Because Tino was scared to death of compromising himself.
He didn’t want to know what would happen if Mary found out he was fucking off the clock. She went to great lengths to make sure he didn’t catch something. To make sure her product wasn’t compromised. Everyone in the high-class sex-trade rings was tested. Even still, Tino could write a book on safe sex because those mob wives were terrified of giving their husbands something and exposing themselves, but it still wasn’t worth it.
So Tino didn’t say anything.
“Are you nervous?” Nova asked, as if that was another possibility he considered, one he was extremely hopeful for. “I could give you tips. You can talk to me about stuff like that.”
“If I need a tip, I’ll let you know.” Tino was seriously going to give himself eyestrain from all the eye rolling. He reached over and got his iPod out of the backpack on Nova’s lap. Then he put in his earphones and announced, “I’m out.”
Tino slept on the subway a lot, because he didn’t get much sleep on the weekends. He had dance-team stuff during the day, and he dealt at night, technically under the umbrella of Nova’s crew, but it was his father making him do it.
To be useful.
To earn his keep.
He didn’t have a five-hundred-pound brain that could make millions and launder money, so he fucked for Mary and dealt for Frankie all to earn the special privilege of sleeping in the apartment over the garage.
Lost Boys had to be useful. They had to earn money, not cost money like other mafiosi kids. They were an investment, not an obligation.
He dozed with the chilled-out throb of low-key techno pulsing in his ears loud enough to block out the train and his brother’s bullshit. He took the opportunity and let Nova watch his back, because they were going to switch jobs soon.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the Nova-babysitting gig, Tino would’ve probably started eating pills on the weekends too.
Or at least smoking a little.
Sorta like the sex, Tino didn’t mind dealing so much now, but at first he fucking hated it and wanted a way to hide from being forced into it. Except shortly after his father threw the backpack at him and told him to be useful, Nova discovered he liked the shit Tino was selling.
In the beginning Nova really had come with Tino to watch his back.
Nova was the one packing.
Nova was the one on guard, but it took a single asshole questioning Tino’s shit to change everything. The prick expected one of them to take the hit to prove it was good, so Nova took the ecstasy even though his brain reacted funny to a lot of things.
Nova did okay with pot, but he’d snorted coke one time when he was working overtime for the old man while juggling crew work and school and didn’t blink for three days. He was wired like a motherfucker. Tino could not wait for him to come down. It made Nova paranoid as hell. Tino wanted to kill Carlo for giving it to him in the first place.
Nova’s brain on cocaine was a fucking nightmare.
It would’ve been a better plan for Tino to take the ecstasy. They didn’t need to go through another blow disaster, but Nova was still in that self-sacrificing, superguilty mode. So he took it and discovered that cocaine might not agree with his brain chemistry, but ecstasy sure did.
Now the only help Nova offered on the weekends was as certified ecstasy tester, which probably was something. Tino sold a lot of shit. It kept Frankie off his back, literally, and there it was.
What the hell did Tino have to complain about?
At least Nova let him sleep on the train.
Chapter Twenty-One
He jerked when Nova touched his arm, because something about his life made him a light sleeper. He blinked awake just as they came to a halt at their stop, and then jumped up to follow after Nova.
The two of them stood on the platform, looking like a pair of raver-boy pinups. A dying breed. The last few of their kind. Tino didn’t spend quite as much time on his hair as Nova, because he wasn’t on the prowl, but the two of them still matched. In their tight black shirts, loose-fitting jeans, and highline sneakers.
Sometimes Tino mourned the death of the rave that seemed to be going deeper and deeper underground as the city cracked down. He got the impression they were in the final days, and sometime in the near future, it was going to be nothing but clubs.
The underground would be gone forever.
And the Borgata would find a different way to make money off the nightlife.
But not tonight.
Tino usually got the first text on the location, seeing how he was the one bringing the treats. He was a promoter-approved supplier of ecstasy, funneled in by the Moretti Borgata for a not-so-small fee paid to the Borgata for the privilege of letting Tino sell it. In exchange, the promoters not only got clean ecstasy, they got the bonus protection of the Borgata, who kept the heat off the hidden venue.
Thus far.
Tino wore a jacket.
He had a gun to hide.