Finally he sighed and said, “Okay,” because how could he not?
“Like the fucking pope.” Carlo shook his head, and oddly enough Tino remembered what he was talking about. Only this time the dark pope was sitting right there, and he wasn’t born to rule the underworld like the don was. He was taking it by force instead. “You’re gonna get yourself killed, Nova, and for all you know, Tino or me is gonna have to pull the fucking trigger to save your goddamn ship.”
“At least it’s something worth going down for. At least my ma doesn’t have to roll over in her grave and be ashamed she gave birth to me.” Nova ran his hand over the sheet of Tino’s bed and whispered, “At least I won’t be Frankie. You gotta kill me, do it, but don’t stop fighting to take our ship back.”
Carlo didn’t respond for a long time. Then he nodded and said, “Lost Boys gotta fly.”
“We gotta be stronger than them,” Tino agreed.
“We protect the ship,” Nova reminded them. “It’s ours. We don’t flip. We don’t run to the fucking government. We play their game, and we make them think we love it. We don’t do anything to jeopardize the organization. Someone tries to hurt it, we put them down ’cause it’s a fucking war, and if you need help digging graves, I’ll help you dig ’em. I’m all in. I’m taking Cosa Nostra, even if it takes me fifty fucking years to do it.”
Tino got his first ink a week later.
Omertà branded into the muscles on his stomach.
A lifetime loyalty pledged to Cosa Nostra before he even took the oath.
Carlo got his ink down the long line of his spine, from the base of his neck all the way to the curve of his back.
Nova’s was on his right side, the oath staining the most vulnerable part of any fighter, from under his arm to the curve of his hip, though their people considered themselves above ink.
And these weren’t pretty tattoos.
They were done in big black street-gangster lettering. Dirty, his father told them later when he beat the fuck out of Tino despite the fact that Tino was still recovering. Making Nova watch while he did it.
It made them look like trash. Tattooed like street thugs. Like the Russians and the cartel. He called them every fucked-up thing in the book, and it took him a long time to notice that Tino wasn’t crying, and Nova wasn’t flinching, because watching Tino bleed for the greater good obviously didn’t hurt him.
Frankie stopped then, as Nova knelt there in the basement and glared at their father like he was fantasizing about killing him.
“Get the fuck outta here.” Frankie kicked Tino as he said it.
Tino turned and looked at him, even if his back was on fire and his shoulder was hurting like a motherfucker. He’d cheated a little and did blow before he got down here, but he wasn’t too high to miss the flash of fear in Frankie’s dark gaze.
For that one long moment Frankie saw what he’d created.
Then the moment passed, and he kicked Tino again, forcing him to get to his feet despite his injured thigh that wanted to give out. Tino didn’t let it; he stood his ground as he turned around and gave his father the same glare Nova had.
They were both taller than Frankie now.
Stronger.
More cut and disciplined, with black belts and a vendetta.
It was the last time Frankie hit Tino.
No one hit him, not anymore.
Even when Tino started doing the don’s dirty work, no one was able to get the edge on him.
He was done bleeding in basements.
And he would put a motherfucker in a shallow grave in a New York fucking minute if they tried to take them down, because Tino had a ship to fight for and a dark pope to protect, and he took that shit very seriously.
Chapter Thirty-Four
East Harlem, New York
Late November 2008
“Are you very high? No.”
“Oh, come on,” Carina said in a singsong voice as she looked up at Brianna from her spot on the tattoo table. Ass in the air, Carina rested her chin in her hand and said, “Just a little one.”
Brianna shook her head. “No.”
“Chicken,” Tino added from the table next to his sister, with his ass also in the air. “Get a four-leaf clover. ’Cause your ass is good luck.”
She laughed. “No. I’m not getting a leprechaun or a four-leaf clover or anything else tattooed on my ass. Just no. You can’t make me. My mother taught me to resist peer pressure.”
Tino snorted. “Oh yeah, that worked out great for you.”
Brianna let them say what they wanted, but stood steadfast against a wall covered in tattoo pictures and watched Tino and Carina get matching tattoos on their asses to celebrate being out of Brooklyn.
100% Grade A Italian
A gigantic fuck-you to all the Northern Italian families who didn’t consider Sicilians real Italians. Some Sicilians didn’t consider themselves Italian either. They were their own special breed of Mediterranean badasses, who apparently held grudges they wanted to last forever.
So there it was, stamped right on their asses until the end of time.