Page 51 of Iron Crown

“Interesting,” I said, biting my lip. “It must be Giovanni Morelli’s.”

Jericho coughed, almost spitting out his drink. He pounded his fist on his chest until he cleared his throat. “The missing consiglieri?”

“He’s thirty years older than her!” Blink balked. “Are you sure?”

“They’ve been lovers since she was eighteen years old,” I stated, bluntly, trying not to let my own judgments cloud my report. “He’s quite in love. So is she, if her reaction today was any indication.”

“We haven’t been able to find the child’s origins.” Blink looked at Jericho. “I had assumed that it was a one-night stand, or one of the many men she’s jilted at the altar. But…”

“It’s Giovanni’s,” I said again, surer now than when I’d stated it the first time. She would not keep the child if anyone else had been the father. “Do we have pictures of the child?”

“Hmm.” Jericho turned to his computer, typed something in, and clicked a few times before he turned the monitor to me.

There was the image of a sweet-faced young girl, around two years old. Unlike my Cillian, who looked like me in every respect, she didn’t favor either of her parents. Her dark hair and pale skin could have belonged to Cosima or Morelli.

But it was the gray eyes that did me in. Two gray, inquisitive eyes that were the carbon copy of her father’s. The shape of them, the slight upward tilt on the corners, the flat arch of a brow, the sparkle, and even the slight melancholy in them were molded in the very image of Giovanni Morelli.

“Her name is…” Jericho said with a small laugh as he tilted his head, “Giovanna.”

Blink let out a quiet, “Oh.”

“Well, that settles who Cosima thinks is the father of her child,” I snorted.

“Giovanna was such a common name that I didn’t consider it,” Blink admitted. “But that would make sense. All of her last moves were in honor of the missing, presumed dead, man.”

“Can I get a printout of some of the photos?” Morelli would want to see these.

At this point, it felt right that he see an image of his legacy.

“What for?” Jericho asked, even though he was already typing into the computer to grant my request.

“We move at sunrise tomorrow, no?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “Giovanni Morelli will be dead by then.”

The two men’s heads spun towards me, but I talked before they had a chance to interrupt me.

“The only way to surrender is to scorch the earth.” I agreed with Blink’s earlier assessment. “Only proof of Morelli’s death will make Cosima pause her endeavors long enough to be struck down. We are not fighting the Mafia,” I said with the confidence that Morelli had granted me with his counsel over the years. “We are fightingher. If she bends, the others will follow.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to kill her?” Jericho said, callously.

“We kill her, she becomes a martyr. The little girl in those photos will be forced to step into her shoes.” I shook my head. Making the next generation pay for our misdeeds was the opposite of what I wished for them. Even for a child that wasn’t my own. “We’ll be fighting the same war again in twenty years.”

I got up and refilled my glass because I needed clarity. The alcohol down my gullet would give me the strength to do what I had to do.

To do the right thing, even though it would possibly break me, and my marriage, in two.

“She must lower her flag and agree to terms,” I whispered. “It’s the only way the others will follow.”

“And how do we accomplish that, Irish?” Jericho said, my nationality suddenly being less of an insult on the Russian’s lips.

“She has to lose hope.” It was all I could say on the matter. “Thanks for the drink.”

As I stepped out of the room, I heard the muffled voice of Jericho asking, “Did he just say he had Morelli?”

“Alive, it seems,” Blink said.

“The sadistic bastard…”

Chapter fourteen

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