Breaking Bones (Mariani Crime Family Series Book 2) by Amanda Washington Page B

from the restaurant.”
    I laughed. “We need to talk about your lack of self-preservation.”
    She shrugged. “What? I’m just trying to be helpful.”
    I slowed and veered off the highway, down a side road.
    She plastered her face against the window to read a sign. Then she craned her head around to check out the area. “Sunrise Mountain, huh?” she asked.
    I nodded and kept driving.
    After a few minutes, she asked, “Uh… where’s the mountain?”
    The vehicle was inclining, heading toward the parking area at the top. “Here. We’re on it.”
    “This isn’t a mountain. This is a slightly larger hill than all the surrounding hills.”
    “But for Las Vegas natives, this is as big as it gets.”
    She crossed her arms and sat back. “Disappointing.”
    “Ouch,” I replied.
    She giggled.
    I parked the Hummer so we were facing the city.
    Despite her previous skepticism, Ariana’s eyes widened. “Wow. This is beautiful,” she said, taking in the view. Lights stretched for as far as the eye could see. “So peaceful. The city seems so far away, but so close.” Her smile shifted into a frown. “Like all the opportunities it represents.”
    My phone buzzed with an incoming message: a code and a name. Everything in the Mariani empire was coded. Drop off and pickup locations all had codes which changed frequently, and I was horrible at remembering them. The codes for orders, however, never changed. They were beaten into me during my training and I’d never forgotten a single one.
    Memories of my training resurfaced. I was eleven years old and Carlo and I were in his Jaguar doing surveillance on a target. The code came across the cell phone the family had given me.
    “What does this mean?” I asked Carlo.
    “Memorize the code and the name, because the message is about to disappear.”
    Okay. “But what does it mean?”
    “Means Nick Jones is hiding from the family and you gotta bring him in.”
    I’d met Nick Jones. He was pushing six feet tall and had to weigh over three hundred pounds. He was hiding? How would I find him? How would I take him? I couldn’t even drive. “Me?”
    Carlo chuckled. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, kid. You’ll be doing that shit soon enough. Those messages go out to everyone on the family network and the first person who sees him needs to take action. There’ll be a nice bonus in it for the guy who gets him.”
    Wondering if he meant what I thought he meant, I stared up at my mentor. Carlo fashioned his hand into a gun and mocked blowing his brains out. Yep, I nailed it.
    He gestured at my phone. “See, Tech has already made the message go poof. Can’t risk information getting into the wrong hands.”
    The message was gone. It was a neat trick, but my curiosity wasn’t deterred. “Why would anyone hide from the family?” The Marianis kept my family fed and protected. Sure, Carlo was a tough teacher, and my body had a few new scars, but I’d learned how to fight and how to stay alive. The Marianis had done a hell of a lot more for me than my own family had.
    He tapped the steering wheel a few times, and I got the feeling he was trying to put his words into kid-friendly speech. He was trying to dumb it down so I could understand.
    “Jones is an enforcer,” he finally said. “You remember what I told you about enforcers?”
    “They enforce the rules of the borgata , the family.”
    “How?” he asked.
    They were big, scary guys who only an idiot would screw with. I’d met a couple of enforcers, and they wouldn’t have to lift a finger to keep me in line. “I’m not sure.”
    He lit a cigarette and sucked in a long drag. Then he asked, “What’s the one thing I tell you the most, kid?”
    I only had to think about it for a second before answering, “Don’t trust anyone.”
    “Good, you’re learning. Yes, don’t trust anyone. In our line of work, ninety-nine percent of the people you deal with are gonna be honor-less thugs who’ll just as soon stick a knife