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Chapter twelve

On Your Head Be It

Kira

C osima had changed. The woman who sat across from me was not the same woman I had known three years ago. Her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, her lips surrounded by the parentheses of frown lines.

She had lost the soft angles of youth. Now, she was all jagged lines and harsh angles.

“The Irish prick and his little whore.” At her words, my steps stuttered. Eoghan had to tug me along.

Her once sweet voice had deepened, and she was coming out of the gate swinging. I wasn’t used to her this way. I had always known she was capable of great insult, and many of the Mafia feared her. But not once had she ever directed it at me.

At my hesitation, her lips pulled into a snide grin.

Eoghan pulled out a chair for me, pushing it in as I sat down before he took his own, picking up my hand and placing it on his thigh.

The restaurant was full of our men and hers. There were other guests there too, but our men, and hers, watched us with incredible interest. I narrowed my focus to just her—blocking out the audience who did not matter for these negotiations.

“Cosima,” I greeted with a slight nod, refusing to react to her bait.

She just let out a small huff of a laugh before her cold eyes assessed me in cruel judgment.

“What happened, Kira? Couldn't find a better meal ticket than this bastard?” She shook her head with scorn. “Have you taken her back to become the true cuckold I knew you to be, Green?”

Christ, this was more venom than I’d ever had spat at me.

“Watch yourself, Durante.” Eoghan’s jaw ticked with his agitation. “You can come after me, but my wife is off limits.” Then his eyes narrowed. “So is my child.”

He laid his hand on top of mine, giving me a comforting squeeze, which I returned.

“Are they?” Cosima tsked, letting out a laugh that sounded like crystal chimes, but had the edges of barbed wire. “Malinda gave me a completely different impression.”

She laughed like the evil queen in a fairytale.

“My mistake.” She filled her hand dismissively.

Her viciousness felt like a slap to the face, but I kept myself perfectly still, taking my cues from Eoghan.

“We were friends, once,” I said quietly, hoping that I could reach out to her somehow. “I really liked you.”

If she had any recollection of our former friendship, it had been twisted into something foul in my absence.

“You were nothing but the help ,” Cosima said coolly, picking up a wine glass by the stem and taking a sip. “How quaint that you thought that was friendship .”

Then she looked at Eoghan. Her smile was so plastic and cruel that I ached for the person she had once been.

“I’m not one to fuck the servants.”

Her words were calculated to hurt. So, she knew Eoghan had slept with Malinda… or that she had been in love with Eoghan. That would have hurt me once. It may have even sent me into a jealous rage, but not anymore.

Not while I sat beside my husband, my hand on his thigh. He placed his elbow on the table, leaning forward, his fist clenched as he said in a calm and measured tone, “I’m warning you, Cosima, one more jab at my wife and this meeting is likely to get quite bloody.”

Cosima’s smile melted away, and she leaned forward, mirroring Eoghan’s gesture.

“I do not fear you, Irish.” Her voice was cold, and I definitely believed her. She was too bitter and angry to know fear. “Do your worst.”

Even her makeup had changed. She had once favored pink, but now she colored her face burgundy and dark. She used to wear pink and pastel colors, but today, she was wearing black.

Time had blighted out any softness from her.

“I know that we were friends,” I said, feeling sad that she had changed so cruelly. “I remember.”

“You remember wrong.”

I did not. I had to stand firmly within the truth. That way, her words could not touch me.

“Enough of this sentimental nonsense.” Cosima waved her elegant hand dismissively at me, as if Iwere a waiter asking her if the meal was okay. “What do you want, Irish?”

Eoghan’s eyes narrowed, his jaw ticked. He was barely holding it together.

“For you to stop attacking my family,” Eoghan said, plainly, “and to come to peace before it’s too late.”

Her laugh was villainous, loud, and everyone in the restaurant turned their heads.

“I’ve already shown you that I can get you where you live,” she said, her voice so menacing it made my skin crawl. “What could you possibly have to offer me, Green?”

Eoghan’s slow spreading smile surprised me. I tried not to let that show on my face, but I had not expected him to look so victorious.

“Oh, just an old friend.” Eoghan leaned back, completely self-assured. “You might know him.”

Cosima looked confused. I was, too.

We both waited, hanging on Eoghan’s every micro-expression, and he dragged it out for dramatic effect.

“How has life been for the Durantes since you lost the good Giovanni Morelli?” Eoghan was so smug, bringing up her godfather.

Cosima reacted immediately, her pale face turning beet red.

