Page 119 of Tide of Treason
Then again, slower.
As though I’d asked something too sacred to touch but too tender not to answer.
“Gentle,” she said. “But not weak. You know the kind. Big hands. Bigger heart. Quiet when it mattered, loud when he was right. He used to say Lucius looked like fire but loved like a sponge.”
I furrowed my brow. “A sponge?”
She smiled. “He soaks everything up. Every word. Every bruise. Every kindness. Doesn’t show it, but it’s there. Swelling inside him. And eventually . . . it spills out.”
Later, I couldn’tsleep.
Humidity too thick, memories too restless.
Lucius’s scent had faded from my pillow, replaced by bergamot lotion and lavender balm and the quiet ache of a man-shaped vacancy. I lay on my side, knees drawn up, hands pressed low on my stomach, trying to recall how it felt to be held. Not just fed or fucked, but held.
He might not come back.
I tested the question on Elio once, but he’d only gone quiet, nudged a bottle of prenatal vitamins my way, and said Lucius was off doing “king shit.” If he didn’t call, it wasn’t because he didn’t care, it was because he cared too much.
And if that wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, then I was a nun.
Eventually, I crashed around two. Dreamt of water. Of gold-tipped rooftops and a street vendor with soft eyes handing me bread while a shadow stood behind me, so familiar it made my bones sing.
34 | Kayla
30 years old
Present day
There was soundcoming from the spare room.
I froze mid-step, one hand on the doorknob, the other wrapped around a jar of pickled peppers I’d absolutely planned to eat alone in my underwear while watching crime documentaries in bed.
Someone was doing something.
Maintenance, maybe.
I narrowed my eyes.
Francesco sometimes fixed things when he was avoiding responsibility. Vito too, though his idea of “fixing” was usually just gluing things back together and calling it a day. Maybe Elio had sent someone. And by someone, I meant Lucius Andrade back from the dead, or, more accurately, from Mexico. Hisright shoulder was bandaged, an arm sling looped lazy across his chest. He was using the other hand—his dominant one—to drill a floating shelf into the wall. Shirtless.
My heart seized up, half in panic, half in whatever deep, primal thing roaredminein the back of my head. My stomach chimed in with anoursthat left me feeling strangely shaky. The prickling heat traveling up my spine was at odds with the cool glass of the peppers in my hand.
Popping the lid, I bit into one with more force than necessary, and drawled, “So, is breaking into your mistress’s apartment a new hobby, or should I feel special?”
The drill stopped.
And then—
“My shoulder is dislocated, not my hearing. And you do own this entire building, so that’d make me a tenant, not a trespasser.”
“Very cute. Next you’ll tell me you’re building a shrine?”
He tugged at the shelf, testing its stability. “It’s a shelf. For my things.”
“You don’t live here.”
Lucius finally looked up. The look in his eyes stole the air from my chest. There was weight there. Grief. The stubbornness that had driven him south and the desperation that always, always brought him back to me.
