Page 102 of Iron Blade

I stepped out of the enclave of the bakery room, into the damp and cold. I closed the door slowly with one hand, and stepped into the expansive hall. I looked around. The sound kept going. It was a sickening, angry sound that made me wince in sympathy, because I had heard that noise before.

In fact, I had been on the receiving end of it during training, after I had been captured during the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) part of my training. How to withstand torture, basically.

I had been beaten, but a small part of me knew that they wouldn’t kill me. What I went through was also nothing compared to some of my companions who were tapped for the real deep-cover work. Their training lasted months, and they were waterboarded within an inch of their life.

This was something else entirely.

I walked with quiet steps toward the noise, to the only other room there was. To my left was an open wine cellar, the casks and bottles out on display. Like the bakery, there was a room behind a wooden door. But this one was fully closed. The closer I got, the more my stomach dropped.

I didn’t dare open the door. I didn't want them to see me. But I did listen, completely stock-still, holding the plate in my hand just in case I was caught - then I could make the excuse that I wasn't snooping. I was just looking to find something that went with my bread… right? That was plausible. If it wasn’t, I could make it so, the way I made shitty art look like gold.

It took a while before anyone spoke. What I heard chilled me to the bone.

“You’ve doomed your woman.” Choked and barely audible, the voice was familiar to me. As familiar as his warning, telling me to run.

“Run away, Miss Kekoa. Run far, far away,” he had said.

I froze in fear, when a familiar laugh crept through the cracks in the door.

“Oh, you Italians… so arrogant, even when you’re on the brink of death.” The familiar Irish accent crawled through, curling its way around my heart and squeezing it like a vice.

The glee in his voice as he beat another man - the sadism? It was unrecognizable to me, but it was definitely him.

This was what Eoghan did. It was what made him sweat, and change clothes before he returned to me. This was the thing he did in the mornings when he left my side.

I backed away from the door, clutching the bowl of bread in my hands, summoning everything Blink had taught me. Everything my training had engrained.

I walked slowly, purposefully to the door, and schooled my features. Numb. Like a ghost, I walked up the stairs, nodding to the girls in the kitchen, lifting my bowl of bread with a slight smile. Then I went straight to my room - our room.

His room.

I dropped the bowl on a table by the door, then rushed to my purse, fumbling to find my phone.

I brought it up to my ear as it still rang.

“Where is he?” Cosima’s voice was heavy with tears. She was definitely crying. “What have you done with him?”

“Who?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. This was all the confirmation I needed.

“Giovanni, of course!” Her crying turned into anger, boiling over too fast for me to control it. “What have you done to him? Tell me where he is? Kira… I’ll…”

“I’ve made a mistake,” I gasped out, shaking my head at my own insanity. I couldn’t believe what I had done.

Far from the Mafia boy trying to end their life in crime, he was in it - it wasn’t just money laundering, until they could get out of the criminal activities to something legitimate. He was just like his father.

I walked into the studio, and looked at the sculpture we worked on together. It glistened beautifully in the light, twisting together. I swallowed, remembering how that was meant to be a symbol of our intertwining lives, coming together to make something whole.

This was meant to be a symbol of our union, the longer we toiled over it, soldering the metal together to make each individual leaf with precision and care.

The basis of a good lie starts in belief. Start with something true, and build from there.

I hardened my heart like the gold at my fingertips, letting it happen one strand at a time.

Chapter thirty-six

What did you do today?

Eoghan

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