Page 115 of Tide of Treason
My thumb dragged along the edge.
Lucius,
You weren’t supposed to be a soldier.
Not in my image. Not in this war. I tried to stay away, thought it’d be better if you never knew my name. But your mother was the kind of woman who made men do stupid things. Like hope.
The first time I saw you was from a distance. You were seven. Playing football barefoot on that cracked court behind the favela. You took a shot, fell, scraped your knees bloody, and got up laughing.
And I thought—fuck. That’s my son.
The day you put a Sforza ring on your finger, you became untouchable. I went south—Brazil was burning, old debts needed settling. But the whispers reached me, even across continents. Iwanted to see what kind of man you’d become in two years without my hands fucking it up. The principessa they said you couldn’t stop looking at. About how you’d rewritten your destiny like you had a goddamn pencil instead of a knife.
I left the world worse than I found it. You were my only chance to fix that. But I’d already poisoned the soil too deep. You were born into a grave I dug with my own hands.
So I made a choice. I wouldn’t take your future from you. I’d just bow out before I could ruin it.
I never touched your mother. Not like that.
But I let them.
And I never stopped them.
There’s no line after that. No salvation. Only the truth.
I deserve every bullet.
P.S. If you ever go back to Brazil, take her to Ouro Preto. The rooftops burn gold at sunset. There’s a street vendor there who makes the best pão de queijo in the southern hemisphere. And if she likes waterfalls, go to Chapada Diamantina. You’ll need to hike, but she’ll kiss you under the water. Trust me.
If I gave you anything, let it be this: a chance to live outside of my shadow.
—S
A low, feralfuckscraped out of me.
I stuffed his letter back in my coat and tasted copper on my tongue all the way back to Manhattan. Each syllable he’d left behind rotted in my chest, settling a bruise that wouldn’t fade.
Quiet wasn’t in the stars tonight.
As soon as the elevator doors opened onto Kayla’s penthouse floor, a stale hush closed around me like I’d walked straight into the back of my own skull. The marble under my feet felt colder than it ever had, biting through leather soles, reminding me that tonight, I was a man missing his shadow. I told myself I just needed one damn look at her. Even if it was only for a second. But I heard voices the second I turned the corner, echoing from the other side of her door. A rough, masculine timbre that didn’t belong.
Fucking Niccolò . . .
My blood went hot and cold at the same time. Lava and ice. A vicious mix of violence and retreat. This time, it didn’t taste like jealousy as much as it tasted like inevitability. I only knew I refused to stand in that hallway and beg for scraps.
I was halfway to the stairwell before I even knew I’d moved. My breath tasted metallic. My pulse ached in my gums. All that fury had nowhere to go, so it festered. Boiled. Saturated the seams of my coat, the creases of my spine, until I was a man made of bad decisions and the leftover heat of a woman who hadn’t said my name in hours.
I texted Rafael two words:
Me:Let’s go.
33 | Kayla
30 years old
Two months later
My hairstylist, Antonio,took one look at me and let out a whimper of secondhand distress. Dropping my clutch onto the nearest marble countertop, I peeled off my sunglasses. It was raining, sideways, apparently, but my makeup had held.
