Page 102 of Tide of Treason
A breath through my nose, tamping down the laugh thatthreatened. Calm, almost gentle, I slid the small leather case from my pocket. Held it between two fingers, watching his gaze track the movement, eyes sharpening. Then I tossed my FBI badge onto the chipped Formica countertop.
It landed face-up.
“I hold a lot of titles these days,” I said, standing. “Gangster. Husband. Murderer. Even ‘little fish’, if you squint. But my personal favourite?”
Silence.
I smiled with venom.
“Director.”
Viviana never sleptwhen the moon was full. Said it fucked with her circadian rhythm. I told her that was the dumbest shit I’d ever heard—right before I tossed a blanket over her shoulders and sat down next to her on the cold tile. Because she was my wife, and I didn’t need to understand her. I just needed to sit there and keep her company while she painted her nightmares in oils too dark for anyone else to look at.
“I think maybe you should see someone,” I offered, when I caught her trying to make a butterfly with black paint and charcoal. “A psychiatrist,” I added, clarifying, because Viviana had a bad habit of being selectively dense when it suited her. “For your . . .”
Hesitating, I watched the lines grow more frantic, theslashes darker.
“For your brain. Mental real estate’s looking a little haunted lately.”
“I’m buying a hamster,” she suddenly announced.
“Oh. Okay.”
I rubbed a thumb over my bottom lip, frowning.
“Tomorrow,” she added, as if the timeline mattered. “I already picked out the name. Cosimo.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Her head turned slowly. “What?”
“You’re naming it after that Sicilian enforcer who peeled off three men’s skin and turned it into a Vespa seat?”
Viviana’s stare was level. Deadpan. Fucking unreadable. Then, softly, she dipped her brush again. “I think it’s poetic. A little havoc, a little feral rage. In a cage with wood chips.”
Right.
Pushing myself upright, I raked a hand through my hair. “You cage it, you clean it.”
“I will.”
“You won’t.”
“Iwill.”
“You didn’t even feed the orchid I bought you.”
“It was judgmental.”
“It was a plant, Viv.”
I walked out before she could argue the philosophical superiority of a fucking hamster over an orchid.
In the bathroom, the shower spat steaming water from one of those fancy rain heads that probably cost more than myChevelle’s transmission. I let it beat down on my shoulders while I braced against tile with both hands and watched the water run pink from my knuckles—split, probably from punching the steering wheel earlier.
I didn’t remember doing it, but then again, forgetting violence was second nature. Shit, give me a cage full of lifers sharpening toothbrushes into shivs, and I’d nap like a fucking baby. One careless comment from my old man about Kayla? Fists swung without permission. Skin split. Bones bruised. Restraint was still my middle name, though; real freedom would’ve meant grinding his teeth into dust and scattering them on the street, feeding the city’s rats a late-night snack.
Elara would diagnose me with father-son trauma. Maybe she was right, but I preferred calling it controlled chaos.
