Page 72 of Tide of Treason
Kayla’s face hardened. With a look of pure disgust, she hauled herself to her feet.
“You’re not decent, Lucius. You’re a degenerate with the manners of a street rat who just happens to clean up nicely. It doesn’t matter if you spent the last two hours reciting sonnets or serenading me with a fucking violin.” She grabbed the discarded blanket and threw it on top of me. “You’re still no good.”
No good.
Interesting choice of words,principessa.
Not good enough for her? Or plain bad?
Probably both.
My chest tightened, a burn radiating through me. Istared at the chandelier until my vision turned to a blur of light and crystal and pain. Until my mind was nothing but a series of fragmented memories. Until the morphine pulled me back under, and Kayla disappeared back into the void.
“Bend over.”
I glanced down at the doctor, this wiry little prick with a mustache too big for his face. Stood in Il Cigno’s open kitchen, morning light poured through the windows, turning the marble countertops into an operating table. He’d praised the lighting last night before fucking off, muttering something about needing a bigger kit for “men my size.”
I didn’t know enough about medical practices to gauge whether this was normal, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t, and I wasn’t interested in finding out if my hunch was right.
“No, thank you,” I said politely. If he wanted to see my ass, he’d have to work for it.
While he fumbled with gauze and betadine, I dug out my phone—left hand, always left, right knuckles still raw from the last problem I solved the old-fashioned way. Thumbed it unlocked. The screen glowed, a sterile lifeline to the empire I’d ripped from bleeding hands. Director Andrade, huh? I tapped out a lazy message to Rafael.
Me:Raid Weller’s office. Treasury prick’s got files I want. Burn what you don’t need.
The letters pulsed against my skin, tiny threats stitched into glass. I’d bet my left nut that pasty fuck had been hoarding files: insurance, blackmail, some inconsequential leverage to keep his ass cozy in that Treasury chair. Too bad for him I didn’t play nice with rats. Rafael and Tadeo would torch it all by noon, and every skeleton Weller saved for me would dissolve into black snow.
Crispin came at me with a loaded needle, threading black suture through its eye.
“Gonna sting,” he warned.
Thread tugged through split flesh, the wet pull tightening my stomach. I’d had worse, though. Way worse. The time I’d taken a machete to the thigh in Rio, for example, blood pissing down my leg while I laughed in the fucker’s face before gutting him. The memory still made me smile.
“How deep?” I forced out.
“Pretty deep.” He squinted, leaning in close. “Could’ve been worse.”
“Alive?” Viviana piped up from across the room, perched at the counter with her nose stuck in some thick novel. I leaned over and stole her mug the moment she glanced at a particularly snooty paragraph. When I brought it to my lips, I expected coffee and got juice. I frowned.
“Peachy,” I muttered, wiping the taste off my lips.
The doctor cursed under his breath about my stitches being messy, and in my exhausted delirium, I figured that was the answer to a lot of things. A messy situation with a messy lady who would give me a messy relationship. Evidently, chaoshad some kind of appeal that left me wanting more.
Viviana flipped a page. “What are we getting Kayla for her birthday?”
I stared at her, flat. “The fuck you mean we?”
“She’ll kill us all if she hates it,” Crispin put in, all clinical nonchalance. I didn’t need him for comic relief. I needed him gone.
“Bags?” my wife tried.
“She’s got twenty.”
“Heels?”
The suture jerked. I hissed. White flashed behind my eyes.
“Shelf collapses at fifty,” I ground out.
