Page 59 of Iron Blade

“Truly, this is an amazing story. Very dramatic. Has it been turned into a telenovela?”

“Don’t act so glib. This all happens to be true.” Her nostrils flared in her anger. “Alastair Green retaliated by kidnapping the Bratva girl, Yuliya, and they starved her for days. They even say that Eoghan raped her, and she was only ten years old.”

So that was the rumor? It was complete nonsense. Our sources in the Bratva, and even the girl - now a woman - said that she was starved and hit, but that was all.

Then again, Yuliya Vasilieva was one tough bitch, and that was probably true even when she was ten years old.

“They left her tied to a pillar with wires tied to her thumbs. She was left there, in the sun, for days.” She was truly appalled by this fact, and I gave her credit for it.

Yuliya was the daughter of the former pakhan. Now her brother had taken his place.

“If she had passed out from dehydration, those wires would have amputated her thumbs,” Cosima looked down at her own hands, her eyes wide in disbelief.

Thumbs were, indeed, important. People who don’t know anything about torture always go for big ticket items: the groin, the face, the feet… but the thumbs? Breaking those beyond repair was a level of hell most people didn’t think about.

But still, I had to keep playing the skeptic.

“Come on, you’re a lawyer, and you know that none of this could possibly be…”

She interrupted me. “The law isn’t everything. It’s not omnipotent. There are people who are above the law.”

“Good words, coming from an attorney. Does the bar association know your feelings on this?” I said, bringing the wine to my lips again and laughing. “That must be why you get paid the big bucks at Daddy’s company.”

Blink always said that the best lies come from something that is true. I was defending Eoghan Green because I wanted to. I liked him, and he was a good person. I knew that in my soul. I let that conviction wash over everything, from my words to my body language.

Cosima clamped her mouth shut. Then she lifted her finger to call a waiter over.

“We all live in fear that one day Alastair or his insane son will take us, and do to us what the Bratva did to Isla Green.” She went pale. For once, I wondered if maybe I had pushed too far. I wish Blink was here, he’d know how to finesse this conversation and get things back on the rails. “We live with that fear every day, and they make sure that we’re reminded of it at every fucking moment. You don’t know what that’s like.”

I let out a slow, even sigh.

I didn’t know what that was like. But I also knew that the stories she believed blindly were not true. The way they exaggerated tales of Eoghan was to create a myth far different from the reality.

I pivoted the conversation to something else.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be poor, Cosima.” I brought my fingers together in front of me, effectively closing off the space between us. “You don’t know what it’s like to watch your father choose to die, because there’s no money for treatment. He could still be alive today. That’s a regret you will never understand.”

Instead of placating her, it had the opposite effect. Her nostrils flared and Cosima just sneered.

She hated being reminded that she was a rich girl. Sure, she hadn’t earned a thing. But that didn’t matter, did it? She thought she had, even as her Daddy, and apparently goddaddy paved the way for her through life. She’d never understand the appeal of a deal like this.

She’d never understand the appeal of Eoghan Green.

She lifted her hand, snapping her fingers and demanding, “Check! Now!”

“Oh, come on, Cosa, sit back down.”

I reached out to grab her arm and she flinched away from me as if my fingers were made of toxic waste.

She had a flare for the dramatics. A thing that she always blamed on her Italian heritage, when in reality, it was all just her, and how spoiled she was.

“Mark my words, Kira, if you keep associating with him, you will suffer the same fate Isla did.” Well, that was a well-landed blow. “I hope you figure it out before you end up suffering next. Until then, never, ever contact me again.”

She stood up, her chair groaning as it scraped over the marble floor.

“Come on, Cosima, don’t go… this is not that serious.”

She leaned over the table with both her hands, bringing her face so close to mine that I could see the blue flecks in her otherwise green eyes.

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