the dream dying as she sat there in his bed, with the marks of sex on her body. More so, she could feel how naive she had been for believing it had ever existed to begin with.

He had waited five years to touch her, and there had been a good reason for it. It wasn’t something silly and ridiculous. It was very real. His reasons were more than valid, and why had she ever doubted them?

Chuito wasn’t one to waste things for nothing.

He wouldn’t throw this away unless the sacrifice was worth it.

Alaine fell down on his bed. She rested her head on his pillow and lay in his sheets that still smelled like a sensual combination of Chuito’s aftershave and sex. She looked at her wrist, seeing the mark of his kiss still there.

She touched it as the tears ran down her face.

He had loved her enough to walk away.

She felt it down to her core, something undeniable and excruciating because of it. All he had ever wanted for her was a happy, peaceful existence. He’d paid for law school because he wanted her to have what he couldn’t have.

A normal life.

A happily ever after.

And he’d known all along he couldn’t be the one to give it to her.

He would never have that. He knew it, though he wanted it as badly as she did. So Chuito made sure she could have it, even if he wasn’t part of it.

One memory stood out in particular. The night he had gotten home from a trip to Miami a little over a year ago, he’d been edgy and drained. He’d almost insisted that she dance with him, when usually she was the one looking for a partner. Then, early in the morning, she had jerked awake to his screaming in Spanish.

* * * *

Alaine ran to his apartment and pushed open his bedroom door to find him already sitting up, looking at his hands as if he was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Chu—” she whispered, not sure if he was fully awake.

He looked to her, his dark eyes glistening in the moonlight. Then he sucked in a hard, shuddering gasp of air and whispered, “
No estás muerta
.”

She shook her head. “Spanish.”

“You were dead,” he choked and looked at his hands. “In my dream, they killed you. They shot you. You were dead. I saw it, mami. They got you.”

“No one’s dead.” She jumped into bed with him. Chuito wrapped his arms around her, pulling her down in the sheets, draping one heavy leg over her thighs as if he needed every part of his body touching hers. “I’m fine. No one’s gonna shoot me.”

His hands were shaking, but he still brushed her hair away from her neck and kissed her forehead, like he needed the reassurance that she was really alive. She just lay there with him for a long time, letting his breathing even out. It took so long her eyes started getting heavy, because she had jerked awake out of a deep sleep.