The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3) (49 page)

“One step at a time, baby,” Tino said as he came up next to her and held the ladder. “You can do this. Don’t look down.”

“I know,” she snapped at him. “I know not to look down. I’m not stupid. I know that.” She reached out to grab the metal, knees still on the ledge as she crouched there, and she couldn’t help but look between steps. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“
Oobatz.
She’s not doing this. I’m sitting my Italiana ass right here and getting arrested. Both of yous are too. Nova can bail us out.”

“It’s not that fucking simple. I can’t get arrested, Carina,” Tino growled at her. “They’ll try to flip me against the Borgata. They’ll keep me until they find something on me bad enough to put me down. Not to mention, if you get arrested on my watch—”

That was all the motivation Brianna needed. She crawled out on the ladder, the freezing metal digging into her knees, making her wish she had worn jeans like Carina. Despite the cold, her palms were sweaty as hell, but she gripped at the ladder for dear life. The other building was slightly higher than theirs, so she was climbing at an incline. One step at a time, with the wind still blowing up between the buildings and her ponytail hanging in her face.

She could distantly hear the chaos from the raid below, and she really hoped no one was looking up and noticing this ladder. “W-what if they see us?” she asked, now hanging halfway between the buildings.

“They aren’t gonna see you. No one ever looks up,” Tino assured her. “It’s all fine. You’re almost there. You’re doing good.”

It wasn’t until Brianna reached the other building that she realized she’d barely breathed the whole time. Her heart was still thundering as she crawled over the edge on the other side and turned around to look behind her. Tino and Carina were dark silhouettes. Their bodies were noticeably tense. It was obvious that watching Brianna make that trek had them near frozen with fear. Though Tino had managed to keep his cool rather than let her hear his apprehension.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Carina’s voice carried on the wind. “I have to do this. She’s over there, and I’m here. I have to fucking do this.”

“Come on, where are those stugots? You got this, sweetheart,” Tino said as Carina crawled up on the ledge. “I’m gonna hold it for you like I did for Bri. Like my fucking life depends on it, okay?”

“Are you drunk?” Brianna called from the other side. “Do you feel stable enough to make it?”

“I’m not drunk anymore,” Carina replied as she grabbed the first rung and looked up at Brianna. “If you can do it, I can.”

Brianna leaned down and grabbed the top rung on the ladder. “I’m holding it from here. We won’t let you fall.”

Carina nodded wordlessly and crawled out, slowly but surely until she was hanging between the buildings with nothing but the metal ladder to support her. Carina’s breath was leaving her in quick, silvery puffs, betraying the fear. It was a horrible thing to watch,
really horrible
, a thousand times worse than actually doing it.

“Go, sweetheart.” Tino sounded anxious. “Get to the other side. I don’t wanna rush you—”

“Then don’t fucking rush me,” Carina growled back to him. “My hands are sweaty as hell, and I feel like I’m gonna puke. Cazzo. I’m never drinking again. I swear to God, the fucking government’s put me off alcohol for life.”

Carina spent so much time bitching and praying she didn’t realize she’d made it to the other side, and when she did, she said another quick prayer in Italian and then crossed herself as she crawled down from the ledge to the roof.

“Hold it, Bri,” Tino called and then crawled onto the ladder like he had done this a hundred times before. “Both hands.”

Brianna leaned down and held it tighter as he took to that ladder like a firefighter with a five-alarm blaze going. Tino was moving so fast the whole thing was shaking, and there was no one on the other side to keep it steady. Brianna’s hands were still sweaty, but she held on to that first rung like it was life-and-death.

Which it was, more so than anything else she’d done in her eighteen years.

Carina wrapped an arm around Brianna’s waist as if afraid Brianna might just plunge over the edge and take Tino with her. Brianna looked down once. She couldn’t help it. Watching Tino move across that ladder so quickly made the view twelve stories down more appealing. Then in the next breath Tino was grabbing the ledge, and Brianna let go of the ladder so he could crawl onto safe ground with them.

“Get down,” he said as he leaped onto the roof.

