Page 39 of Iron Cross

He bit his lower lip, his eyes growing sad and watery.

“You must kill me, you see,” he said, shaking his head. “If I return to her alive, she will spend her life loving me. Dedicated to me. And I have no years to give her, even if you were to release me right now. Even if you had never captured me. That is not what I want for sweet Cosima.”

I wasn’t sure if I'd ever call his Cosima sweet, but he was a man in love. Delusion was a part of that state, was it not?

“If you kill me,” he said, with an almost pained sigh, “then she has a chance to move on. To find love. To find a partner strong enough to fight beside her, to love her, to give her a family.”

“And that is what you want? For her to… move on?” I swallowed, feeling the bile creep up my throat because that is the last thing I wanted for Kira. The idea of her moving on was so reprehensible that I would murder anyone who ever came close. I would dip them in lye and watch them melt, slowly, until they were nothing. Completely erased from all existence.

I would kill every person in this world, until Kira had only me to turn to.

“Make me feel better, young King. Tell me of your misery with your wife,” he said with a winsome smile.

Bastard.

But at least in this I could bring him comfort.

“She’s falling in love,” I said bitterly, clenching my jaw as if the very words I uttered offended me. “With another man.”

There was a steady drip of water somewhere in this basement. There was no leak. Just the damn humidity that built underground. The squeak of Algernon in the corner was becoming all too familiar.

Morelli speared a fork into the roast beef and potatoes of his dinner, as hehmmedat me. “And how does that make you feel?”

I’d had to come home to handle a small matter with the business, as Dairo had sabotaged another of Durante’s shipping containers. This time, it was traveling by commercial rail and, somehow, went missing from the station. There was blowback and alibis that had to be made, and I had to be here to orchestrate it.

Thankfully, with Dairo as a body double, we were twice as efficient, and I could indulge in my little…sessions.

“Are you my therapist now?” I lifted my brow and watched as he balanced a plate on his crossed legs, a glass of red wine on the floor in front of him.

Sometimes, he made me feel centered. Like I could know true north based on the logic in my mind.

But not today. Today the entire world felt like it was twisted on its side, moving, off-kilter.

“In the strictest sense of the word, a consiglieri is a lawyer, but…” He shrugged as he picked at his food with his fingers. We had dispensed with the ceremony years ago. The only thing he found holy was the wine that I provided. He always drank with the greatest reverence. “A consiglieri is an advisor. A mentor. A therapist, as well, I suppose.”

I pulled one knee up as I leaned against the opposite wall.

“What did you think when you watched her falling for another man?” Morelli’s words grated at my skin.

Was this the first time Kira had fallen for someone else? How many had come after me, wishing to woo her and her child further from my grasp? The question made bile crawl up my throat. Three years was a long time. Had she fallen into the arms of others? Had she taken a lover?

Murder. That was the only thing I felt. The need to murder any man who had her adoring eyes on them. I wanted to kill every person who had made her smile in my absence. Anyone who had ever lessened her burdens or looked down at my son likehewas their family… I would dispense with them at the bottom of the sea like Durante’s cargo.

“Like…” I sniffed the air as if a malodorous gas was poisoning my lungs, because there was. “Like I would kill any man that even looked at her with lust.”

“Jealousy is not a wise trait to cultivate,” he said with a nod. “Do you love her enough to ever want her to move on, though? If you were, to say…”

He did that slashing gesture across the throat again, and made the croaking sound.

“I’d have to be very,verydead to ever want her to move on.” I crossed my arms, wondering if this conversation had a point, or if it was one of his many intellectual exercises. “And even then, I don’t think so.”

“Ah, young King,” he said with a chuckle, “Then your love is a selfish one.”

That pierced me through the gut. It was like he’d fired a rifle right into my chest.

“Bullshit.” I scowled.

“If it was a selfless love, you would want her to have whatever she needed to be happy—”

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