Page 117 of Iron Blade

“You’re a sick fuck, Green,” Morelli’s voice finally had a flutter of fear, as he watched the canvas come to life, just as I did.

Oh, he was right. I was a sick son of a bitch. A monster. A demon. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

I looked at him and smiled, wiping my hands on a white towel that turned red with the color of the canvas.

“We don’t have her. At least we didn't plan to take her,” Morelli finally confessed. “I don’t know where she is, and we don’t…”

I waved him off, because I already knew all this. I wasn’t bleeding him because he and his Italian ilk had taken Kira from me. I was bleeding him because I was a monster, and it was time the world knew it. It was time to rule with fucking fear.

“It’s not done yet, though,” I lamented, looking at the large canvas with a grin. “There’s so much more left to do.” I sighed, stretching my neck one way, then the other. “So much paint left to make.”

There was only one visage in the enormous canvas that did not suffer, and did not scream. One face that looked on my devil with sadness and pain. In the top most corner, was an angel dressed in white, looking over her shoulder with a sorrow that broke my heart. Kira. But she didn’t have a crown of orchids and leaves. No. Her crown was that of thorns, and blood dripped down her face.

I had made the mistake of thinking she was a helpless orchid - a perfect white bloom in the darkness. But I was seeing clearly now that I had been right. She was a rose. A white rose dipped in blood, stained red with thorns as thick as iron nails.

The blood on her face was the pain I had placed on her sweet skin because I was a beast. I was a monster. I would cause her pain, and that was my tragedy. To love and hurt. To protect while causing harm.

I had painted her obscured, hidden in the darkness. But I could see her. I could see her wedding dress, even when I drew it in shadow.

For weeks, I painted in the basement, draining Morelli as the surgeon placed IVs into him, so he wouldn’t die.

And with every passing day, I hummed a melancholy tune, the words changing every time.

Black is the color of my true love’s hair, She’s disappeared to my despair. I’ll make her a painting from bloody lines And suffer death a thousand times.

I finished the last stroke at what would have been twilight, seen by the glow of the hearth.

To the melody of Morelli’s pained groans, I signed my name on the corner.

“Do you think she’ll like it, Morelli?” I asked, standing over my great masterpiece.

Morelli’s half closed eyes stayed the same - in that strange, tired, catatonic void.

“I think she’ll like it,” I said, staring down at the painting with my hands on my hips. “She’ll think it’s a masterpiece.”

“I remember your little Kira,” Morelli said, his voice ragged. “My nephew helped her with a little loan a few years ago.”

I stiffened, remembering…

“He said she would suck his dick.” Morelli let out a laugh that made him sound drunk, or insane. “I was going to go with him that night, to get the little pretty thing on her knees.”

I didn’t move. I barely breathed.

Morelli was pale, his skin pasty, as sweat and piss covered what few clothes, now little more than rags, clung to him. He was hallucinating, surely.

“It’s hard to forget a name like that. Kira Kekoa.” He said the name with glee. Had I mentioned her name to him before? Her maiden name? Or did he know her from before? Had Cosima introduced them? I wasn’t sure. I could hardly remember, I had been painting for so long. I hadn’t slept.

My heart stopped, when his laugh started again, bouncing off the walls and into my ears, pressing against my brain like my head was caught in a vice.

“Every time she couldn’t pay the loan to save her pathetic, good for nothing father, she’d get on her knees,” he laughed. “When I went to visit his office, there was no sign of him, or her. His office was clean, I could still smell the fucking disinfectant. Bleach!”

Disinfectant? I wanted to ask, but I had to let the madman ramble, before he came to his senses, or died.

“I didn’t remember her until after Cosima brought her to lunch,” he sneered. “My sweet angel, with that fucking serpent whore.”

Another man would have beat Giovanni Morelli to death. Another man would have lost their temper, and broken the man in a rage.

But that was not the man my father raised.

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