Page 112 of Tide of Treason
“Then what’s that?”
Big hands coasted up the back of my thighs, warm and rough, as though he was checking for fault lines in my skin. Finding none, he slid them higher. Gripped the tops with a squeeze that stole my breath.
“Insurance.”
32 | Lucius
23 years old
Present day
Kayla wasn’t here.
Good.
Bad.
Fuck.
My body didn’t know what to do without her eyes on it.
“Lucius Andrade. Sergius Braga. Stand before the Cosa Nostra.”
I stepped forward, stiff in the shoulders, half certain my heart had loosened from its anchors and would crash into my gut before the night was done.
“Weapon,” the chairman said.
I didn’t plan on losing.
But it seemed no one was asking for my plans tonight.
My palms itched.
My chest burned.
And when they laid the gun between us, cold steel against red velvet, I understood the old gods better than I ever had.
Sergius raised the gun.
Pressed it to his temple.
Clicked.
Silence.
The ritual dictated you pass the gun.Oneshot. Then the next man takes it. But he didn’t. He racked it again.
“Wait,” someone barked. The chairman or Rafael or God Himself—I couldn’t tell. I was stuck in that moment. Frozen. Blood slowing to a crawl.
He clicked it again. Empty.
“Basta!” Enzo snarled. “That’s not how it works—”
Sergius ignored him. Took one last look at me. And it wasn’t pity or remorse or pride. It was peace.
It happened too fast for my next breath. He slammed the muzzle back against his skull and pulled the trigger. In that humid second, the air in my lungs stalled. Someone shouted my name, or maybe I only heard it in my own head. All I saw was the flash. All I felt was recoil—spiders of electricity skittering along my spine, though the gun was in his hand, not mine. Then blood. Sergius Braga’s brains painted the air in a thousand shades of crimson and bone.
The phantom leash around my spine snapped.
