The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(79)

Then he spent three years in his Garnet prison, and his life was basically training, eating, working out, and spending time with Alaine. That was the extent of his existence. Sometimes he’d show up in Vegas or some other big city, win a fight, party for a few days, and then he went back to his Garnet prison.

He’d done three publicity tours.

Those were all right. He liked seeing different places. He liked talking to the fans, especially other Latinos.

But for the most part life had gone from high-speed to crazy slow.

Being friends with Tino taught Chuito that drugs really did affect people differently and getting clean did too, because there was nothing chill about Tino Moretti.

He was full throttle from morning to night after it took him exactly one week to crash from a powerful blow addiction. He slept through the whole f*cking thing. His depression was minimal, and nothing about him seemed altered or worse for the wear when he simply upped his caffeine consumption and started to train to be a fighter as effortlessly as he did everything else.

As much as Chuito loved being Boricua, he decided if he could have chosen, he would’ve been born Italian.

If one was inclined to be a gangster, Italian was definitely the way to go. They had generations to hone that shit. They picked their women to make better mafiosi offspring. They actually bred to be as pure and hard-core as possible. Chuito knew that Tino’s mother had been his father’s mistress rather than his wife, but he also knew she’d been a pure Sicilian, Italian-speaking daughter of immigrants from the Old Country, and his father knocked her up not once, but twice. It was almost as if he had planned on making an heir and a spare in Nova and Tino.

That was highly f*cked-up.

Especially knowing how well he’d succeeded at it.

Though Chuito did have to wonder if Tino was this amped up naturally, what he’d been like on blow—probably scary as f*ck—not that anyone here would notice.

Everyone liked Tino. He was a fun, easy guy to be around and was one of those people who could say whatever the hell he wanted and people thought it was part of his charm. Women flocked to him like they did to Marcos, as if they were completely oblivious to the undercurrent of danger that surrounded them.

Even Romeo seemed to largely dismiss anything hard about Tino, and he was his brother. Though Chuito had noticed Romeo was also a sort of father figure, which was the reason Tino had been willing to tell off Nova when he was crashing, but answered the phone in a f*cking heartbeat if Romeo was calling.

It was the strangest shit Chuito had ever seen in his life.

No one saw the gangster in Tino.

No one.

Not even Jules, and she saw everything.

Chuito was alone in knowing one of the scariest motherf*ckers out of New York had landed in Garnet.

“The f*cking Russians, man,” Tino was ranting as he bench-pressed after hours at the Cellar because he was a night owl too. He looked up at Chuito, who was spotting him. “I know that’s why Nova is tense every time I talk to him. Before I left, he was up to his ass in comrades. I don’t know why the old man keeps getting in bed with them over and over again. Their rules are jacked.”

“Are you supposed to be telling me your shit?” Chuito asked him. “Nova said—”

“Nova hates the Russian mafia more than I do,” Tino went on as if he hadn’t heard Chuito. “Did you know they aren’t supposed to get married? What I can’t figure out is if they aren’t getting married, where the f*ck do they keep coming from?”

“They don’t have kids?” Chuito asked in surprise.

Most of the gangsters he knew had kids, and the Italians were worse than Latinos. Never underestimate a predominantly Catholic group of people’s abilities to reproduce more of the same.

“Half those f*ckers are ex-KGB. Nothing scares them,” Tino assured him. “That’s why they don’t let them have kids. They make sure their associates got nothing to lose, but you would think the basic law of survival would make them bend to intimidation tactics. It doesn’t. We had this comrade in deep with the old man. A quarter of a million in arms that he didn’t deliver on. Madonn’, I tried everything, and I’m very good at my job. Ended up having to sink him. He didn’t even cry on the way down. Now here we are, back in bed with more Russians. Oobatz.”

“Tino,” Chuito warned. “This sounds very internal.”

“If the old man had seen that shit, he wouldn’t be so quick to sign the dotted line for all these arms deals.” Tino wasn’t listening, just kept talking instead of counting as he lifted. “That’s why accountants shouldn’t be running things. I mean, at least Nova gets his hands dirty sometimes outta some sort of brotherly guilt because I always end up with the hard jobs. That ex-KGB f*cker not crying freaked his shit out too. He hates dealing with the Russians. That has to be why he sounds so stressed.”

“You really need to shut up,” Chuito growled at him and pulled the barbell out of his hands and put it back. “I’m serious, Tino. I don’t want to hear this shit.”

Tino rubbed the sweat off his forehead and laughed. “What? Who are you gonna tell? The Feds? I got shit on you too, motherf*cker. We’ll go down together if you sell me out.”

Tino knew Chuito’s stance on law enforcement and was clearly using it as leverage because he needed someone to talk to now that the only form of communication he had with Nova was the phone, but Chuito still couldn’t help but point out, “Nova will sink me if he knows you keep telling me this shit.”