Tino bent over to grab the ladder, grunting when he unhooked it. He managed to keep it from slamming against the building when he pulled it off from where it was balancing on the other ledge. Then he brought it up quick and didn’t bother to slide it back into place. He just tossed it on the roof and then ducked down between Carina and Brianna when they both sat to catch their breath.

“Porca puttana, Tino.” Carina clutched her chest but wasn’t able to finish, because Tino slammed a hand over her mouth.

“Wha—” Brianna started, but Tino’s wide-eyed look shut her up.

She instinctively ducked down farther, and only then did Brianna hear the chaos from the other building. The bark of dogs as federal agents swarmed onto the roof. The glint from flashlights hit their roof, and Brianna’s heartbeat nearly deafened her as the dogs’ barking got louder.

“There’s no fucking way. Unless it was Spider-Man up here. The dogs are losing their touch.” A voice echoed from the other side. “It’s clear.”

Tino took a shuddering breath next to Brianna, but the three of them stayed there for a long time. Though the guy deemed the other roof clear, it took forever for the ATF agents to go back downstairs. Tino shrugged out of his jacket and gave it to Brianna. She didn’t like the idea of his arms bare, but she went ahead and put it on because her dress didn’t cover very much, and she could freeze to death waiting.

Even after the agents were all gone, the three of them stayed down, so silent they were barely breathing. Carina started texting on her phone that she had stuffed in her back pocket. Brianna had left hers at home since they’d decided to ditch their purses, and thank God they had.

“Paco got out,” Carina whispered. “He’s gonna meet us at the apartment.”

“El Barrio.” Tino didn’t sound surprised Paco had avoided arrest. “He knows how to get the job done.”

Carina was still typing on her phone. “He got your boy Aaron out too.”

Brianna nodded and breathed another sigh of relief. “Bet he’s never coming out with me again.”

“Fuck Aaron,” Tino growled, as if all the stress from nearly getting caught by federal agents chose right then to rise up. “You can find a better dance partner.”

Brianna turned to look at him for a long time before she asked, “Can I?”

“That was impressive,” Carina added, still texting. “I forgot how good you two are together.”

“I didn’t. I never forgot. Not once.” Tino squeezed Brianna’s bare thigh lightly. “You were awesome, baby. Badass.
Sexy badass.
”

Brianna turned and looked at him curiously. “The dancing?”

He smiled. “That too.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tino had been doing a lot of blow over the past two weeks. Not his fault; it’d just been a crazy month. The second he got the cushy Carina-babysitting gig, it seemed Cosa Nostra decided to take a shit, and every shady gangster had tried to either flip against the Borgata or steal from them.

Lately, Carlo had been favoring chemicals to get rid of bodies since the feds had been watching the docks, and he was apprehensive about taking out the boat. There wasn’t anything quite so unpleasant as the smell and sound of chemicals dissolving a human body. The visuals weren’t too fucking great either.

Tino thought he was immune to death until Carlo pulled the lid off that first barrel and the two of them stood there in protective gear, huffing and puffing as they fought with the body of a dead dealer who’d been speaking to the feds like a fucking moron. He acted like it was a big fucking shock the old man had eyes and ears in the government.

What was he? New?

Didn’t matter now. Tino strangled him using wire, because Carlo had Tino do most of the hits these days. Not to be an asshole; Carlo just wanted to desensitize Tino in case a bullet got Carlo and Tino ended up alone. Carlo had been talking about that shit a lot lately, which didn’t exactly help Tino’s blow habit.

For several months after Tino started being an enforcer, he developed Nova’s stomach issue when it came to stress. He spent a lot of time puking his guts up like he had that first night in the bathroom after Mary left him.

He felt like his soul was being raped all over again.

The first job he went on, they had to shoot the target through the eye, up close and personal. They ended this capo, a guy neither of them knew, because his name ended up on a piece of paper. It was a message job, and they had to leave the body there to be found as a warning that they were watching the crew Don Moretti knew was stealing from him. Not the best introduction to enforcer work, and Nova lost his shit when he saw the report on the news, especially since he was the one who’d tipped the don off on the stealing. The idea of Tino doing a job that left that much evidence nearly sent Nova over the edge, but Tino point-blank lied about being there.

In Cosa Nostra, no one was supposed to know what another person was doing. Even brothers. It was a solid rule. A good rule to protect everyone, most especially the administration, and Tino made sure he protected Nova.

