14. Blood of Mine
Chapter fourteen
Blood of Mine
Eoghan
S hiny was covered in blood, her dyed midnight black hair was stringy, clinging to the sides of her face. Her clothes were soaked in the cold winter rain that had stubbornly kept itself from turning into snow.
“Surveillance going well, Shiny?” I asked, as she glared at me.
She grunted. It was a very un-lady-like sound.
“I found an accomplice for our friend, Chicken.” She shook out her hair like a wet dog, splashing me in the water.
“Chicken?” I grunted, lifting my arms to shield myself.
“Alfredo.” She smirked, because no matter what she did, she could not help thinking about the sauce of the same name. “He had a driver, who was apparently the brains of the operation.”
Humor was never Shiny’s strong suit. The few times she had thrown me and Dairo into a fit of laughter, it had been absolutely unintentional. She ran away a pretty blond princess, and came back a raven-haired skeptic with a dark humor that would make even the coldest killer shudder.
“Oh?” I asked, “Where is this Italian genius that was pulling our Durante the Lesser’s strings?”
“In the trunk of the car.”
“Really?” I crossed my arms. “You intended to leave him there?”
The man must have been an icicle. Then again, I had heard that freezing to death wasn’t the worst way to go. According to Jack London, it could be as peaceful as going into a deep sleep. But mercy wasn’t really a trait Shiny had.
“Nope. I was intending to have you go get him.”
I rolled my eyes, irritated by her gall. “You’re a brat, do you know that?”
I clambered to my feet. I’d done nothing physically strenuous that day when I sent her out to find Alfredo Chicken’s accomplice, so it was only fair.
I stepped out of the little warehouse we were bunking in and popped the boot of the little armored sedan. Nice, nondescript, white vehicle. The most common color, in the most common looking body type.
Unlike our Italian companions, we had taught ourselves to put flash and ego aside in order to blend in with the population. Truly, it was a lesson we had learned from Dairo’s training, which he had learned from the SAS, and then his time at Caledonia Security. I wasn’t above taking advantage of his expertise to improve Green Fields Enterprises.
He’s the reason why we were the efficient elimination machines that we were now.
The efficiently hog-tied mafioso wriggled as I hoisted him over my shoulder. Whatever cotton she had pushed into his mouth, then duct taped to his head was now blunting his attempts to scream.
With a shrug, I dumped him on the floor, his sad little head slamming against the ground.
“Don’t break him!” Shiny chastised. “We need to question him.”
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 that very New York City rhythm. Italian-American. I was always fascinated with that rhythm. We were all the 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.
“Tell Eoghan…” the man said, almost weeping. “I can do for him what Keith was doing for the Italians. Tell him! Tell him I can help him. Tell him—”
So he didn’t, in fact, recognize me. That was fun.
“What were you supposed to do to Mrs. Kira Green?” I said again, shaking him by the collar.
He choked and cried out, and I slapped him hard across the face.
“Tie her up and serve her to Durante, or bring him her head. Those were our orders.” His head, still slammed to one side, was braced for another impact.
“That’s helpful,” I said, pushing off the wall. “And this town was chosen specifically because…?”
He winced. “Durante has a spy in the Irish. They say that the blond bastard has searched every other town in the area, and they’re convinced she hasn’t run far. So, it was a process of elimination. With only this county left…”
“So you were going to go door to door like Jehovah’s Witnesses to find a woman who’s been missing for three years? Do you even know what she looks like?”
The hostage shook his head. “We have pictures of when she worked at the gallery.”
“Is there anything else?” I leaned into him, softening my face because I did not want him to be scared. I wanted him to think we could be allies of a sort. “I’m looking for her too, alright? You help me out, and I don’t see a reason you and I need to fight. Some man’s runaway wife shouldn’t be this important, and it’s all bollocks!”
He looked at me with relief in his eyes.
“I don’t want to kill anyone. I just want to stop the killing. You get me?”
He lowered his head, as hope bloomed in his chest.
“I have told you all that I know.” His soft murmur was barely audible. “We just need to find her, to stop this insane war!”
“Aye, I agree,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder.
