Page 91 of Tide of Treason
Naturally, she didn’t listen. Never fucking did.
“That watch of yours,” she murmured, tracing the rim of her glass with one manicured nail. “Real?”
Marco was offended. “Of course it’s real.”
She cocked an eyebrow, then nodded toward Vito. “Your call.”
The giant dabbed marinara from his lip. “Fake.”
Elio, bored, chimed in. “Knock-off.”
“Bullshit,” Marco snapped. “It’s Cartier.”
“Made in Hong Kong?” Francesco dragged a breadstick through a pool of marinara and popped it into his mouth. “Or did you find that beauty on Canal Street?”
Laughter rippled down the table. Kayla’s lips curved, amused but distant. She rose, smoothing her satin dress until it gleamed. Each step closed the space between us until her heel hovered an inch from my boot.
“Lucius, are you armed?”
I met her gaze. “Always,principessa.”
“Good.”
Everything happened so quickly that I almost didn’t have time to react. Her hand flashed out, a little white blur, before it was sliding into my suit, reaching for my Glock. It slid free of its holster with an erotic whisper of steel. My pulse gave a single thick beat. A smile curled her mouth as she angled the barrel at Marco’s forehead.
“Beretta?” she purred.
“PX4 Storm,” I answered, watching the way his eyes flicked to the barrel and widened. I hadn’t put a safety on the piece. “Made in Italy. A good weapon for women, even better for smaller hands. Recoil is nice. Won’t break your wrist, baby.”
Kayla didn’t miss. Perfect aim was part of her legend.
Marco found that out the hard way when she put a round through his front teeth.
A moment of silence stretched over the room, elastic-thin and holding breath. He had a wide-open maw of gum and shredded nerve endings where his pearly whites used to be, babbling pained gibberish I had neither the patience nor the sympathy for. I tucked the piece back into my holster, fingers brushing the residual heat from where her hand had kissed the metal. Burned my fucking skin clean through.
Niccolò dabbed blood from his lapel. “I always forget how hot that is.”
26 | Lucius
23 years old
Present day
A poisonous hushhung in the bedroom, curling through the light like cigarette smoke, wrapping around my throat like a lover who didn’t know the wordenough. It glittered silver in the lamplight, tasted of iron and greed, and coiled tighter every time Kayla slid another inch of silk from her body. I was trying very fucking hard not to care. Ended up examining my own hand instead, the thin blue veins snaking under bronze skin, all leading to a heart I’d never fully learned to trust.
“I don’t like being reminded of things I can’t . . .” My lungs emptied in one harsh exhale. “Change.”
A strange look shadowed her face before she turned away, leaving me studying the dark hair trailing down her back, the longest strands stopping at a point just before thecurve of her ass. The sight speared through me. I wrenched my shirt loose, raked a hand across my jaw. The idea of leaving pinged around my head, but I knew I wouldn’t go anywhere. Kayla held me in a prison made just for me.
The usual urge to wreck shit, to blame the bipolar for every bad decision I’d ever made—too much serotonin one minute, dopamine starvation the next, thinking I could conquer the world right until I crashed headfirst into the pavement—was an easy scapegoat. Though, lately, I couldn’t pin this feeling on just the mania. Something else made me want to torch the whole damn world, and it wore the shape of the woman in front of me and answered only to her name.
Elara would probably appreciate hearing that in our next session.
Might toss in the mommy issues too.
‘Cause, yeah . . . thirty.
Fuck.
