Page 100 of Tide of Treason
He smiled, a flash of dimple and darkness, and wiped his thumb clean on his jeans. “They were imported.” He let theline hang for a second, but his eyes didn’t lighten. Then his voice went softer than I’d ever heard it. “I’m sorry, principessa. This is on me. You should never have to dodge bullets because I’m too fucked up to cut ties with my own past. I drag you into this shit every time I breathe. They’re after me, not you. The Mexicans . . .”
Words locked behind his teeth.
My brain staticed.
Lucius Andrade, repentant, was an optical illusion. There were only so many ways for him to saythis world wants me dead but keeps missing, and now you’re in the line of fire.I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to say sorry for keeping me alive, that I’d take a thousand stray bullets over a single day of the quiet that settled when he was gone, though the words were a fist in my throat.
The manager peeked over the counter, chalk-white. I stared him back into hiding. Cowards didn’t deserve an audience.
“I’m okay,” I managed, not sure it was true, but needing it to be.
His thumb skimmed beneath my eye, wiping away nothing yet scattering my equilibrium. “If you weren’t, you’d tell me.”
I nudged his sleeve. “Come on. Before the uniforms arrive and your FBI badge gets us an all-expenses-paid trip to witness protection.”
His eyes narrowed. “Kayla.” His tone conveyed I wasn’t getting out of this with a joke or a sigh, and maybe that wasfair. I swallowed.
“Stop making me like you. It’s exhausting.”
By the time we rolled through Il Cigno’s gates, adrenaline had dried into a tacky film on my skin, and the neighborhood rumor mill had already completed its first cycle. Word on the street was that Lucius had personally gunned down the entirety of the Mexican Cartel while I clutched a carton of organic eggs and watched from the sidelines.
That last part was especially irritating.
There was no scenario in which I would ever clutch something.
Let the record show I don’t clutch.
Mamma flipped on the news, and suddenly the headlines had shrunk down to one anonymous attacker. Nobody bothered mentioning that the morgue had an equally anonymous occupant. Another channel, another version: now we had zero assailants, and a bleary-eyed cop was sternly reminding people not to unload their weapons on espresso bags in broad daylight. This advice was met with the solemn approval of Nonna, who was already trying to cancel our next grocery shopping trip.
The logic was mind-blowing.
“YOU PUT YOUR HANDS ON MY DAUGHTER—THE ONE YOU AREN’T EVEN MEANT TO TOUCH—AND NOW SHE’S BEING SHOT AT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT?”
A strand of dark hair slipped from my bun, falling across my collarbone. I twisted it absently, watching the hallway where shadows flickered beneath the office door. The wallshere were thick, but they weren’t thick enough to soften the edge in my father’s voice, nor the deep, unbothered timbre of the man on the receiving end of it.
“It’s cloudy today. You shouldn’t be making threats when the barometric pressure’s this low.”
“Are you insinuating I can’t make threats unless the sun is shining?” Papà seethed.
Lucius, unruffled. “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m outright stating it with the full weight of meteorological evidence on my side.”
My tongue pressed against the back of my teeth, annoyance curling low in my gut, because this wasn’t helping. None of this was helping. If Papà kept broadcasting his distaste for Lucius, we’d watch it spill into the vote. And if the vote tipped the wrong way, if just enough hands lifted in Braga’s favor, then Lucius . . .
My hand drifted below my ribs.
The doctor claimed it was too soon to feel anything, but doctors had never met my anxiety. I was already playing the odds, counting bodies, estimating who would swing where. I’d spent the last forty-eight hours reshuffling power in my head, shifting alliances, setting fire to possible futures and wading through the smoke to see what remained. But, truthfully, I couldn’t see the end of this road yet and I hated the lack of certainty.
Viviana offered the obvious truce.
“Can we just be glad they’re both okay? That nobody was hurt?”
29 | Lucius
23 years old
Present day
A city isonly as strong as its underbelly.
