Page 10 of Tide of Treason
Flick,
flick,
flick.
The sound of inevitability.
The sound of being boxed in.
It irritated me enough to speak. “How’d you find me?”
“I asked the right questions.”
“To who, the NSA?”
“A janitor at one of Braga’s warehouses.” A beat. “Men will trade anything for a smile.”
Shit. I’d given that low-life a cigarette two nights ago for keeping quiet. A single Marlboro for my location. Loyalty really was a cheap, bankrupt currency.
“Next time,” she said, eyes forward, “try paying your rats better.”
I swallowed a curse when she coasted to a stop in front of the one place I considered mine: a narrow two-story with peeling paint and a view of the bay if you squinted past rusted cranes. Porch light dead; curtains drawn. Exactly how I’d left it. My jaw knotted.
“Get out,” she said.
I didn’t move. “Who told you?”
“You would be amazed what money overhears.”
“You spying on me, Sforza?”
Her laugh—low, unamused. “You’re marrying my sister. Due diligence.”
“She doesn’t know this address.”
“I never said she did.”
Coils of something ugly tightened behind my ribs.Paranoia tasted like metal fillings and old blood. I cracked the door open just enough to let the night shove its salt-brined breath across my face, then glanced back at the woman behind the wheel. Head-on collision of crimson lipstick and midnight eyes.
We stared.
Long enough that the dashboard clock clicked a minute forward and the heater coughed dust across my boots.
Then she reached over, pinched the lapel of my coat, and tugged until the scar on my temple hovered an inch from her mouth. Her parting words were soft, threaded in Italian like a lullaby soaked in arsenic.
“Ti ho visto prima che il mondo ti rovinasse.”
3 | Kayla
26 years old
January 2016
The marble wascold beneath my knees. I traced a gloved fingertip along the inscription, the black lettering deep enough to catch snowmelt. It dripped from theoinOnore, running thin, silent trails down the headstone, bleeding into the ground below.
Honor.
Legacy.
