Page 157 of The Enforcer

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 asshole 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 fuck-you to the other families; it was a fuck-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.

Carina’s father lost his shit when he saw her tattoo, since Italians didn’t mark themselves like the other crime organizations did. He thought it was dirty and ghetto, something only a slut would do. Brianna wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t heard him use those exact words. He thought the tattoos were a power play by Nova after the whole Mary fiasco.

Maybe they were.

Especially since Brianna had started seeing that tattoo everywhere in the network, an alliance to the bastardi of the Borgata. More specifically it was an alliance to Nova, showing up across the city, etched into the skin of people who believed in the underdogs.

“I’ll get something,” Brianna said as she broke the awkward silence that had descended on them. “I don’t want you to watch me get it, though.”

Tino arched an eyebrow, staring at Brianna’s short dress. “Don’t wanna show me your ass.”

Brianna shrugged. “Something like that.”

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