Page 19 of Tide of Treason
“Yes.”
“You have any idea how many filthy hands that shit’s passed through to end up here?”
“I’m well aware.”
“Try using something other than your nose. Those prissy fingers of yours, maybe. Or that tongue.”
I’d meant it to be a passive-aggressive remark, but the moment the words were past my lips, a picture of her sticking out said tongue against powder flashed into my head. White on pink. Christ. A vision straight from a back-alley porno, except it was her, and the reality made my pulse stumble.
Naturally, she didn’t just take the bait; she wrapped itaround her finger and made a meal out of it. Deliberate. Slow enough to hurt. That tongue slid over her index finger and gathered a stripe of coke, the taste lingering before she curled it back into her mouth, savoring it until there was nothing left. Then she sucked the remaining digit between her lips, and I forced a deep breath into my lungs.
Heat detonated behind my sternum. I felt it travel, a dirty comet, straight south.
Kayla Sforza licking blow off her finger was enough to knock the air out of a man’s lungs. Literally. The poor sod closest to us proved my point, his grip on his rifle slipping until it clattered to the floor and he fell to his knees. I reached out and took the guy by the base of his skull, gripping his scalp so he wouldn’t tip over and crack his head open. A groan rolled out of his slack mouth, eyes rolling white.
“The hell’s the matter with him?” Enzo growled.
“I think . . .” one of the soldiers, Matteo, spoke up with a sheepish look on his face. “I think his heart skipped a beat, boss.”
I looked down at the sorry bastard in my grip, shaking my head at the incompetence. I was just in time to catch Kayla wiping her tongue off on a corner of a handkerchief before folding it back into a neat square and tucking it into her purse. I yanked on the soldier’s hair, jerking his head back so his slobber didn’t land on her Louboutins.
“You should get him a bib,” I muttered, low and dry. “Looks like he’s about to decorate your heel.”
Her smile caught me off guard, a fleeting curve thatsparked a molten, reluctant heat in my gut. The sensation soured fast, leaving a bitter tang on my tongue.
“He’s dehydrated or some shit,” I grunted, tossing him back against a piling like the sack of uselessness he was. “Get him some water, a sandwich, and maybe a fucking backbone while you’re at it.”
An anxious looking Matteo handed me a bottle of water. I took it, unscrewed the cap, and emptied the bottle over the unconscious bastard’s head. Cold water had a way of snapping a dazed brain back into the present. With a few splutters, coughs, and a whole lot of blinking, he finally came back to the land of the living.
And then he stared. At her. At me. At nothing. As if he hadn’t just swooned like a teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert. He wasn’t the only one staring, either.
Annoyance flared hot. So, I did exactly what that twisted impulse in my mind told me to. Slammed my knuckles into his jaw with enough force to knock him back out cold.
“Stay the fuck down this time,” I muttered.
If anyone was bothered by me knocking him out, they didn’t show it. Enzo shook his head, disapproving, but didn’t seem like he cared enough to argue. His attention shifted back to business, and I did as well.
The last of the bags exchanged hands. Abel muttered “about goddamn time,” and I agreed with a quiet, “for real.” For a few minutes the universe had mercy, letting me focus on transferring the funds through the accounts without distraction.
The cocaine would be split seven ways, laundered through legitimate businesses under the Brazilian Cartel. From there, the money would sit for days, monitored for heat, then funnelled to ranks below. Sergius would get his cut, naturally, but not before I made sure to give that fucker the smallest, most pathetic slice I could get away with.
I was responsible for this operation.
I was not going to get screwed.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, a mosquito under the skin I wanted to crush. I’d only just turned it back on—call it hubris, or the need to flex a little after pulling off the impossible. When I saw Braga’s name flash across the screen, a smile pulled on my lips. I answered the call and brought it to my ear.
“Seu filho da puta.”Son of a bitch.“You’ve made off with nearly a third of my profit margin!”
The deal was sixty-forty, but numbers meant shit to a man who’d gut his own mother for a sliver of margin. “That was the agreement. We don’t like to get cheated any more than you do.”
Sergius growled a few choice words across the line, one of them being a racial slur. “I don’t like this,” he bit out. “I don’t like it one bit.”
“You don’t have to like it,” I answered. I stepped away from the group to hear better. “It is what it is. If you’d been here the past few days you could’ve come to the port to inspect the product and the weight yourself. Maybe then you would’ve felt more confident in the deal.”
He’d been in Brazil for the last two weeks, overseeing the distribution of an underground fighting ring. It seemed he had some of our boys running a place for high-end clients. And probably some more good old public executions. The distant beat of techno music suggested he was currently enjoying Rio’s nightlife despite anger at the profit margin.
Of course, he wasn’t thrilled at being reminded of the fact that I’d been taking care of the main operation in his absence. Sergius grumbled about how he’d “get the money out of me some other way.” I had no doubt he would try. The man had no morals, or ethics, and if he couldn’t get the cash out of my account he’d get it from my dead corpse.
