Page 18 of Tide of Treason
On the inside, the mania was building.
One good flick to the temple and my illusions of control would collapse. Bipolar disorder was a bastard like that. Fair, you could drown it in pills, but it’d anyways float back to the surface, smug as fuck, waiting to remind you who was in charge.
It was past midnight when I finally palmed a Xanax and a Prozac. Elara would’ve been proud. Maybe not so muchabout that next Xanax I popped just for shits and giggles, watching Enzo’s men meet the slave traders halfway. The exchange began. Cash for girls. The crates of cocaine stayed locked in the belly of the ship until every note was counted. The traffickers used forklifts to bring the crates to the ship’s deck as the workers set up portable lamps to illuminate the area.
This was when things started to get dicey.
Half of thesoldatihad peeled off under Enzo’s orders, escorting the petrified souls back to the compound, leaving me and Abel behind with the rest to make sure nobody got cute. He rolled a cigarette between his fingers. Looked calm as a corpse. Might’ve been a different story had he not been in a constant state of ecstasy while he waited for his first born.
My blood snapped and fizzed beneath the skin. Chest cinched tight. I was ready to blame the pills when one of ouramigosvoiced the obvious.
“Algo está no ar.”Something’s in the air.
A pair of Braga’s higher-ups seemed pissed about getting cheated, but were quick to shut the fuck up when money spilled out of a duffle bag and into their hands.
“. . . aye, and she’s carrying a big fucking payload. Three million dollars worth, Ms. Sforza.”
A sultry, satisfied little hum rode the breeze.
My mood flipped from tense to murderous in a fraction of a second. I rubbed at my eyes. Forced them open wide so I wouldn’t blink and miss anything. It was the don’s eldest, posted up with the rest of her old man’s soldiers while the dealgot done.
Long hair so dark light drowned in it, lips lacquered a lethal red, a silhouette sculpted for wet dreams and ruined vows. I’d told myself, more than once, that no woman came out of the womb built like that. Porn stars tried and failed, usually with scars for their trouble. But she was all real, and reality had the habit of jamming itself in my face until it left a scar.
The notion of her sashaying around a Cartel stronghold while looking like she should be on a runway in Milan gnawed beneath my ribs. Who the hell let her walk into this meat market in stilettos? Did her papà get off on parading her around a compound full of traffickers and savages, or was I the only sick fuck here who noticed? Did I get a say, as her future brother-in-law, or was I just supposed to shut up and watch her get eaten alive?
I realised, with a flash of shame I refused to acknowledge, that I’d spent too long staring. Digging another Xanax out of my pocket, I held the tiny white pill between my index and middle finger. Contemplating. I knew if Kayla saw this, she’d assume I was some sort of junkie. I considered that and found I didn’t give a fuck. I wasn’t a fan of the high, and sure as hell wasn’t going to die soft of an overdose of anything, so I popped my third and final Xanax for the day, along with a few more Prozac than I’d normally take.
Numbness bled through slow, a soft haze rather than full stupefaction. Shoulders loosened. And I couldn’t hold back the uptick of a smile when one of theamigosmentioned she had beautiful hair.
Abel side-eyed me, then shook his head. “Try not to flatline.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, voice thick, and let my eyes drift back to Kayla, who’d taken her gaze off the traffickers and aimed it at us instead. Bottomless. That was how I’d describe her gaze, as if it didn’t have a start or end. A pit that could lead into my own personal hell with no escape. They stared right into mine until whatever they were searching for was found and she looked away again. Or maybe she got bored.
Abel caught sight of our interaction and rolled his lips between his teeth to avoid a knowing smile.
In theory, the plan was foolproof.
In practice, I found myself edging over to Kayla and her papà the moment the last of the cocaine bricks were loaded into duffle bags, my hands buried in my pockets. Enzo had a cigar sticking out from between his teeth while he took his sweet time inspecting some of the bricks. I’d have told him to hurry the fuck up if he hadn’t been holding my fate in his palm.
“Top-shelf,” I told him, because it was. The Cartel never messed around when it came to quality. Cooked in jungle hellholes, strained through the veins of chemists who’d sell their souls for a tighter purity cut. This stuff could wake the dead and bankrupt heaven.
“Mmm.” He pinched one of the chunks gently between his fingers. White powder stuck to his thumb. It passed. “Always is. The product will be distributed as discussed. The money is yours, young man, as we agreed.”
The money was mine, yeah. For a good three seconds.
Then, because this family liked to test my patience, Enzo handed the chunk over to his daughter. Kayla pinched a bit of white and held it up to her face to have a look herself. I almost thought it was a joke. No way this regal woman was going to put coke so close to her pretty, perfect nose.
A surge of edgy anger flared up in my chest.
Jesus, she was going to snort.
“You can stop sniffing the thing now,” I snapped, the words rough and mean and definitely louder than I goddamn intended. “If the purity isn’t to your royal standards, you can take it up with Braga when he gets back.”
I didn’t exactly know where the sudden anger had come from, only that the sight of her doing drugs wasn’t something my mind was willing to accept.
“I was testing the consistency,” she replied smoothly.
“With your nose?”
