“Fine.” Carlo took a long, hard breath and then said, “But we let her go, and we still don’t know where the hell Tino is. Think about that one, genius?”
“I can think of someone who knows where he is,” Carina said darkly, reminding them all that she was still there, because she had fallen strangely silent. “We’re going back to Brooklyn. Right now.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
What Carina remembered, and Brianna hadn’t, was her mother’s threat the night of Tino and Brianna’s fight.
“She got weird when I told her Brianna and Tino were fucking.”
“Which was a lie,” Brianna reminded her.
“She was jealous! Do you understand how fucking sick that is? Now she’s done something to him,” Carina went on as Nova drove thirty miles over the speed limit. Her voice was shaking, but she wasn’t crying. It was like she was past tears and into something much more dangerous. “I know that’s what it is! She told me she was going to! And she made this my fault! She’s hurting him to get back at me! She’s turned her fucked-up, twisted Brambino shit into something I gotta slit my wrists over. If I hadn’t told her about Brianna, he’d still be here!”
No one could say anything to that.
Only Carina could admit something so horrendous. That it was her words that pushed her mother over the edge. Others would hide it. Even Nova seemed to be hiding his guilt, with cracks of it showing when they least expected it. Carlo was silent and tormented in the front seat. Brianna was definitely hiding it as she sat there next to a raging Carina, remembering the night she and Tino got into that fight.
Remembering that she’d called him a whore, not knowing how true it was.
It was her tears that drove Carina to say what she did to her mother, and it was very hard for Brianna to do anything but replay that night over and over again in her mind.
But Carina was the only one owning her guilt completely, admitting that one stupid fight with her mother might have been the catalyst that led to Tino disappearing. It was like watching Carina’s world shatter in the background while everyone was too caught up to notice.
“If he’s dead, I’m going to prison.” Carina said it with certainty, making Brianna think it wasn’t an idle threat.
“If he’s dead, I’ll help you hide her body,” Nova assured her from the front seat as they all finally acknowledged the very real possibility that Tino wasn’t alive anymore. “And we’re not going to prison for it. I’ll eat a fucking bullet before I go to prison for a goddamn Brambino, and I’ll make you eat one too. They don’t get that from us.”
It was such a horrific thing to say.
That Nova would kill his sister rather than let her go to jail for the Brambinos, but all Carina said in response was, “You won’t have to make me do it. I’d help you pull the trigger. We’ve been fucked by those puttane for the last time.”
So the Brambinos had this big hang-up over Sicilians.
They considered them dirty, angry versions of Italians who thought with their dicks instead of their brains.
They thought the Sicilians were beneath them socially…far beneath them.
And it wasn’t just the Brambinos. There were other families who considered themselves more “northern,” though they’d all been in America forever.
Most of them weren’t even full Italian anymore.
Brianna never paid much attention to it. It was an old, stupid Cosa Nostra thing that went back probably a hundred years or more and really shouldn’t exist, but it did for some reason, because the Brambinos let it, and the others helped.
They took power in an archaic stereotype, because no one could deny the Moretti Borgata was one of the strongest families, so they made them out to be hotheaded, uncivil animals who had no place in their society instead.
Brianna never believed Sicilians were any different from other Italians until the night they skidded into the driveway in Carlo’s black Lexus, and Carina flew out of the car before it had fully stopped.
She didn’t wait for the men.
She didn’t stop to ask her Zio Carlo for help, even though he was the strongest enforcer in the Borgata. She didn’t wait for her brother who’d just offered to help her hide the body. The men ran after her, and by the time they caught up to Carina in the kitchen, she had grabbed a pan off one of the hooks hanging over the island.
“Carina—” Nova started cautiously.
“Back off!” Carina yelled as she pulled open a drawer and took out an extremely large butcher knife. “This is all me.” She pointed the knife at Nova, who backed up a step and held up his hands. “I want your gun, smart guy.”
“I’m not giving you my gun,” Nova said with a manic laugh. “There’s no way.”
Carlo looked at Nova. “I sorta wanna give her mine.”
“If we kill her, we won’t know where Tino is,” Brianna reminded them. “We need to find him.”
One way or the other, they needed to find him.
If he was dead, she still wanted to find him.
She didn’t want him to be another CliffsNote in mafia history. She wanted him to be buried. To have a headstone. To be remembered.