Page 132 of Tide of Treason
Smoke curled from the muzzle. I matched it with a cigarette, letting the barrel breathe.
The others were trailing the ridge. We’d come up Friday afternoon. Private grounds in the Catskills, Sforza-owned since before Prohibition. Thick with pine and silence and whatever the fuck was rotting in that abandoned barn we kept passing. We had a schedule. Early rise for the hunt. Midday check-ins on federal ops. Lucius, can you hop on this encrypted call with the intelligence directorate? Yeah, certo—after I sluice elk off my boots.
Dinner at six. Bourbon at seven. Sex with my lady, if I was lucky, by ten.
I stared down the cooling steel and tried not to wonder whether deer could see the red spreading in my chest every time Kayla crossed my mind. Ridiculous, a man reeking of death daydreaming about silk and perfume. Yet she’d wired herself into the trigger pull, the cadence of my stride, thedesperate fist I wrapped around myself under scalding water to take the edge off so I wouldn’t blurt something like “I miss you” out loud in front of her cousins.
By noon, I’d field dressed the buck, cleaned the rifle, and buried my longing in half a bottle of Knob Creek. Kayla had her back against the wooden fence that bordered the tree line, talking to Rafael. My consigliere’s life was a series of disasters. Wife One ran off with a Swiss violinist. Wife Two left him post-rhinoplasty for the man who’d given her a new nose and a tight jawline. The third stayed the longest. Which meant she fucked him up the worst.
I watched Kayla from the porch. Chewed on another cigarette. The painkillers I’d scored from Francesco’s dealer were hitting hard, and so was her.
She glanced up.
Locked eyes.
Time froze, fractured, re-formed around the gravity between us. No longer frost; it was late nights in her sheets, whispered Italian, and the rasp of calloused palms over silk skin. Sun bounced off the top of her ponytail. She had on a thermal long sleeve that hugged her chest, black leggings that made my teeth ache, and boots with fur at the edges.
I flicked ash into the wind, jaw tight. She made me want to do unspeakable shit like braid her hair and kiss her so slow it’d border on worship, then slap her ass for ever making me feel that way.
“Eyes off my cousin, Romeo.”
Elio appeared beside me, unzipping a thermos. “Youwant her, marry her. You don’t, back the fuck off. She’s had enough mess for one lifetime.”
Ultimatums came too late.
I already lived in the mess.
Slept with it.
Ate beside it.
Came in it.
He watched smoke coil from my lips. “Thought her and Giorgio were bad, but I didn’t know what ‘bad’ really was until I saw her with you.” Thin smile. “I’d put six between your eyes for being a dumbfuck, but I’ve already got a hit out on myself.” Pouring a stream of coffee into a paper cup, he handed it to me.
I sipped. “She didn’t blink when I signed the annulment.”
“I think she loves you. Which is unfortunate, given the part where you’re—how do I say this—you.”
Steam fogged my stare. “What if I love her too?”
Elio swore under his breath. “It’s a stupid question.”
“So I got a stupid answer. How hard is admitting it to myself?”
He stared out at the frostbitten woodshed, the pine skeletons, the snow that’d blanketed the fence. “She’s loyal, my cousin. In the way that gets ugly. You could fuck someone else and she’d find a way to blame herself. Think maybe she wore the wrong perfume or said the wrong thing. She doesn’t cry, Lucius. She bleeds. You’ve got her in so deep, you’re practically touching her soul.” He shook his head. “You take a bullet forher, that’s a start. That’s loyalty. But you don’t even have to be in a war for that. Just being there on quiet days is plenty. You let my cousin down”—his eyes went hard—“it’s your grave we will dance on.”
The next day,I left the lodge before dawn. By the time I’d scaled the tree and settled myself with Vito’s hunting equipment in the branches, the sky had lit up blue-pink-gold with sunrise. The snow was bright. My breathing steady. The only hint of movement was the flutter of a rabbit disappearing into the underbrush, and a pair of cardinals who landed on my scope and argued over who should get the seed. They were so close I thought they might peck out each other’s eyes, and for a brief moment, I considered the birdshot in my pocket.
In the end, they flew away, a little speck of crimson and charcoal in the stark white wilderness.
What did you do when a woman gave you everything?
You didn’t fuck it up. That’s what.
You got down from the goddamn tree, you brushed the snow off your jacket, and you went home before someone else figured out what she was worth.
I pressed mynose into his neck. “Take me home.”
