Page 127 of Tide of Treason
If only.
37 | Kayla
30 years old
Present day
I cracked thewindow for mist to tap my cheekbones. From the driver’s seat of a matte-black Maserati I didn’t technically own, I had a front-row seat to the last piece of unfinished business: the final idiot who’d voted for Sergius Braga two months ago, now getting properly acquainted with a crowbar. The reverberation of splitting bone settled into my own jaw.
In my world, justice had a dress code. The first victim had dangled from a rusted crane in Astoria, a Sforza coin jammed between his teeth as a salute to the old country. The second had taken a “farewell cruise,” hog-tied to a boat and sunk off Atlantic Highlands, courtesy of two bricks of heroin in his pockets. By that point, I wasn’t even angry. It was routine, a kind of savage exfoliation of all things treacherous.
In other words, spring cleaning.
Unwrapping a pomegranate lollipop, I popped it in my mouth. Lucius had tucked it into my palm this morning. It was thoughtful. Cute. Annoying. I wondered, with an idle sort of panic, what it would take to make him love me past reason.
Pregnancy made me restless, meaner with my affections, rougher with my love. I wanted to bite him, fuck him, feed him, leave crescent moons in his shoulders and swallow every drop he gave me. I wanted his mouth everywhere. On my throat, my belly, my pussy—anywhere that ached.
From behind the battered walls of the meat-packing warehouse, a groan floated out, followed by the moist crack of another body giving way. I tapped the candy against my knee, watched the syrupy gloss catch the light.
Persephone bit into a fruit and sealed her fate. She chose hell, and I’d always liked to think it was because she preferred the fire to the silence. Because sometimes, damnation is warmer than loneliness. Especially when it holds your hand and calls youprincipessain the dark.
The last scream died behind warehouse walls, swallowed whole by Queens’ industrial breath.
I started the car, threw it into drive, and felt something pop.
The engine sputtered, and then—
Black smoke hissed from the hood.
I didn’t know much about cars, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good sign. I also knew the Maserati hadn’t done anything to deserve my string of Italian expletives that left theair around me scorched blacker than the plume of ash curling into the sky.
“Thermostats fucked. And your coolant hose is dry,” were the first words Lucius spoke when I called him for help. The fact he knew the problem based solely off my panicked description was both frustrating and attractive, and I wasn’t sure which I felt more. “Jesus, Kayla. I told you not to drive this car.”
Oh.
He did . . .?
Fifteen impatient minutes later, he was bent under the Maserati’s hood. I hovered on the curb, ankles precarious in stilettos that threatened to fuse with the sizzling asphalt. Without glancing up, he asked, “You sure you didn’t do something to it?”
I sniffed. “No.”
“A little trick to get me here?”
“No.”
Yes.
Midnight-blue eyes rose over the hood. “Certain?”
“Positive,” I snapped, shifting my feet to avoid letting one heel vanish into a sewer grate.
“Mmm. That’s too bad.” Lucius straightened and rattled off a string of dire mechanical maladies: gaskets blown, belt cracked, the reservoir so parched it was a miracle I hadn’t ended up a bonfire. Something about “you’re too cold to catch fire, though” slipped in there too.
I batted my lashes in mock innocence and murmured, “So can you fix it?”
His gaze softened to something warm and indulgent. “Not on the side of the road, baby. We’ll need new parts. They’ll charge extra for that accent of yours at the Bay Ridge garage—unless you tell them you’re mine. Could go either way.”
I was still getting used to this whole “we” thing. The idea that he was mine to call for help had the effect of a small explosion behind my navel; warm and destructive and hard to ignore. Sunlight cut through the clouds, gilding him in lazy arcs of gold—bronze and godless, like something that didn’t evolve so much as survive.
