Page 18 of Iron Cross

“What do you expect me to do?” I almost whined. “Blink, I… I’m at the end of my rope. I don't know how to get more funds.”

I couldn’t bring in the kind of money I had when I was at the Four Gallery. A single night could wrangle me millions, if not more. With a delicate whip of my hand, and a sigh of admiration, I could fund an entire operation.

But now, I had to be satisfied with Non-Fungible Tokens and online dealings, along with some cash from in-person sales. Selling art, to launder money… but even laundered money needed a source.

Blink wiped his hand down his face, his long fingers landing on the five o’clock shadow that I knew he hated. He’d been getting lazy about his grooming - a sure sign he was under more pressure than he could handle.

“You know we care about you. You know that we have faith in you, but…”

But. But.But…

I hate that word.

I hated that Blinkalmosthad something that sounded like a feeling in his cold, calculated being.

But… they didn’t care. They didn’t have faith that I could turn it around. I didn’t either.

As right as he might be, it didn’t lessen the sting. Three years of containing everything inside me made it impossible to hide how I felt now: Like a failure.

“Blink…” I said quietly, knowing what would come next.

“He hasn’t stopped looking for you!” Blink whispered harshly, staring straight ahead. “He’s brought Sinead Flanagan back into the fold, and made her a captain. I don’t know how long she’ll keep the secret of your whereabouts from him. We might need to move you again.”

That was a death sentence. It took me weeks to get to the place where I could sell art. To get to a kiosk that became a tourist spot, and get an online store to pull inanykind of funding.

“The Italians are circling you,” Blink continued. “His obsession with you is common knowledge, and they truly think that catching you will be the way to bring him to his knees. Or worse.”

“Worse?” I asked, annoyed that he wasn’t into his usual straight talk.

“They want to recreate what happened to Isla Green.”

A cold shiver went down my spine as the memories of those photographs came front and center in my mind. Isla Green, broken. The mortician’s report on the condition of her body. The madness that I saw first hand in Alastair Green. The family curse my son might inherit.

“That would make him more ruthless,” I said, quietly, trying to compartmentalize the roiling feelings in my stomach at themention of Eoghan’s name. “It wouldn’t weaken him. It would unleash him.”

If the murder if Isla Green unleashed his father’s cruelty, then I had no idea what would happen if the same was done to Eoghan’s wife. To… me.

If they starved, beat, tortured, and assaultedme.

I sometimes felt so disconnected from who I was that I couldn’t connect the danger with my existence.

“Eugenio Durante’s foresight has suffered since the loss of Giovanni Morelli.” Blink leaned back in the seat as Cillian babbled an approximation of the ABCs in the back.

Giovanni Morelli could still be in Eoghan’s basement, being tortured and beaten. No one had found a body, and Cosima was still looking for him.

As much as I tried not to read the intel reports and news broadcasts… I couldn’t help myself.

I needed to know what was happening to the life I left behind. I told myself it was for my safety, but that wasn’t why I devoured every morsel of information. It was because I missed my monster.

“She’s primed to stab her father in the back, and take over the Mafia. Frankly, if it weren’t foryou,darling, I would try to make those two marry—”

“I’ll murder you.” I don’t know where those words came from, or why my fists clenched, until my knuckles turned white.

Blink could do it. He could make those two marry. He had a way of forcing people to act in accordance with plans as if he had the fates in his back pocket. He could tilt people to do what he wanted, and they’d never know they were sideways until it was too late.

But surely… Eoghan… would never have another. He’d sworn to me.

But what was a promise, after three fucking years of silence?

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