Page 47 of Iron Cross

I irritatingly waved my hand, telling her to get on with it as she cut the duct tape on his cheek. Our hostage spat out the cotton in his mouth and sputtered.

I watched him struggle and cry, and realized how much I truly admired Giovanni Morelli.

When we took him, his only thought was for his beloved, Cosima, to be safe. In his last moments of freedom, he told her to call for help that would arrive too late for him. Yet he still did it.

I beat, bloodied, and broke him, and all the while, he had a dignity and pride that made me regret each bruise I inflicted.

Even now, he breathed and suffered in a damp cell, sleeping on a threadbare blanket, because I could not offer him more luxury than that. He took the indignity like a hero in an old story, his mind sharp, his heart pure, and his focus on nothing but the woman in his heart.

There was nothing more noble than that.

“Please, I don’t know anything! Let me go!” Our hostage had no such strength of character.

I wondered if anyone else did.

I wondered if I would take imprisonment with the saintly sanity of Giovanni Morelli.

“You told Alfredo to come to this town,” Shiny said, walking around him as her black boots clomped on the cement. “Why?”

She had two phones in her hand. The first, I recognized. We had taken it off of Alfredo, and she’d hacked into it, using baby powder to figure out the most pressed numbers on his screen. Through the process of elimination, she’d figured out the combination, then disabled it. The other, blood-covered, cracked phone in her hand, I assumed was our new guest.

Our hostage shook his head. “I didn’t. I don’t know anything!”

His voice had thatveryNew York City rhythm. Italian-American. I was always fascinated with that rhythm. We were allthe descendants of people who did not speak English, so how did our linguistics deviate so much from one another?

“So why are you and the little Fettuccine Alfredo here?” Shiny said, her voice low, irritated, and full of venom.

There was something appealing about an angry woman.

That fire in Shiny was… quaint. Even charming.

But in my Muse? It would be electric.

I knew there was something wild inside Kira Green. A beauty I never had the privilege to see. It was all but confirmed that she had killed Giovanni Morelli’s useless nephew. Surely, there was a fire that burned within her, far more dangerous than Dairo’s own little underground fighter.

“Alfredo got a tip from someone, we don’t know who. He said he had a spy in the Irish, but would not tell me who it was! He was just told that she was around this town.”

“Just around this town?” I said in sheer mockery. “What were you going to do? Knock on every door and claim you were the census?”

“If we had to, yes! If Alfredo has no money to live, then what chance is there for us? I have no job without him! Durante said he would kick us all out for simply being assigned to him.”

Poor little hostage.

A bodyguard for the wrong member of the royal household would now perish along with his useless charge.

“What would you do with Kira when you found her?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.

“I don’t know.” He looked at me, though his eyes were more scared of Shiny than me. Maybe he didn’t recognize the head of the Irish - I had become quite elusive in the last three years. Longevity for foot soldiers was never great.

Or maybe he recognized the sadism in Shiny that I outwardly concealed.

“So, what were you supposed to do with Mrs. Kira Green?” I asked, quietly.

“I know who you are.” His voice was shaky. He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was staring at Shiny. “You’re Sinead Flanagan. You killed Keith Bourne!”

“Oh? I have a reputation?” Shiny said with faux demureness. She smiled, the cruelty written on her delicate features. “I was happy to kill that spy. Do you want to know how I did it?”

She tilted her head to one side and our guest flinched, as if she had struck him.

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