Page 60 of Tide of Treason
I humoured him with a raised brow, the silent language of our childhood.
He grunted.
Lucius appeared beside him. Dress shirt, tie, and his inked biceps were so big the material strained against them. I wet my lips. Hated myself for it.
“Tell me, Sforza. Are all your exes this fucking stupid, or is Niccolò in a class of his own?”
Vito’s deep chuckle rumbled between them, and I realised, with no small amount of horror, that I had united the two most dangerous men in my orbit through their mutual hatred of one idiot, and the apparent pride of being the tallest assholes in every room.
Lucius nudged the prone body with an immaculate shoe and shook his head, disappointment softening his mouth into something boyish. “You should’ve let me shoot him.”
My cousin’s next grunt came with a built-in moral compromise. Translation: he didn’tnotwant Lucius to shoot Niccolò, he just didn’t want to get blood on Katie’s shoes.
“Would’ve made too much noise,” he said aloud.
“I’d have muffled it.”
“Still messy.”
I stared at the two of them, eyes narrowing at the casual banter, the slight curve to Lucius’s mouth, then I noticed the tiny flare in Vito’s gaze as he held his stare. I hoped that was mutual respect and not the first tinges of lust, because I didn’t think Lucius would survive Vito’s idea of a good time.
I pushed past the Testosterone Twins to locate Katie.
Turning, her eagle-eyed gaze flickered sharply from me to the towering shadows at my back. Her smile was a little too wide for the scene she’d just witnessed, but as the head of family relations and a PR expert, she could sell ice to polar bears.
“Niccolò won’t need a cab,” she chirped, relieving me of my Negroni and taking a brave gulp. Her face puckered. “Negronis are so bitter.”
“So am I,” I murmured, reclaiming the glass. “Try gin instead of Campari.”
She coughed, dainty. “God, you know I’m defenseless around an open bar. We’ll top the papers tomorrow—wait and see.” Her gaze narrowed to a lethal slit as it drifted past my shoulder. “And you two aren’t making my job easier.”
Lucius ignored the reprimand. “Quick and quiet’s the way to go. Some prefer the clean kill, but there’s something to be said for the psychological effect of—”
“Draining the blood first?” Vito finished darkly, nodding appreciatively. “Sends a good message.”
Lucius offered a low clinical aside about arterial spray patterns.
Vito countered with the efficiency of venting a femoral artery before bagging the remains.
I closed my eyes against the duet of serial-killer courtship. Katie hissed a profanity.
It was official, I realised with a swell of dread.
They were flirting.
17 | Kayla
29 years old
Present day
The storm hitlike fat Uncle Brando dropping into a lawn chair—loud, splintering, and absolutely inevitable. Fat drops of rain hammered the pavement, rattling windows, washing all that tourist filth off the strip of carnival games and rigged slot machines.
I ducked into Casa Sforza’s underground parking garage, leaving behind the neon circus upstairs where the fucked-up family show was still in full swing. Lights flickered overhead, half-burnt bulbs that cast everything in a jaundiced glow. I glanced down at myself. Annoyance ran through me. My dress—Saint Laurent, bought with blood money and the illusion of good taste—had gone sheer in the rain and barely covered any cleavage. I’d been three hundred grand down andtwo shots up on some designer tequila Rafael had smuggled in from Mexico when I decided to grow a conscience.
True to form, it’d gone from summer drizzle to full monsoon in under ten minutes, sending everyone scrambling inside. Pushing my soaked hair out of my face, I squinted at the sea of cars. The low thud of bass-heavy music drifted through the garage, muffled by layers of concrete, rattling its way through steel beams like a heartbeat. A slow, lazy growl of an engine cranking. Metal on metal. The unmistakable drag of a wrench.
I followed the sound, rounding a row of cars.