His brother didn’t need to know the dirty details that had Tino puking on the side of the road after he made Carlo pull over.

But that was a lot of hits ago.

Now he didn’t think anything could get him, but those fucking chemicals were really pushing his limits. He could smell them every time he closed his eyes, and tonight he couldn’t seem to get to sleep to escape it. He was still hyped up on the adrenaline from the roof. Hours later and his heart didn’t want to stop beating fast. He had that horrible hot-cold feeling crawling up the back of his neck, making him realize his body was itching for blow. He’d taken a shower when they got back to Carina and Brianna’s apartment, but he was still sweating.

He had the blow on him.

He and Carlo got special boots made last year that had a secret compartment in the heel. If they got patted down, they weren’t going to get caught for narcotics—packing heat, fuck, yes, but narcotics, no. With any luck, even if he got pinched, the cops would never find the blow in his shoes.

Tino lay on the couch, shirtless in only his jeans, and shifted as he tried to stop himself from reaching for his boots. He had a strict rule that he didn’t do blow unless he really needed it. When the rush of invincibility might just save his life. When it was absolutely necessary for the chemical high to hit his brain and make his reality a little less horrific.

Lying there and hearing the muffled sounds from Carina and Paco in the bedroom down the hall was not a good reason for blow. So he looked at his phone, actually hoping for a text from Carlo to meet him.

Nothing.

It’d been quiet for two days when it’d been busy for weeks, enough that he was starting to get too dependent on the white-powdered happiness. Not for the first time, Tino made the decision to just suffer the withdrawal, if for no other reason than it’d make the next time he used it much better.

Last thing he fucking needed was for the blow to stop working as well and end up like one of those assholes who was snorting it every time they went to the bathroom to take a piss.

Carlo kept his shit together. Like Tino, he only did it when he was on the job, and he never seemed to get itchy without it.

Carlo told Tino once that he did blow when he was working to make the jobs easier, and he fucked when he wasn’t working to make life easier. He never mixed the two. Even if he went weeks without a job for the Borgata, he kept them separate, and it worked because Carlo was Siciliano and fucking would always be more fun than blow.

Made sense to Tino.

Except he wasn’t fucking.

He was sitting here sweating and twitchy on Carina’s couch, listening to his sister get some instead of him. It felt like a very sad reality all of a sudden, and he was starting to make mental excuses to do the blow.

He needed a distraction.

Desperately.

He was still staring at his phone, waiting for a call, for some asshole somewhere to threaten the Borgata and give Tino a real reason to reach for his boots.

Like God still heard his prayers, the doorknob to the other bedroom twisted quietly.

Tino turned off his phone and dropped it to his chest. Then he closed his eyes, trying to make his body relax, which was almost impossible. He was already on edge, and just hearing the soft-footed steps of Brianna sneaking out of her bedroom made his breath catch and his dick hard.

He was still turned on from the roof earlier, which was probably why he’d been missing blow and enforcer work. Seeing Brianna crawl out on that ladder with total trust in him, badass and fearless when most women would fall apart, really did it for Tino.

Big-time.

Brianna stopped her trek toward the kitchen, standing behind the couch, and Tino could feel her eyes on him. Now his skin was hot for a different reason, and there was a rush of need burning at the back of his neck that had absolutely nothing to do with blow.

All thoughts of cocaine flew right out of his mind when he realized she assumed he was sleeping and took the opportunity to stare at him. Shirtless. With his guns tossed on the coffee table and the blanket tangled around his feet. Still hard as a fucking rock, Tino wondered if she noticed and shifted his hips, arching them up in a way that made it blatant what he was thinking about.

She sucked in a quick breath.

He reached down and grabbed his dick through his jeans because it fucking hurt. Not like he had a lot of opportunity to jack off when he was babysitting the girls.

In a soft, breathy sigh, Brianna whispered, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

The sound of her voice made every hair on Tino’s body stand on end. Everything in him wanted to grab her and give her what she was praying for, but Brianna was a good girl. It could never just be sex to her, and there was no part of Tino that believed he and Brianna could have one of those cute and fluffy college relationships like her friends did.