Page 14 of Iron Cross

“You think you are her destiny,” Morelli said, amusement in his gray eyes. “Bah!”

He waved the back of his hand at me in dismissal.

“Iknowwe are destined,” I said through clenched teeth. “There is no her, or me. We areone.”

“Calm yourself, young king,” Morelli chuckled. “I am only teasing.”

He tapped a finger against his chin, his beady eyes glinting with that humor that had started coming back over time. He liked toyank my chain, and then he’d appease me. I just had to wait for the balm that he would provide.

“You feel for her as I feel for Cosima,” he said with a wistful sigh. “If I could have loved someone else -anyoneelse - I would have. But love is a blessing and a curse. I understand your feelings.”

“You did not want to love her?” I asked, perplexed.

He solemnly shook his head.

“She is too young. I am too old. Better she fall in love with somestronzothat her father could set her up with. Someone who could be her ally. Her partner.” He placed his hand on his heart, as if the organ pained him. “The tragedy is not that I loved her. It is that she grew up, and loved me back.”

He looked around, and I caught a glimpse of a tear in his eye, as Algernon squeaked in the corner of his cell.

“This is not going to end with joy and happiness,” he gestured to the cell around him. To me.

I felt the jab of his fingers against my skin, even if he did not touch me. A poke, a prod. A pain that hit me in the chest.

“She loved me back, and look at what the fates have given us.” The waver in his voice was so unlike him, that I felt the urge to reach forward and take his shoulder. To tell him that he would find happiness. That I would make it so. I would find a way somehow.

But in a flicker, the moment was gone, his eyes stone cold and clear, as he looked at me.

“But you, young King?” He chuckled, and even smiled a little. “You have a chance at something, ha? You could be happy. You could stop these wars, and Cosima could live in a world away from this life. From all of… this. Maybe she can be happy.”

Again, he gestured to his surroundings but I knew it was not to his cell. It was to the house, to the city, to the world that lived in the shadows away from the prying eyes of the law. A world I did not want my son to grow up in.

Then he wisely smiled at me, as though he were a priest bestowing a blessing on me.

Morelli’s teeth had yellowed, though remained intact. I had given him water to clean himself, to clean his teeth. Though his hair and beard grew out in shaggy clumps of white and gray, he was meticulous about his cleanliness. As meticulous as the circumstances could allow.

I knew he was on my side. I knew that because of the information he provided about the Durantes - allowing me to weaken them, while also shoring up Cosima’s position as his replacement. Good-hearted, powerful and sly, Cosima was ready to stick the knife in her father’s back. All she needed was a little… push. The right moment.

Morelli assured me she would wait. She would sit back, until the moment was at its richest.

And I believed him. He had never failed me.

He led me like a tutor to the correct answers.

“Fate is a fickle thing,” Morelli mused. “But romantic love, when it is true and blessed, can give us wisdom and mercy, where we would normally choose cruelty.”

That was his way. He made a deceptively simple statement, then Socratically pried the answers from me, occasionally giving me inside knowledge of the Durante Mafia. The man was professorial and a lover of the classics, like myself.

I poured us two glasses of red wine, the two demons of the Diavolo dell'arte label winking at us in black and red. A suitable palette for two men like us. He rummaged through his pile of books, his fingers skimming the titles.

Like me, Morelli was fucking mad. And we were two men in a wretched place, heartbroken and longing, but for very different reasons. But with his ample amounts of free time, with only books for company, I was starting to think he was turning into Alonzo Quijano, and would take off to become a knight errant to start tilting at windmills.

I wouldn’t blame him. Hell, I almost wanted to release him. Already the possibilities of peace with the Italians swirled in my mind. A peace where Eugenio Durante was dead, and Morelli and I could rule as comrades.

“Ah, yes! Here it is!” he said. “Don Juan!”

He threw the book at me - a well-worn, wrinkled paperback - and I caught it in mid-air.

“I’m not a fucking libertine!” I was irritated, as I sipped the wine.

---