Page 3 of Iron Cross

“Ah, yes, Aoibheann,” he said amused, as he held his glass up in the space between us. “The second wife. The quiet one. We could never get much about her, other than her connection to the Boston Irish.”

“There's not much to know of her. She's a dull and quiet little thing. No more hardened than your pet mouse.” That was the real insult to injury. That mousy thing had somehow stolen my wife and killed my father.

“Ah, don’t underestimate the quiet ones,” Morelli said, raising a finger and wagging it at me. “Mice can survive anything. Long ship voyages, the wilderness, and even the New York sewers. The mice thrive and multiply, no matter how many times they are stomped out, killed, and poisoned. We set traps and bait, and yet they thrive. There is something admirable and cunning in that.”

There was nothing cunning about Aoibheann. Without her old Irish witchcraft, that particular kitten would have no claws at all.

“Are you advising me?” I asked, with a chuckle, downing my glass and refilling it, feeling the burn of my father’s whiskey as it slid down my throat, burning my chest where my heart should have been.

He coughed when his drink went down the wrong pipe, and covered his mouth with the back of his skeletal wrist.

“Pardon me, oh, chief of the Irish,” he said with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. “I’m a consiglieri. Old habits die hard… or they’ll just die with me.”

“I’m not the chief—” I stopped myself from correcting him, realizing that I was in the wrong.

Now that my father was gone, the enterprise was mine, and mine alone.

“Ah, the young prince finally realizes that he must put on the crown,” Morelli said with a smirk, his arrogance not quite extinguished. Maybe I had gone too easy on him. “Do let me know how heavy it is.”

“And if it takes off my head.” I made a slashing gesture across my throat. “Will you rejoice, old man?”

“Hardly,” he said, his eyes lifting up to gaze at me. “In fact, I will make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“The Godfather, really?”

“I'm in the Italian Mafia,” he chuckled. “We’ve all hate-watched it many, many times.”

“What’s your offer?” He was a likeable old man. It would be a sad day when I had to execute him.

“I will help you take down Eugenio Durante,” he said, his head tilting up to me with an arrogance I despised. “I will be your consiglieri.”

“I’m never letting you out of this cell alive.” I was baffled that he would offer. If this was a ploy for his life, it was a bad one.

“I know this, young king,” he chuckled, as if I was a petulant child he was indulging. “I know I will not leave here with my heart still beating. All I ask from you is a favor.”

“Why? Why would you help me?”

“Because Eugenio Durante must be destroyed,” Morelli said, “He is the scum in the pond. The cancer that must be cut out.”

“Aren’t you his best friend?” I was surprised by the hostility, and more than a little suspicious.

Morelli had been by Durante’s side through it all. In every photograph, and every slaughter, he was there. A second in command. The perfect lieutenant. His right hand man.

“Your spies are good.” Morelli smirked. “But they are not able to read between the lines, are they, young king?” He leaned back, and smiled. Eerily wise and ethereal, like some ancient woodland fairy, able to tap into an ancient wisdom that we mere mortals craved. “Have you seen how many others have been third or fourth in command? How many right and left hands have come and disappeared? Like the dictators of old, Durante is afraid of his own shadow. Of any man who could usurp his… inadequate hold.”

Morelli sneered at his critique of his former boss. Or maybe he was still his boss now. I was not sure.

“I have lasted because I do not crave power. But…”

“But?”

“Cosima.” He said her name like a prayer, as though he was uttering the name of the Madonna herself.

The way he said her name struck me in the heart. Not because I cared about the woman, but because there was a longing in his tone that I recognized. It was a tone I had used many times, when I whispered Kira’s name into the dark.

“Mark my words, young king, as Kronos ate his children, Durante will eat his young to keep them from taking what he believes to be his.” He shook his head. “He only has the one heir and he has done more harm to her than the Bratva, the Irish, or the Triads could ever hope to do.”

“You think he’ll kill her?” I asked, curious at how Shakespearean this was all becoming.

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