I went behind him, pulling my iron blade from the sheath at my hip, and cut his arms free.
“Grazi! Grazi!” he said, whispering his thanks.
“You’re welcome.” I plunged my danger into his jugular, the blood spurted out like I had cut a water hose while it was in mid-stream.
As the splatter of his crimson blood colored the ground, his body collapsed forward, his hands limp at his sides, as he died with his face in his own puddle.
“Seriously?” Shiny said, looking at me with her arms crossed, one foot tapping on the ground in her annoyance.
“I’ll clean it up,” I grumbled, once again, agitated that when we were alone, Shiny was able to have such an attitude with me that was rather unbecoming of a Lieutenant.
Still, I was glad she was here. I was glad she had found her way home to my side, the same way Dairo had. And though Dairo may say that he was here because he found the love of his life, and needed to re-enter the life because she was the daughter of the Bratva, and Shiny had fallen head over heels for the trainer that I had rescued from a melee in the Underground fighting circuit, I could not help the feeling of fate that surrounded it all.
“You’re a bloody menace,” I said, coming to my knee, grabbing the hostage by the arm.
“Ouch!” She placed a hand over her heart as if she was offended. “That’s hurtful.”
“Oh, shut your gullet,” I sneered. “Your husband might be able to deal with your cheek, but I’ve had quite enough of it.”
I was with the people I was meant to be. Our roads placed us on the same path, and as soon as Kira and my son were by my side, then all would be well again.
But I never thought that I’d have competition for my Muse’s attention.
Did I know there was a possibility that she had found a paramour in the last three years? Maybe. It would break me, but under the circumstances, I had already resolved to forgive her.
“Well, you’re in a mood.” Shiny rolled her eyes, and to my surprise, got down beside me and began to help me move the body. “Bad news while you were observing today?”
I never thought that I would bear witness to her.
I grumbled, “She told Aaron Jackson her coffee order today.”
“So?”
“I never knew it,” I admitted. “I never knew how she liked her coffee.”
Shiny stared at me with a quizzical expression.
“Do you know how Ajax likes his coffee?” I asked.
“A scoop of creatine and fake sugar,” she rattled it off without a thought.
That was a part of marriage we did not have time to get to. I did not know how she liked her coffee, and I had no idea what she wanted with her toast. I didn’t know what food she liked when she was sick, or what shows she’d watch when she was on bed rest.
The overwhelming need to know these things about her, and about my son, felt like a heat beneath the skin. A fever that could only be quenched when I took my spot as the man of the house and cared for my wife and child, as a father and husband should.
My shoes were soaked in the blood of a hostage who would do my Muse harm, and I saw it clear as day. To be a husband and father, I would need to draw more blood, and my blade needed to be sharpened on the flesh of our enemies. That was all I had to offer my bride - more blood, more death, more sins on my conscience.
I’d take it all, for the precious, mundane domestic bliss of waking up and getting her coffee ready in the morning, never having to ask her what it was.
I reached into my pocket, to look at the coins I had, to see what our little accomplice merited.
“It’s weird that you do that,” Shiny said, looking at my open palm. “Even in death, you continue their torture.”
I chuckled, “Care to explain?”
Maybe Morelli was rubbing off on me. The Socratic method. I wanted to see if she had read me right.
“You give them too few coins for Kharon, the boatman that will take them over the river Styx into the afterlife,” she said, shaking her head. “They need at least two coins, and you only give one. Fewer if you’ve slaughtered a group.”
“They can fight over it in the afterlife,” I smirked.
“You don’t believe in any of that,” Shiny said, her face grave. “Do you? Fairies, witches, the Greeks… it’s hard to peg down what you believe.”
That was a good question.
“I imagine I believe in all of them, and none of them,” I said, looking at the corpse I had to dispose of. “My faith has waned over the years, but I believe in family, in promises kept, in loyalty.”
I believed in marriage. In Kira.
“If there is a boatman, though,” I said, “or if St. Peter takes bribes at the pearly gates, I want them to turn on each other. To know of each other’s treachery and deceit.”
When the masks came off, I wanted them to see one another for what they truly were.