Nicholas Borelli II, [Noah Munck], leads a sheltered, germ-conscious life in a small town where his parents micromanage every bite and habit. His summer is meant for a math camp, but the camp is canceled, and with his parents working far away in Papua New Guinea, the family arranges for him to spend the season in Brooklyn with his paternal grandmother Tutti, [Rita Moreno], and his Uncle Frankie, [Steve Schirripa], whom he has never met. The big city feels overwhelming at first, a world away from his orderly routine, and Nicholas must learn to navigate subway noises, bustling streets, and new social codes.
To help him adjust, he befriends two local teens, Donna, [Cristine Prosperi], and Tommy, [Jasson Finney], who show him the ropes and introduce him to a tougher, faster pace of life. They offer him a sense of belonging and a glimpse of life outside his small-town rules, and through them Nicholas begins to see Brooklyn as a place where summer could actually feel exciting. Yet under the surface, clues begin to surface that Frankie might be more entangled in something shady than Nicholas realizes. The more Nicholas observes, the more he suspects that his uncle’s quiet edges conceal a dangerous, criminal world.
Everything shifts when Nicholas answers a private phone call and ends up taking a debt-collection job for a man named Paulie, [Vincent Curatola], an assignment that drags him deeper into the gangster milieu. Inspired by one of his favorite films, he adopts the nickname “Nicky Deuce,” a persona that earns him a uneasy respect within the criminal circle and pulls him into decisions with real consequences. As his name and presence grow, Nicholas can’t shake the feeling that his uncle Frankie might be far closer to the inner workings of the Mafia than anyone in his family realizes.
The gang’s world opens wider as Nicholas and Tommy uncover a startling scheme connected to horse racing. The mob is cheating at the track by conditioning their own horses with hypnosis, turning predictable outsiders into supposed underdogs who win big payoffs when the horses cross the line. The plan hinges on a keyword that can “switch” a horse’s fate in a race, allowing the gang to cash in huge sums while the public believes in improbable upsets. In the course of investigations, Tommy is hypnotized too, and the trio—Nicholas, Donna, and Tommy—find themselves drawn into the danger in a way they never anticipated.
Driven by desperation, the teenagers kidnap a racehorse in an attempt to thwart the scheme, but the gang retaliates by kidnapping Tutti. What begins as a reckoning over a debt and a teenager’s curiosity quickly spirals into a full-blown crisis that ties Nicholas’s parents, Tutti, and Frankie into the criminals’ web. The group is overwhelmed and captured, but they manage to break free, even as the manipulated horserace hurtles toward its inevitable outcome. The tension peaks as the gang’s operation threatens to ruin not just lives but the integrity of the racing world itself.
In a climactic turn, Frankie reveals his true role not as a simple relative but as a covert investigator planted by the NYPD to uncover the gang’s machinations. The truth comes out, the criminals are exposed, and they are arrested, bringing a measure of justice to a summer that had begun with lies and fear. Nicholas’s father finally sees Frankie in a new light, and the family’s fractures begin to mend as they reckon with what happened. Tutti’s steadying influence nudges them toward a gentler sense of adventure, and the story closes with a hopeful moment—a dance, where Nicky Deuce and Donna share a tender kiss, signaling a future that might still be bright, despite the shadows that briefly darkened their summer.
