Page 25 of Tide of Treason
Maury wheezed out a few broken breaths and ran a hand over his shiny, bald head. “Yep.”
“On Lieve’s teddy bear?”
He looked up again. Took in my expression.
“Ain’t her favourite one.”
“All of them are her favourite.”
“I’ll wash it, pretty boy. S’just spit, not dogshit.” A casual shrug. “Anyway, boss just wants to remind you, Viviana—she ain’t like the others. High-class, classy shit. Treat her right, he says. Make her feel special, like she’s the only bitch in the room. ‘Cause to her folks, she is.”
Silence thickened.
I stared at Lieve’s bear. At the glob of snot and spunk drying into the pink of its fur.
“Message delivered,” I said, too calm. “You’ve got five seconds to leave before I lodge this pen so far down your throat that you’ll be signing autographs in your intestines. Oh, and take the bear with you. Let a maid wash it—a maid who keeps her mouth shut, not one of the big-mouthed bitches.”
Maury snatched it up between two fingers. The big oaf’s wheezing laughter followed him out the door, and I sat back in the chair, rolling the pen between my fingers, the heavy weight of it a sharp reminder of the shitstorm I’d signed up for.
The wedding cake had been white. I remember staring at it during the reception, three tiers of sugar-coated hypocrisy, covered in delicate swirls and edible pearls that probably cost more than the kid I’d bribed to clean my car windows last week. Viviana cried that day. Definitely weren’t tears of joy. When she’d met my gaze during the vows, I’d seen her soul dying. No one else noticed, except maybe her older sister,who’d watched us over the rim of her champagne flute with the darkest expression I’d ever seen.
I bowed my head over the desk, palms digging into my temples, a bitter laugh working its way up my throat. Suppose it’d have made more sense if the straight daughter took the vow, but Kayla; she was knocking on thirty now, wasn’t she? Old, by cartel standards.
My mama would’ve whacked me with a slipper for even thinking it.
A slow, deep exhale, then I ran a hand over my stubble, the rasp of it filling the empty space around me. I didn’t know why I was thinking about Kayla. Probably because I’d have preferred her in front of me instead of Viviana.
I pushed the thought to the side, letting it sink through the cracks and get swallowed by the pit in the bottom of my mind that housed all the other unwanted shit I didn’t want rattling around.
6 | Kayla
29 years old
Present day
Vito’s fist metGiorgio’s cheekbone with the sloppypopof a champagne cork—except the bubbles were cartilage and blood. A red mist arced across the room, landed on the stack of legal briefs I’d meant to sign before lunch, and painted a Pollock on the Montblanc pen still cradled between my fingers. Reclining in my chair, my eyes caught and narrowed.
People assumed I inherited my father’s ruthlessness the way most daughters inherited their mother’s jewelry: an heirloom, glittery and inevitable. Truth was uglier. Had I popped out of a stethoscope-wielding doctor’s womb rather than a Sforza’s, I still would have crawled toward the nearest shadow, pressed my ear to the beating heart of organised crime, and murmuredmine. Some infants grasped for rattles. I’dreached for power cords and felt the hum of something forbidden. Nature over nurture, or maybe original sin wore lipstick in my case.
Another punch from Vito landed. A tooth skidded dramatically across my polished mahogany desk, clicking to a stop by my freshly buffed thumbnail.
Fate, that petty mistress, never lost my number. Lately, she followed me, making me unable to turn a corner, walk down a hall, or step into a room without crossing a certain someone’s path. I’d go about my day, and suddenly, the smell of tobacco or the sound of a pen scratching on paper would assault my senses.
I should’ve known when I found the bastard watchingPretty Womanonmycinema-grade projector the day before. Who had a better taste in rom-coms than my sister’s hot-as-Hell husband? He’d been sprawled on the couch, remote in hand, wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. I’d also had the misfortune of noticing before he was aware of my presence, which led to me . . . accidentally glimpsing Lucius’s impressively long package.
Yeah, so I had a thing for Brazilian men.
A big one.
Fate could have given me something easier to deal with. Maybe a harmless samba instructor, not the heir to the most sadistic slave trader this hemisphere has produced since the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Giorgio curled himself into a fetal position, desperately shielding his head. Vito’s boot didn’t care; it slammed into hisribs again and again. Blood splattered the floorboards, turning the cherry wood into a grisly mosaic. I considered calling Vito off, yet the man at his feet had bled on my nineteenth-century Moroccan rug first, and that was enough to commute mercy’s sentence.
Truthfully, I’d gone over a hundred ways to get my sister out of this marriage, knew every move I’d have to make, every throat I’d have to slit. And yet, I hadn’t done a damn thing. Not because I feared the Brazilian Cartel, but because I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Viviana was safe with Lucius, safer than she’d ever be in our father’s world, and that settled beneath my skin with a tense feeling I couldn’t shake. Because if Lucius was her shield, then what did that make me? What had I been all these years, telling myself I could protect her when I never could?
“I met with him!” Giorgio finally choked out in Sicilian. He was crumpled against the wall now.
“Be specific,” I said. “Who’s him? You’ll have to narrow that down,cucciolo. You’ve pissed off a lot of people lately. The barber you stiffed for a trim, the bookie you tried to cheat, that kindly widow whose charity you embezzled from . . .”
