She took a long, shuddering breath. “I should’ve made it better.”
“Hard to make it better when you’re doing it in front of a hundred sick assholes drinking champagne.”
Lola was quiet again, before she said with a smile in her voice, “You did pretty good.”
“Thanks. So glad.” Tino snorted sarcastically. “I know you were pissed at your father. Why the fuck shouldn’t you be? Sick fucker, even he should have limits. First time on display like that, and he sticks you with a guy you didn’t know. You could’ve taken it out on me, but you didn’t.”
“We made you beautiful instead,” she whispered. “Now look at you.”
“Yeah.” He held out his hands and stared at the tiled floor. “Look at me. In the women’s restroom, selling my zio to the wrong woman for the week. My life is so shredded.”
“Your pretty girl, Brianna, that’s something.”
“She hates me. Hooked up and broke up in the same week.”
Lola was quiet again before she asked, “Was it horrible?”
“Yup,” Tino said without hesitating. “Completely horrible. I don’t even know why I’m still here. Now this shit. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the next party they put us together for, I’m not gonna be able to do it.”
“I’ll break up with him before that. We’ll make it work. We always make it work. That’s why we’re the best.”
“I don’t think that’ll help me,” Tino argued. “I won’t be able to get it up knowing what I know now. Carlo’s my zio, Lola.”
“Take a blue pill. It’ll go up.”
“You with the blue pills.” Tino laughed in spite of everything. “I’m a Siciliano. I don’t need a fucking pill.”
“There is something to be said for Siciliani,” Lola agreed. “I thought it was just you, but—”
Tino grimaced. “Stop.”
“You’ll grow into yourself nicely,” Lola finally decided. “You’re talented now. In ten years you’ll be incredible. Your pretty girl will come around, Tino. She won’t be able to help herself.”
“I don’t want her to come around,” Tino admitted, even though it hurt to say out loud. “I would never make you do anything I wouldn’t do myself. You know that, sweetheart. That’s our deal.”
“That’s what makes you beautiful,” Lola said softly and then sniffed. “That’s why they all want you.”
“Is it?” he asked curiously.
“You’re stronger than most, and they sense it. Women crave a strong man. It’s instinctual. We can’t help it,” she said with conviction. “You make their husbands seem weak. Women see it now, but just wait. Even men catch on eventually. Ten years. Everyone thinks it’ll be Nova, but they’re wrong. You’re the one they should fear.”
“I’ll never be more powerful than Nova.” Tino said it with absolute certainty. “I don’t want to be more powerful than him.”
“I’m not talking about power,” she said slowly in the way of someone truly intelligent. “I’m talking about fear and strength. There’s a difference.”
Tino looked at the partition that separated him from Lola, because he remembered a discussion with Carlo about something eerily similar.
“People fear Carlo, you know?” he confessed when he knew he shouldn’t. “He’s not just an enforcer. He’s our lead enforcer.”
“I’m not surprised. It makes sense.” Her voice was choked again. “It’s instinctual. Women can’t help it. It’s so easy to fall in love with a strong man. I think I’m sad for your Brianna.”
Lola was a girl whose father made her to sell her.
She stopped crying for herself a long, long time ago.
So Tino was silent and let her cry for Brianna instead.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tino’s shit week carried over to the next and got progressively worse.
He dropped out of dance after the fight with Brianna, and someone must’ve clued in Mary. So Tino was busy in a way he didn’t want to be, and he was one very small step away from asking Lola for some blue pills.
He didn’t know if it was too much pot, or too many oxys, but he was having issues he couldn’t afford. He kept trying to imagine Brianna like he normally did, but all it did now was leave him feeling gutted.
He leaned against a tree one block down from Rosie Campelli’s house, trying to get his mind straight. She wasn’t the worst woman to deal with on a Wednesday. She was sweet, one of those who liked Tino to pull her hair, and usually that worked great for him, since Tino was inclined to hair pulling than things of a more Mary nature. He didn’t mind being on his knees for a woman, but he didn’t want to feel like a dog being there.
Rosie texted him this morning, and he said yes because someone worse could show up. Plus Mary fucking freaked when he turned down last-minute appointments, and made the alternative so much worse. It was the easiest stop all week, but he was crumbling.