Page 103 of Tide of Treason
I sent Rafael a text and got dressed.
Suit black as the inside of a closed casket, black as the thoughts spidering through my head.
I had to get out of this goddamned house before I ripped the bathroom mirror off the wall and drove the shards into my own reflection. I left with a migraine where my soul used to be and enough fury in my chest to blister concrete. Drove aimlessly for a while, letting the city bleed through the windows. Cabs honking. Steam curling from grates. Neon dripping down wet sidewalks. Somewhere between a junkie overdosing outside a bagel shop and a drunk Wall Street fuck pissing in an alley, I realised where I was going.
Cipriani’s back booths sat half-empty tonight, swathed in crimson light that made everyone look a little sinful and alot dead behind the eye. I slid into the one furthest from the stage, letting the scarlet haze sear into my eyelids until darkness swallowed the color.
After confirmation from Maya, I’d sent two of my best Feds to sniff around Braga’s Jersey properties, quietly feeding reports into the burner in my glovebox. The only thing I told them was “dig”—everything else was up for interpretation. I trusted them. They had my back in any situation, including the kind of bad that ended up with a body in a river. If they found something useful—“useful” being defined loosely—they’d tell me.
I rubbed a thumb across my bottom lip, not really focused.
Three days since I’d last seen Kayla, and my skin felt too tight. Three days was enough to wonder what that pretty prick Niccolò did with the time I didn’t take. If he slid a hand down her thigh in one of her board meetings, maybe fuck her all soft and forgettable. Grinding my palm into my eye socket, I tried to shove away the image.
I hadn’t touched another woman since her. Couldn’t. And not for lack of trying. My dick still worked, evidence courtesy of every morning since, but the second another’s skin grazed mine, the world dulled to ash. No heat or hunger aside from this gnawing annoyance that made me want to start fights or leave the fucking room. It was as if my brain got tricked into monogamy without asking me first. Some fucked-up Trojan horse of loyalty that snuck in during a blowjob and never left.
Her scent lingered in my sheets, coconut and vanilla weaving through the cotton, a taunting fist around my balls.I’d chucked that shampoo bottle twice, watched it clatter into the trash. She’d replaced it, every damn time. Left her mark in the form of snide little notes.Stop pretending you don’t like this. You’re not fooling anyone, including yourself—K.I kept one of them in my glovebox, sandwiched between my Glock and the burner phone. Weakness pulsed there, raw and undeniable, but not weak enough to stop me.
“We don’t doze here, darling.”
The voice hooked into my ribs and dragged.
I didn’t startle—years of discipline had beaten that reflex into submission—but my lid cracked open to be greeted by a pair of heels that cost more than a week’s worth of product. Black dress, tailored overcoat, Italian pinstripe slicing through the dim. Kayla carried weight, a regal shadow that pressed the air thin, untouchable yet sinking claws into every nerve I had left.
A manicured nail hooked my chin, tilted it up, and then she kissed me. Gentle, though the taste of her lit me up. My heart stomped in my chest. Blood rushed through my ears, clouding my vision. I breathed her in as she pulled back and sat across from me.
“Straight from a meeting,” she said, voice cold enough to crack my molars. “Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think straight. You were clogging my head, Lucius.”
Satisfaction filled me. “Definitely a you problem. Couldn’t relate less.”
Dark eyes narrowed. “No?”
“Nope.” Heat licked up my neck, but I held the line.
She looked away, jaw ticking, and I knew she was pissed. I’d torched out my last fuck to give somewhere between her first lie and the last time her lips brushed mine—burned it clean out.
“Who gave me up?” I asked.
“No one who matters.”
That told me everything. Rafael’s name climbed higher on my shit list, right above the Cartel diamonds he smuggled and the Marlboros he chained while playing Freud. Now he thought he was fucking Cupid? I’d carve that notion out of him later, maybe with a knife gone dull for emphasis.
Naturally, I ordered her a filet mignon drowned in truffle butter, because when Kayla Sforza decided she wanted an after-midnight feast in her own goddamn strip club, guess what? She’ll get it. Kitchen closed? Not my problem. Strippers half-drunk and stumbling in the back? Also not my problem. One call to the chef, and boom, dinner’s served. Figured I’d get a plate too, ‘cause she’d glare at me until I ate something.
Back at the shelter, Abel and I mastered the art of ignoring empty stomachs. Hunger was white noise, second to sirens, first to frostbite. Kayla knew exactly how fast I could talk myself into believing I was full when all I felt was lightheaded. So now she fed me like I’d starve if she didn’t. Sometimes, I wondered if she saw something in me that reminded her of a past she didn’t talk about. Or maybe it was pity disguised as habit. Either way, I chewed, swallowed, felt the weight settle.
When we finally slipped into her private office, her desk was less a slab of wood and more a coronation throne scatteredwith shit I definitely wasn’t supposed to see. Ledgers, vote tallies, family holdings, and a manila folder screamingSforzaacross the top. I caught myself staring. Power had a gravity, and she was the fucking moon.
“They trust me with the final count,” she said, quiet. “Always have.”
That sentence alone sent scales clattering to the ground, shattered every thin hope I’d stupidly let myself build. Sergius Braga’s shadow crept back in, thick with old-world rot and sharp with fresh-blood ambition, twisting the screws until the picture crystallised: I was a marked man. I was dead before I’d even hit the ballot.
Heart pounding, palms slick, I dropped my head into my hands.
“Backstabbers,” I whispered, clocking the Glock before her reaction. It waited on the desk shadowed by the same votes that decided if I’d keep breathing past Friday. The barrel wasn’t aimed yet, but the betrayal was. My name wasn’t carved on that bullet, but the intent was there, etched into the marrow of this room, pulsing under my boots, breathing down my neck.
“You gonna kiss me goodbye,principessa?” Rage sat in my gut, sticky enough to gum up the gears in my head until the only thing moving was the instinct to destroy. “Slide that pretty mouth over mine one last time before you feed me to your fucking family? Maybe you’ll get off on it,” I added, conversational. “God knows you’re fucked-up enough.”
She made a noise barely audible over the thrum of blood in my ears.
