Page 136 of Tide of Treason
“I assume you’re here to boast? To wave that annulment? To gloat about how many tongues wag when my eldest daughter shows up brilliant and barefoot and, apparently, engaged to her sister’s ex-husband?”
My mouth went tight. “Why does a woman’s happiness make you so deeply uncomfortable?”
He ran a hand down his tailored suit, fixing the perfect line. Glanced at Mamma, who sipped her espresso at the breakfast table with Nonna and pretended we weren’t arguing across the kitchen.
My parents met when he was eighteen and she was seventeen, drunk on black-market vodka at a Sforza-sponsored bacchanal in Palermo. Papá knocked her up on the roof of a theater while Vivaldi blasted from an orchestra pit three stories below. I always thought it sounded like rape in a minor key. They married before her belly showed, and by the time I arrived, he was already fucking the concierge at the Plaza. Mamma started porn the year after.
I used to wonder if he hated me for coming out of her. For ruining the illusion.
He called me precocious; she called me herlittle blade.
The truth was, I’d always been the sharpest one in the room.
Even when no one said it.
Especially then.
The empire did not run without me.
“You’re pregnant,” Papà announced, voice flat.
“And glowing,” Nonna chimed in breezily, adjusting her cat-eye glasses. “Hormonal vasodilation,tesoro. Gives you that fresh, youthful flush.” She shrugged gracefully, jewelry clinking in refined defiance of my father’s perpetual mood. “Science, not superstition. Although”—her eyes glittered mischievously—“the sex probably helps.”
I fought a smile. “You’ve been talking to Marilyn Duboisagain?”
“Oh, she tells me everything. You know, she keeps a log. Says she hears you through the ceiling when you’re having your ‘late-night aerobics’ and likes to write down how many minutes Lucius lasts. Her best estimate so far is forty-seven. Said she had to take a heart pill afterward.”
Fantastic.
Papà’s gaze slid down my midsection, and that was the moment I realised I’d been absent-mindedly caressing my belly. A quiet, defensive growl echoed in my throat. My baby would never be another pawn. Nonna set her empty cup in the sink, gracefully dismissing herself from our looming showdown.
“For the record, I’m thrilled. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call Marilyn up and inform her she lost her money. I told her fifty-three.”
Alone with my parents, the silence ballooned. He was still staring at my stomach.
“I’m keeping it,” I blurted, the words so harsh they surprised all three of us. “Just in case that wasn’t clear.”
He lifted one shoulder. “We assumed. After the annulment, Lucius was . . . Well, you know Lucius, when he makes up his mind about something, he stays the course.”
That, it seemed, was his version of blessing. He glanced at Mamma; she offered me a small, conspiratorial smile. I turned to leave, but his voice caught me.
“Even when it seems otherwise, we love you, Kayla. If Lucius ever steps out of line, you’ll come to me.”
I nodded, though I knew that day would never come.
I walked out of the kitchen. Through the hall lined with gilt-framed ancestors who’d died too young or lived too long. Past the cracked vase Mamma refused to replace because it had been bought in Venice by some duke who once tried to marry Nonna. Past the dusty piano where I’d taught Viviana her first sonata.
A snatch of Portuguese trickled into the space, casual and low, laced with clipped commands and that indifferent heat Lucius always carried when speaking to men who owed him blood. My pulse tripped, stumbled, found its feet again. Every line of him was warmth and heartbreak and a hundred sleepless nights tied with a red ribbon and handed to me without a receipt.
No returns.
No forgiveness.
Maybe Persephone had bitten into that fruit because she’dwantedto.
Maybe hell was just what love tasted like when it rotted sweet on your tongue.
I pressed my palm flat against the wall as I passed, the brush of worn stone stealing the leftover shudder from my skin. Without pausing his conversation, Lucius grabbed my wrist. I tugged lightly. He didn’t let go. Only shifted the phone to his other ear, thumb dragging a slow, thoughtful brand against my inner wrist.
