Page 90 of Tide of Treason
Amara moaned again, louder this time.
Rafael gave me a look. “You gonna do something about that?”
“Why the fuck would I? She’s a grown-ass woman.”
“You know she only does this shit for your attention.”
The truth in that grated.
I rubbed both palms over my jaw, staring out across the compound. The idea of sliding back into Amara made my skin itch. I’d rather stick my dick through a truck-stop gloryhole and pray the aftermath came with selective amnesia. That had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact I hadn’t used a condom since Kayla, and I wasn’t about to sheath up now—not when the memory of her still blistered under my skin, thorned and impossible.
Maya was now shouting at her sister for being a“puta escandalosa”and threatening to duct tape her to a fucking chair. Amara flipped her off without breaking rhythm.
I’d taken them in once Braga turned their apartment into a crime scene and they had nowhere else to go. It was a decision made under the influence of guilt, which had theworst fucking hangover, because now Maya had turned my modest two-story in Staten into some kind of rogue halfway house, complete with cartel wives, girls who “just needed a place to crash,” and one eighty-pound pit bull with anxiety issues and a taste for raw hamburger.
Most days, the circus pissed me off. The chaos, the crowding. Except Maya kept the kitchen stocked with groceries I actually ate, stitched up bullet wounds without commentary and never touched my shit. As for Amara . . . well, Amara had stopped crawling into my bed the second she figured out I wasn’t biting anymore.
Truth was, I didn’t spend too many nights at that place anyway, unless I had an engine to fuck with. That’s all it was good for, these days. The girls had made themselves at home. Maya and her Cartel strays. Tadeo coming and going. Dominguez running his mouth. The kitchen light burned out last week, so there was a busted lamp in the hallway instead, throwing everything in a weird yellow haze. The living arrangements worked until they didn’t, which usually coincided with me leaving a red stain on the couch from something that couldn’t be stitched.
I should put a few slugs on the sofa and set the whole thing on fire.
A sigh slipped from my teeth. I dragged the joint between my fingers, mulling over a solution that didn’t require torching half my house.
I stepped intothe hotel lobby with Vargas flanking me, the bite of fresh-cut roses thick in the air. We’d done a bit more digging before coming back from Staten to Manhattan. Mostly meaning I smoked half a pack, stared down a laptop screen full of redacted reports, and let Maya talk in circles until she finally admitted she had fuck-all except a whisper about a warehouse in Newark and a maybe-sighting from a narco cousin who couldn’t tell the difference between Braga and a raccoon on meth.
Still. The feeling wouldn’t shake.
Vargas veered off toward the bar, grumbling something about a drink. I was already heading for the restaurant with blood under my fingernails and cigarette smoke in my collar. Not literally—tonight, I was all pressed linen and crisp tailoring, although my conscience wasn’t.
The maître d’ planted himself in my way. “The private lounge is booked, sir. Members only.”
I watched him fidget. “That so?”
He tried again. “If you’d like to wait, I can—”
I cut him off with a name. “Kayla Sforza.” My eyes tracked the bead of sweat that slipped down his hairline. “She owns this place. Maybe she’d like to know she’s being locked out of her own party.”
“She’s . . . in a meeting. I can’t—”
I flicked a glance over my shoulder. “Vargas.”
He looked up from his drink, expression as dead as my patience. “Boss?”
“Show our friend here some hospitality.”
The maître d’ started to protest, voice cracking with fear, but he didn’t get far. Vargas moved quick for a man his size. There was the dull, wet sound of bone on marble, a pink spatter on cream wall. My pulse beat steady. The flames in my blood cooled, calcified into something sharper.
Kayla occupied the head of a table dressed in wedding-white linen. Around her, men of the Cosa Nostra lounged—raked-back hair, heavy rings, Herculean wrists strangled by gold. Her cousins flanked either side, elbows propped, casual in their amusement.
“Lost, Andrade?”
The sneer wore more cologne than spine. I tracked it to its source: white suit, white teeth, white lies. He kept going.
“You’re a long way from the plantation,moreno.”
The room stilled, a collective inhale snagged on the edge of violence. A hushed, “Jesus, Marco,” slipped from someone, chased by the metallic click of a safety snapping off.
I’d grown up dodging fists for the crime of my skin, each bruise a lesson in getting even. And I had. Tenfold. So, when a low-rank decided to spit slurs at me, I just sighed. Adjusted my sleeves. Shot Kayla a look that begged her not to paint the walls red over this idiot’s mouth.
