The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(126)

But most of the time, Tino’s job as an enforcer wasn’t so bad.

Especially since he took over as one of Carina’s bodyguards.

That was what enforcers did on their downtime.

They protected the administration and their families, because being at the top of the totem pole meant the family got the best bodyguards.

It didn’t happen overnight; for a long time Tino shadowed his uncle everywhere. He never came back to school or dance crew, and even with Mary’s bullshit done and no more dealing, Tino was always busy.

Always gone.

Dropped out of school and just kind of disappeared.

He was at his brother Romeo’s apartment more than anything. Back to being Harlem Tino on the outside, and something none of them were allowed to know about when he went off with Carlo. She tried not to complain because she knew what his brothers meant to him, and being back in Harlem was important to all of them.

Brianna remembered the first night they’d pulled Tino out of the Savios’ basement. It also happened to be the first night Romeo was out of prison.

She and Carina sat on the top steps to the don’s basement, listening to Nova throwing up in the bathroom downstairs like all the fear and horror waited until right then to show up while Romeo cried over Tino. Even if their older brother didn’t know the whole truth, there was no way to hide that Tino had been shot and beaten by an opposing family. Romeo knew his prison stay had left his younger brothers in Cosa Nostra for the rest of their lives, and he sounded really broken over it. So Brianna and Carina sat there listening rather than intrude on the breakdown of not one, but two imposing and intimidating men.

She and Carina wanted to be close to Tino, but eventually Carlo just said, “Come on,” and forced them back upstairs.

And that was sort of how it all felt.

Like Brianna and Carina had taken a backseat in Tino’s life for over two years.

Until graduation, when Carina finally got to move out of her parents’ house, because, yes, Mary was still around, scarred, but not nearly as subdued as she should be, and Carina’s father was still an * too.

Now Carina needed full-time security, and since Tino preferred Manhattan and Carina got the Midtown apartment as a graduation gift from her nonno, it all fit into place.

The family didn’t like to be too obvious with their security, so Tino looked much more natural shadowing his sister everywhere, getting tattoos with her, hanging out at the same parties, rather than a collection of suited, middle-aged men following her.

If the feds were taking pictures, which surely they were, it was a great cover for both of them, because it made Tino look like a party boy too. Both of them with too-large bank accounts and the entire city as their playground. The next generation of useless mafiosi brats who would undoubtedly be the demise of their crime kingdom.

The Cosa Nostra was nothing if not efficient at letting the government see what they wanted them to see.

So everyone was happy, and it was all perfect.

Except Brianna was sharing the apartment with Carina, since her mother wasn’t keen on investing in Brianna’s future and a free place to stay in Midtown was a godsend for a girl on scholarship. Brianna cooked and cleaned to earn her keep, and Tino helped because since they’d moved in three months ago, he had been underfoot constantly. Passing out on the couch all the time rather than heading back to Romeo’s place.

Tino’s brothers still lived in East Harlem because they loved it there. Only in one of the new buildings that was the result of urban revitalization of El Barrio, as most New Yorkers called East Harlem. The last few traces of Italian Harlem were almost completely gone, and maybe that was why the brothers refused to leave. Even if Romeo was doing amazing in the MMA circuit and Nova wasn’t hurting for cash either. They stayed, and not on Pleasant Avenue, where the last Italian holdouts were making their final stand.

The three brothers claimed all of El Barrio as theirs, and Brianna couldn’t help but agree.

She loved El Barrio.

And not only because of one wild night on ecstasy that ruined her for all other men, probably forever. Sure, there was a life and vitality to East Harlem Brianna associated with Tino, but the nightlife was fantastic too.

She wasn’t the only dancer who loved it.

There were dangerous sections, like anywhere in New York, but with Tino around, it didn’t feel like something she had to worry about.

It was one of her favorite places in Manhattan, and the reason they were getting tattoos in the back room of a dodgy El Barrio parlor instead of somewhere more upscale in Midtown.

Plus, they were in the network.

The holster and gun.

The Omertà tattoo on Tino’s stomach.

None of it mattered here.

That was the first thing Brianna learned when they’d moved out of Brooklyn.

It was all about the network, and the two years Tino spent in Carlo’s shadow made him an expert on the network. He knew every safe place in every borough of New York. It never ceased to amaze her that a guy who’d struggled to pass geometry could navigate the city like the map was tattooed in his brain.

Carina twisted her hair up and held it on top of her head, showing off the small, cursive Omertà tattoo at the base of her hairline that she’d gotten not too long after Tino got his. It wasn’t a f*ck-you to the other families; it was a f*ck-you to their own family. They were a new generation, a tougher generation, one that was a little more streetwise, and a lot more connected to the element the Morettis profited from.