The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(144)

“This is Tino. Tino, this is Miranda. She’s a first-year dance major like me. You know Aaron.” Brianna pulled the chair out farther and gestured to it. “Sit. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“Hi, Miranda.” Tino nodded in greeting at Miranda and sat, looking a little disoriented, which wasn’t like him. He glanced for half a second at Aaron and said, “Hey,” before he turned back to Brianna. “I was actually hoping you could take off for the rest of the day.”

“Is everything okay?” Brianna gave him another wide-eyed look, because Tino showing up in full-on enforcer mode, antisocial and intimidating, was scary to her in a way it wasn’t to the rest of the table. For all she knew, some sort of mafia war had broken out, and he was here to pull her underground. “Where’s Carina?”

“Oh, shit, she’s fine.” Tino looked down at himself and flinched again. “Everything’s okay.”

“You know Bri’s friend Carina?” Miranda asked from across the table, completely oblivious to their real conversation.

“Yeah.” Tino gave Miranda a look, like she was annoying white noise. “She’s my sister.”

“No shit,” Miranda mumbled, raising her eyebrows as she let her gaze run over Tino. “So it’s Tino Moretti, then?”

“That’s what my driver’s license says.” Tino said it lightly, but there was a tenseness to him that made Brianna defensive.

“Exciting,” Miranda decided for the table.

“Excuse you,” Brianna snapped with a look of disgust. “You said that out loud.”

“It’s okay.” Tino still sounded haunted, out of place, an enforcer who wasn’t supposed to be social, rather than the fun-loving guy he was for clubs and parties. “She’s not the only one to think that.”

“We’re going now.” Brianna tossed her banana on Aaron’s tray and shoved her book into her bag with shaking hands before she said something she couldn’t take back three months into school. She was still out of place and trying to find her footing, because these kids were nothing like the ones at St. Francis. It was like she’d landed on another planet with a completely different set of rules than she grew up with, and she’d been looking for nice, normal friends to help her blend, but she decided right then Miranda wasn’t her friend anymore. “Come on, Tino.”

“I want details,” Miranda said without apology.

Brianna surged across the table and smacked Miranda before she could stop herself, angry, open-palmed against her smug face, hard enough to make Carina proud when her head snapped to the side from the force of Brianna’s anger.

“What the f*ck was that for?” Miranda shouted as she cupped her cheek, and everyone in the cafeteria turned their way.

“I don’t know what things are like where you came from.” Brianna leaned in, keeping her voice low and narrowing her gaze at Miranda as she went ahead and handled it the only way she knew how. “But he came here to see me. That means he’s mine. Private property. You look at him. You speak to him. You even think about him, and you’re disrespecting me. I don’t like being disrespected.” She shouldered her bag and then turned back to Tino with a look of disbelief. “What is she? New?”

“I guess.” Tino put an arm over her shoulders. “Can you imagine what they’d do to her at St. Francis? The girls there get nasty about shit like that.”

“They’d bury her in two days.” Brianna leaned into him instinctively. “How was work?”

“Eh, it was all right.” He shrugged as they started walking away. “Hardly any blood.”

“I told you.” Aaron’s voice echoed from the table. “You better figure out a way to make it up to her, because I wasn’t exaggerating about what happened Saturday night. He made them disappear like a f*cking phantom. You do not want to be on her bad side.”

Tino and Brianna nearly hurt themselves trying to stay cool and not start laughing. It wasn’t until they were outside that Tino looked at her with a wide, amused smile that reached his eyes and said, “That was very hot.”

“Thank you.” Brianna couldn’t hide her blush as she buttoned her jacket to cover up her tank top. She was wearing sneakers and hip-hugging dancer sweatpants with it, because she had just gotten out of dance class and hadn’t planned on a bike ride. She draped her bag over her front, with the strap stretching from her shoulder, down between her breasts, and across her other hip. She took the helmet when he handed it to her, and started working on the bobby pins in her dancer bun until her hair fell down into a messy ponytail. “What are you gonna use? I hate when you ride without a helmet.”

“We aren’t going that far.”

“Home?”

“No, somewhere else, actually. No one knows I’m back yet. I thought we could hide out until tomorrow. Carlo’s laying low too.”

Brianna stopped her work of pulling the band on her ponytail down to make room for the helmet and just looked at him in concern. “You said everything was okay.”

“It is. I just…” Tino shrugged and looked away from her. “I thought maybe we could talk about things.”

Her stomach lurched when she realized this could be some sort of breakup visit. “Things about us?”