Page 79 of Tide of Treason
By the time I recalibrated the lens and adjusted for dilation, irritation was rolling off me in waves. I was so transparent I could taste it.
“I can’t get an accurate reading with your pupils blown wide.”
“Then stop looking so fucking sexy, baby.”
My teeth met in a silent grind.
“Probably used to it, aren’t you? All your old patients, going a little crazy over you.”
“Some of them, yeah.” I bit my lip thoughtfully. “One tried to sign over his trust fund. Another sent me a dozen roses every Monday. And one . . . well, one asked me to kill his wife.”
His brows rose. “Jesus fuck.”
Eh. Maybe I should’ve lied and said I inspired nothing but gratitude and stellar Yelp reviews. Though brutal honesty had always been my ugliest party trick.
Determined, I snapped my spine straight and slid into professional autopilot. Unfortunately, my hands hadn’t gotten the memo. They drifted up his throat—purely corrective, I told myself—until my nails grazed his scalp. The reaction was instantaneous: tension sluiced out of him in a shiver I felt through my fingertips. His pupils contracted, the blown-out black pulling back just enough to let the blue breathe through, a striking contrast against the light brown of his skin.
I could have stared forever.
I had, honestly, for years.
One last flick of the occluder confirmed what I already knew: perfect vision. The bastard probably saw in infrared, too. Which only reinforced what I already knew. This had never been about his eyesight. This was about putting me under bright lights, nostalgia pressing against the ache of something I’d once loved, tempting me the same way a drink does after years of sobriety.
“Lucius.” His name left me soft. “I don’t think—”
“Guess I just wasted your time.”
“Happens a lot with you.”
“Mmm.” A slow smile. Dimples dug into his cheeks. I wanted them. I wasn’t sure if it was legal to want someone’s dimples, but I was going to find a way to own them. Laws were flexible when you were the daughter of a don. “Take cards?”
Leaning across the desk, I grabbed the credit card machine and tossed it in his lap.
“What’s the cost for you?” he mused, studying it. “For the way you make my head go quiet at night?” He lifted his gaze and waited.
My pulse kicked. I kept my mouth wired shut, tempted to remind him that sheikh-level wealth could buy better anesthesia thanme. A wiser woman would’ve sent him to literally any other doctor, but I wouldn’t have to worry about that. I didn’t practice anymore. This was a relapse, not a career.
Never breaking eye contact, Lucius swiped a black AmEx. The total blinked, a number so obscene it stalled my heartbeat.
“What—?”
“I’llpay whatever buys one smile.” He rose to his incredible height. “You’re not cheap, Ms. Sforza.”
He pressed his lips to my cheek before the door whispered shut behind him, off to do whatever it was he did when not actively ruining my equilibrium. Which, at this point, I was pretty sure was something disgustingly bureaucratic if the suits and clandestine meetings were any indication. Some hybrid of Cartel ruthlessness and federal corruption I was better off knowing nothing about. Because if I knew, I’d have to be complicit in it, and my hands were already stained with enough blood to paint the Sistine Chapel three times over.
And all I saw, even with perfect vision, was red.
Always, inevitably, red—spreading beneath my skin like fresh varnish, making everything else look suddenly, inconveniently alive.
Viola’s nail shopwas a mausoleum of Italian nostalgia, all faded posters of Positano and a jukebox crooning Dino’s greatest hits. I settled into the chair, letting her peel the old polish off my nails while she muttered about “youth these days” and “ungrateful granddaughters” before making a noise of vague disappointment.
“Bambina, you keep coming in here with broken nails.”
“Occupational hazard of dealing with men, really,” Imused.
She sighed and moved on to bitching about the neighborhood parking situation. I let her talk, nodding at all the right places, the whole time pretending I didn’t feel Nonna’s stare drilling into the side of my head from the corner of the shop.
I hadn’t expected to run into her here, but that was my mistake. If you were an Italian woman over sixty-five and didn’t have a standing appointment at Viola’s, you were probably already dead. Nonna sat there like a judgmental little gargoyle, watching my every move as she flipped through aVogue.
