Page 24 of Tide of Treason
She didn’t want me.
And I didn’t give a fuck.
When she’d come to me three days into our marriage with those big, pleading eyes and begged me to help her “fulfilla fantasy”, I’d agreed. If she needed something to make this charade bearable, I could give it to her. Went and invited her high-class friend, a primadonna with a filthy mouth and a cunt that loved cock like it was her favourite pastime. Viviana ate her out while I watched, finger-fucking the woman hard enough to make her sob. Then I’d tangled my fist in her hair, forced her pretty mouth down my cock, and fucked her throat until her mascara bled black tears down her porcelain skin. My wife watched, got herself off, and moaned another woman’s name.
See, the Sforzas had it all wrong from the jump. Thought I’d fuck her straight, pound their precious daughter into submission until she cried out for men like the rest of them.
Idiots.
They’d handed me their girl and expected me to do their dirty work. But the only collar I wore was gold, not diamond. Power, not pussy. Viviana could lick every woman from Staten to Long Island if it kept her out of my way while I built my own empire on the back of this alliance, kept our trade smooth, and made sure the blood money poured in.
Our marriage kept me off the streets.
Kept my neck clean, my guns legal, my enemies guessing.
“Sign here.”
I flicked the cuff of my sleeve impatiently. “And here. And there. Fuck, is there anything else you want me to sign? I swear, you put more ink on paper than the government does.”
Maury grunted, a sound that rumbled through his barrelchest. “Ain’t my call. Just followin’ orders. Boss wants it signed, he gets it signed.” He shoved the pen, a clicking fountain pen, towards me with a stubby finger.
Another sigh, then a harsh scrawl too jagged to be anything close to elegant. The ink bled into the paper, soaking the fibers until the name was illegible. Lucius fucking Andrade. Signed in blood and bone, carved into the flesh of my soul. I didn’t believe in fate, but I believed in playing the game until I could rig it to my advantage.
“Satisfied?” I growled, jabbing the pen back into Maury’s meaty paw. He grunted again, flicking a glance at the next page.
“Almost. Boss got one more thing for ya.”
I looked up, eyes narrowing as I studied the man in front of me. Maury had been the Sforzas’ head of security longer than I’d been breathing. Whenever his mouth cracked open with those words, it was never roses and fucking sunshine.
“This better not be an anniversary gift. I’m not kissing Viviana’s cunt tonight, Maury. Not with the mood she’s been in.”
The laugh that tore out of him was a rasping thing, devolving into a wet, guttural hack, rattling the ashtray on my desk. I leaned back in the leather chair, its groan drowned by the sound of him hacking up something yellow and thick. It splattered right on the ear of one of Lieve’s teddy bears.
The pink one. The one she dragged everywhere.
My gut twisted, an ache that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the kid who’d tucked said bearunder her chubby little arm this morning while she explored my office. Now it sat there, defiled by this prick’s spit.
I hadn’t been ready when Marisol went into labor. Hell, I didn’t even know she was in labor until Rafael called while I’d been elbows-deep in engine oil, telling me to get my ass to the hospital because there was blood, too much of it, and Abel’s daughter was about to come into a world without her father.
I remember the smell of bleach hitting my nose so hard it made my eyes water.
The goddamn fluorescent lights that hummed too loud in my ears.
The chairs bolted to the floor.
And Marisol, screaming.
First time I held Lieve, I wasn’t thinking about angels or miracles or any of that Hallmark bullshit. I was thinking about how fucking small she was, how her fists were the size of dimes, how her face scrunched and turned beet-red when she cried. I was thinking about how Abel wasn’t there to hear it. Cut the cord. Tell her it was going to be okay when she cried her lungs out.
That job fell to me.
And I took it.
Because I made a promise.
A man’s only worth the weight of his word, and mine was heavy enough to drag me under.
“Is that phlegm?” My voice was ice.
