Boisterous, mercurial, Tyrus Weatherford has never had a problem keeping a broad social circle, his temperament lending itself to an easygoing charisma and a wholehearted, if easily revoked, brand of conviviality all his own. It was, in part, his habit of keeping so many acquaintances which led him astray as a pup on the streets of Austin, pulled all-too-quickly into the orbit of easy money and free drugs offered by doing ‘favors’ for the local bangers and older kids, on his block, then his street, then his entire ward. Getting in on the ground floor as a courier was easy, and Tyrus took to it like a duck to water, pounding the pavement night in and night out as Central Austin’s premier delivery service for the sordid and illicit. Like most drug-runners, though, he had an expiration date, the day that the balance of risk and reward he’d treaded got thrown out of whack by the weight of time settling around him. When he turned 18 and the heavy focus of the law came to bear, Tyrus made his last drop-off and used the cut to buy his first pack of smokes, a new piercing, and a one-way Greyhound ticket in the general direction of the coast.

Arriving to the outskirts of New York from Austin Texas on a bus and without a job or any connections to speak of smacked a bit close to the plot of Midnight Cowboy for Tyrus’ tastes, so the great dane made sure to latch onto another crew before he had to start shopping for tassled leather jackets and practicing his best Jon Voight. All Tyrus had ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for a hard day’s work, having been to long surrounded by abject poverty and nothingness to want anything other than easy money and easier company. Blinded by the city lights and swept into the undertow of his new friends and coworkers, Tyrus lost years toiling in relative obscurity on the wrong side of the Hudson, perfectly happy with his lot in life of roughing up store-owners and skimming shipping containers until the opportunity for something more came calling.

The big leagues. The families. Everything hinted at in popular culture from Goodfellas to the Godfather. Money, prestige, the ability to call people ‘wise-guy’ or say ‘capeesh’ without irony, all of that and more was offered to him, all he need do was undermine the crew he ran with and betray the people who’d taken in a stranger and helped turn the city into his home. There was no hesitation on his part, Newark burned the same night Tyrus got the call and the big dog had his lip pricked, temple kissed, and swore his undying loyalty to the Cosa Nostra within the week. There was a reason for letting Tyrus in, even after he’d shown himself mercenary enough to tear down the system he’d helped establish on the far bank of the river. The family was sick, a seemingly inexorable backslide of embezzlement and corruption which the leaders were desperate to put an end to as their grip around the city loosened one errant finger at a time. They needed an enforcer, a cleaner, and what better candidate than a money-hungry canine built like a brick shithouse and without any warm childhood memories of Cousin Donnie to pull the punches when he tried to cook the books.

Tyrus was put into a position to be a professional son of a bitch and he flourished in the role, quickly gaining a reputation for ruthless professionalism when on the job and rambunctious bacchanals when free. It was an easy life, busting heads that deserved it, he found himself rising within the well-structured ranks of the family at an almost meteoric clip until, well, until he didn’t anymore. Tyrus had been clambering so fast up the rungs that he’d never even thought about what would happen when he reached the end of the ladder. It was called a crime <b>family</b>, after all, and he’d been far from born into it, an outsider called in during a time of need and relegated to the responsibilities of that job and nothing else. A contractor, to be used but never trusted. In the seasons that’d slipped by since he first took the oath of loyalty to them, it seemed the leadership had lost track of just how they’d come to possess the tool they wanted to keep so deep buried in their pocket. Tyrus had remained the same deeply opportunistic dog that turned New Jersey’s criminal ecology upside-down, despite how well the new life had treated him he was restless, stagnant. He needed more responsibility, power, respect, all the things he was merely teased with by his status as a mere friend of the family.

Like a young sensation in any field, Tyrus had attracted a number of underlings, small-timers who’d hitched themselves to the tail of his rising star and made life easier for the dog in exchange for some preferential treatment. Fed up with the inability or unwillingness to let him move up the chain of command through merit alone, the great dane rallied his inner circle of underachievers and reprobates to put himself back into motion. Though his enforcement operation was largely relegated to the interior of his benefactor’s territory, the appellation Tyrus Fabius Weatherford still held enough clout about the underbelly of the city to earn him the ear of a rival don who thought his proposal was novel enough to earn him the man’s interest. A new territory carved from the beating heart of manhattan and presided over by a certain oversize canine, with special accords made for the family that’d played patron to the endeavor, of course. It was a pipe dream, but a feasible one. Who better to ensure the decay and crumbling of an establishment than the man who was supposed to keep it in check? It would be an easy task to sweep the legs out from under the delicate financial machine he was supposed to upkeep, and hopefully as effortless a job to build a new empire from the rubble.

Tyrus had overplayed his hand, he learned that the moment his apartment door had been found ajar, the garrote that slipped about his neck next was mere confirmation of what he already knew. Someone had sold him out somewhere along the line, a loose-screwed pair of lips squealing out the end of his little insurrection, and potentially his life. Still, they made the error of sending just one of his erstwhile co-workers, probably too caught up in the romantic notion of an enforcer gone awry ‘straightened out’ by someone who held the same job title to realize that Tyrus had been their foremost implement of discipline for a damn good reason. He made it out of New York in much the same way as he’d gone in, fitfully asleep on a Greyhound pointed nowhere in particular and sent off in the dead of night. Thrown back to square one by the recoil of misfired ambition, though not without having learned his lessons, Tyrus figured that it was time to find a new hustle in a new city, though he had a feeling New York would catch up to him eventually.