In a fury, she hissed, “You murdering prick! You came like cowards in the night!”

Beneath the anger, the bluster, there was that current of pain in her eyes.

“I watched you take him. I know it was you, you Irish bastard!”

“Aye, I remember. Two of you, alone, late at night, hard at work in the office,” Eoghan sneered.

So, they had been lovers after all…

“Aye, I know it,” Eoghan said casually, almost laughing, “But that was my father’s time. Now , is different. You and I are at the helm, and we can choose a different path.”

Eoghan let go of my hand, leaning forward on the table, his fingers steepled before him.

“You have rendered your father powerless, and I know you’re giving the orders now, Cosima.” He took a deep breath and calmed himself before he looked her dead in the eyes. “Call off your men and come to the table to broker peace before any more bloodshed happens.”

She leaned back, placing her fingers elegantly across her lap, her eyes traveling up and down Eoghan as if she was looking at an interesting, but vulgar, window display.

“I will never agree to shake hands with the likes of a Green.”

“We need to let the past die. I let it die with my father.” Eoghan jabbed his index finger into the table to emphasize his point as he grew more insistent.

“You have no love for yours, I know it. So finish your coup, get rid of him. Hell, you don’t even have to kill him.

Take his seat, officially, at the head of your family, and come to the negotiating table, so we can make peace and move on from our family curse! ”

He leaned back, as if calming himself again.

“If you do, then I will return Giovanni to you,” he said murmured. “Unharmed.”

My heart skipped a beat, squeezing in my chest.

He still had Morelli? After all of this time? After three years? I kept the shock from registering on my face.

I could remember his screams, and Eoghan’s taunts. I remembered the fear I felt behind the closed door… the anguish that had made me run away in the first place.

No one knew this. It would have been in the reports if we’d known. This meant that Jericho didn’t know this either.

“I don’t fucking believe you!” Cosima’s fingers clutched the edge of the table. “How dare you come with this pathetic lie!”

“Oh, he’s alive and well. Begs me to make sure nothing happens to you in the war you are escalating.” Again, Eoghan smiled. “He tells me not to hurt his precious angel.”

I knew that Eoghan was getting frustrated, just from the sheer, unnerving calm that took over him.

“I wonder what he’d say if he could see what kind of venomous serpent you’ve become,” he said pensively.

“Giovanni would rather die than betray me!”

The conviction in her voice did not allow for any argument. She had absolute faith in her godfather.

“Oh, that’s true. I believe it wholeheartedly, in fact.” Eoghan leaned forward in his seat again. “He thinks that your father will cause you further harm. He says Eugenio has harmed you for your entire life. He lives because he is still bargaining for your safety.”

“You’re lying!”

“You’ll come to realize that I do not lie, Miss Durante.” Eoghan leaned forward. “When did you open Giovanni House? Your cute little foundation for literacy? What was it? Two weeks ago?”

Cosima’s jaw clenched so tightly; she could have shattered her molars.

“You wore a pair of white gloves, do you remember them?” Eoghan didn’t wait for an answer before he went on. “He says he gave those gloves to you for Christmas. Were you giving him a sign that you still loved your dear Godfather ? Were you hoping he’d see it and come running back?”

I tightened my hand on his thigh, begging for him to stop.

“You’re a liar, Eoghan Green.” She said it quietly, like the calm before a raging, destructive storm.

“He told me that the way you held your arm…” Eoghan let out a low whistle. “Morelli says your father beats you, each time you turn down a proposal of marriage. Is that right?”

Her face went from an angry red to a pale white. She was shocked, or afraid. I wasn’t sure which.

“He would never tell you this!” Her eyes were wide, and her conviction was so strong, it was practically a religion. She was walling herself in her beliefs, her indignation the most impenetrable suit of armor.

Underneath it all was pain and longing, and I felt awful for her.

“Eoghan,” I said quietly, squeezing his hand again.

He glanced at me for a moment, and I begged him with my eyes to stop taunting her. To stop hurting her. I could feel her pain as well.

Deep in my heart, I cared for her.

On the day she thought Eoghan was kidnapping me, even though we were just on a date, she had bargained for him to release me. She didn’t need to do that. A Mafia princess did not need to put her neck out for some... Art dealer!

I could not forget that as easily as she could.

“Oh, he would,” Eoghan said, turning back to Cosima. “Because he knows your father will dim you, the way my father tried to dim me. He wants an out for you! A safe place for you to land.”