Page 26 of Tide of Treason
He licked blood from his lips. “Braga. I met with Braga.”
A pleasant chill tip-toed down my spine. “What did the butcher of Rio want? A coffee date? Matching friendship bracelets?”
“He wanted access to your funds,” Giorgio rasped. “He said he’d offer ten percent if I routed the transfers through a dummy account in the Cayman Islands. I—I didn’t say yes, I swear—”
“You met with a cartel kingpin who deals in human flesh and you think the part I’m upset about is your offshore account?” The kingpin never gave without taking double in return. And yet, he’d disappeared, off the radar since Lucius put a ring on Viviana’s finger two years ago. The silence alone was enough to make my skin itch, to set my instincts howling that something was coming. Here was my papà’s consigliere, sweating and shaking, giving me proof that Sergius Braga was still watching, still pulling at strings as though he hadn’t spent the last two years letting us believe he’d cut them.
“What else did he offer?”
Giorgio faltered.
My eyes hardened. “Say it.”
“A girl,” he admitted, voice cracking. “He offered me a girl.”
“Describe her.”
“She’s from Lisbon. Portuguese. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Said she was a virgin. Showed me a—”
He fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a small photo, unable to hide a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes when he put it on my desk. I slid it closer with a finger. A girl stared back at me from a stained white wall. Full-frontal, naked, drugged. Her eyes were glazed, lips swollen, arms dotted with old needle marks. She looked barely legal.
“She’s beautiful,” he breathed, stupid hope curling in his voice. “I thought maybe—if you weren’t using the penthouse this week—I could—”
The slap cut through the silence, sharp as a bullet.Giorgio’s lip split open, his dream shattered in a red bloom.
“She would’ve arrived in a wooden crate, Giorgio. No passport, no name. And the second you laid a finger on her, Braga’s men would’ve filmed it and used it to blackmail you until you begged for a bullet. Ring any bells?” I glanced at Vito. “Remember Rio? That little apartment above the bakery with cameras in the vents?”
He nodded once.
Giorgio whimpered. “I didn’t know—”
He started crying. Full-on sobbing. Disgust curled through me. I’d once fucked this man. Let him inside me. Now, I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.
“Put him out of his misery,” I told my cousin without turning.
A mutedpop, then the whisper of a body folding to the Persian rug. His fantasy lingered in the glassy sheen of his dead stare, caught in that last obscene heartbeat.
The Sforza in me purred.
I stood, the black of my heels matching the hem of my black skirt, and pulled a cigar from the humidor, rolling the length of it between two fingers. When I had my first taste of Brazilian tobacco, I’d thought I’d smoked the sweetest nectar in the world, but now, the smoke left the same bitter, ashen flavor in my mouth that sat in the pit of my stomach and grew each day Viviana was wedded to Lucius.
The thought prompted me to light the cigar while I stepped over my ex-lovers dead body. I stopped at the door just before I opened it.
“Make sure to double-bag his head before you move him. And I have a feeling we’ll need more men than usual.” Looking back at Vito, I added in a dark tone, “Something tells me Giorgio wasn’t the only traitor amongst my ranks.”
Leaving the office, I passed Maury who stood by the door. He held a pink bear between his fingers.
“Lucius wants this washed,” he growled.
“Does he?” I drawled.
He grunted.
Maury was about as charming as a bag of gravel to begin with, but he’d developed a particular contempt for me in the last few months, as if I’d somehow betrayed him with my indifference. I was about to dismiss him when I stopped, turning to watch his expression as I said, “By a maid? Not one of thebig-mouthed bitches.”
He froze. “How’d you—”
I flashed him a smile that was every bit the daughter of my father. “It’s hard to be private in a house full of gossiping women, isn’t it?” With a faint sound of pleasure, I turned and continued down the hall, enjoying a long, deep inhale of my cigar between each slow, heeled stride.
