Page 1 of Tide of Treason
Past | Part 1
1 | Lucius
19 years old
September 2015
I stared atthe yellowed notepad on the scarred motel desk, fingering the stub of a graphite pencil until the tip splintered. The first line wavered beneath my gaze:
LUCIUS BRAGA ANDRADE.
I pressed the side of the pencil to the paper, scratched a thick black line through the middle name.
LUCIUSBRAGAANDRADE.
Eighteen years stacked behind me in the rearview. Nineteen on the odometer now, and this wretched September night in 2015 was purring in neutral, waiting for me to shift.
Winter of 2013 tasted like metal in my mouth. Abel had shoved a cracked Styrofoam cup of instant coffee into my frozen hands. “Drink,pannekoek,” he’d said, curling away fromthe bone-deep chill so I could soak up his body heat. That was Abel van Blair—two years older, too big-hearted, already making plans. “When I’m nineteen, I’m signing up,” he told me, voice low so the night guard wouldn’t hear. “The marines will scrub my record clean, yours too. I’ll come back for you.”
Now, the smell of motel detergent reminded me of bleached blankets in the corps barracks Abel had described in his letters: parades of boots, shouted cadence, sweat and disinfectant. New Jersey was an ugly step-sister to every dream I’d ever had, but the room was paid for the week, and the owner minded his goddamn business.
I rolled the pencil between thumb and forefinger, graphite dust peppering my knuckles. One deep breath, then I wrote the line that had been rasping in my skull since the second I slit Braga out of my name:
Senhor, se me escutas, não me dê paz.
Dá-me munição.
Lord, if You can hear me, don’t give me peace. Give me ammunition.
I dragged a line throughmuniçãotoo. Because prayers were for people who still believed in ceilings that didn’t leak. What I needed was a plan that didn’t end with a toe tag.
I closed my eyes and slipped back—
Harbor, Staten Island, 2014
“You know how to keep warm?” Abel asked, voice shaking from the North Atlantic wind. He shoved a Berettainto my fist. “Recoil.”
The deal had soured; Cartel mules scattered like rats when the Fed sirens wailed. Abel stayed, dragged me behind a stack of shipping crates, and taught me how to breathe around the taste of fear. When the first agent rounded the corner, Abel popped him center-mass. The impact jolted through me, echoing down the barrel I held but never fired.
I threw up afterward.
Abel handed me gum and said, “Better to vomit today than bleed tomorrow.”
Next morning, Sergius Braga congratulated us for protecting his product and rewarded me with a new title:watchdog. Collar invisible, chain unbreakable. Abel got a bonus five grand. “Wedding fund,” he joked. We bought antiseptic and bandages for the shelter. That night we toasted with stolen whiskey, and Abel promised again, “When I’m nineteen, I’ll sign. The Corps likes boys with scars. They call it character.”
Two weeks later he mailed in his enlistment forms. I never asked where he got the judge to expunge our records. Some miracles came with receipts you didn’t read.
Step one: breathe.
That was harder than it sounded. I’d spent the afternoon swapping IDs with a strung-out forger in Newark, traded the last of my Venezuelan cash for three passports and a Beretta 92with its serial number filed off.
Step two: build a spine out of spite.
I opened the duffel at my feet. Inside: a letter from Abel—postmarked Parris Island, edges greased by a hundred rereads—three boxes of .40 S&W, and the battered leather Bible my mother used to smuggle under the mattress. Pages thin as cigarette paper, margins full of her prayers.Seja um homem bom, meu filho.Be a good man, my son.
Sorry, mãe.
The world didn’t have room for good men; it barely toleratedusefulones.
