Upside of Neverland
Carina
Carlo
Brianna
Tino stared at it for a while, because that was about it for the good things. He drew a line under each of their names, and then paused on Brianna and decided to adduniformsto the list.
Even if they had been on the downside list, he couldn’t help but be a little excited about the first day of school if Carina’s best friend in a Catholic school uniform was the bonus.
They had her tryouts tomorrow in Bed-Stuy.
He’d been counting down the days. Not like he had much else to look forward to, and he was dying to see what sort of routine she was doing. He wanted to ask Carina what song Brianna was dancing to, but it felt like a spoiler for the one thing he had to look forward to.
So he wroteBed-Stuyunderuniformson the list.
He heard someone on the stairs, which surprised him because Nova hadn’t been gone long. Maybe his brother felt guilty and got Tino fast food and a movie rental before he went running to the don.
Tino was about to addBig Macto the list and turned around, expecting fries. Instead his stomach knotted when he saw Carina’s mother open the door.
This was the first time he’d been in the same room with her. He’d only ever seen her from a distance, spying that shiny blonde hair in the house across the pool, but up close Tino could see Carina in her.
His sister’s features were Frankie’s.
Her coloring was definitely Frankie’s.
But the rest was from the woman standing in front of him. She couldn’t be more than five feet. Everything about her was tiny, but she was curvy too. Her hair was wavy, shoulder-length, very styled like even the strands were afraid to fall out of place. Her makeup made her look too perfect.
Actually, she was a beautiful woman.
Exceptionally beautiful.
Like Tino’s ma had been exceptionally beautiful.
Frankie didn’t half-ass his women.
“Valentino,” she said in a crisp way that reminded him of the blond asshole back at the school.
Which made sense, considering she was Dominic Brambino’s aunt.
Thank God Tino colored in the fucking list.
“Yeah,” he answered when she arched an eyebrow at him like she expected an answer.
He wasn’t real sure what he was supposed to do, but all the fine hairs on his arms stood on end in fear the same way they did when he got near his father, so he just sat there looking at her.
“It’s a stupid name,” she said in annoyance, as if he was insulting her by making her say it. “Almost as bad as Casanova.”
“Lucky I’m not Casanova, then, huh?”
He wanted to bite off his tongue after he said it, especially when she stiffened and narrowed light eyes at him. He definitely needed to shut up, because he was inclined to say a lot of dumb shit, and Nova told him a thousand times if he got in trouble, not to say anything.
To just keep his mouth shut and wait for him to get there.
Nova had been talking about school, social workers, cops, things like that, but Tino assumed Mary Moretti fell into the same category.
“Thank God you don’t look like them. I don’t think I could stomach that. Looking at Frankie is bad enough.” She spit out the wordthemlike it was the most repulsive thing she could think of as she walked into the apartment and glanced around in disgust. “You haven’t cleaned this place up yet?”
