Page 22 of Iron Blade

“Keith,” I said, looking at one of the Green Fields Enterprises - the family LLC - guards. “I have a task for you.”

Keith smirked, his eyes darting around.

He leaned towards me. “What do you need, boss?”

His strong Irish accent was like mine. He had come over when he was young, and living in the society we did, the Irish was something we could put on at will. And we laid it on thick. It was good for the boys. It let everyone know, without a doubt, that our blood ran emerald green even if we had blue passports and waved the stars and stripes.

“Cosima Durante,” I said, taking a drink of the Vermouth in front of me. “I need you to follow her. I need to know who she is, who she talks to. I want to know her opinions on everything from the Middle East conflict to the right length for a hemline.”

“To what purpose, boss?” Keith asked, his brow lifting. “It’ll be easier to know what to look for, if I know what you’re after.”

I shrugged, leaning back in the booth. “It's just time that we get to know this generation of Mafia, isn’t it?”

I didn’t trust Keith. Not as far as I could throw him.

I had known him since we were kids. He had been engaged to a girl who lived within our clan. The Flanagan girl, Sinead. The girl had been a favorite of my mum’s before her untimely death. The daughter my mum had always wanted.

They were arranged to be married on her eighteenth birthday, and young Sinead had been eager for the match. But on that fateful day, when there should have been wedding bells ringing, and blood spilt in a handfast, the bride went missing.

What had Keith done to our little Sinead to make her disappear? I wasn’t sure. But I didn’t trust him.

He was a competent soldier, though. And a more than competent spy.

“A’right, boss,” he said, with a grin, as a woman walked into the bar in shorts so small, you could see the bottom crease of her arse.

Keith bit his bottom lip as he stared at her with lustful intent. The girl flipped her hair, looking over her shoulder at him in clear invitation.

I had lost the man’s attention.

Like me, he had an Irish accent that made the American girls swoon, and he had no problem taking advantage of it.

Since his engagement, and hell, since even before it, he was a consummate man-whore. It was probably best that Sinead had left him at the church with his dick in his hands.

I suppose that was none of my business, at the end of the day.

“I’ll get it handled,” Keith said, as he leapt from the chair to see the girl, leaving me alone in the corner booth.

I looked up at the cracks on the ceiling of the bar.

The crown molding had the faintest hint of four-leaf clovers. Four leaves, four green fields… four, four, four. For the four provinces of Ireland.

Christ, I missed my homeland. I missed it and resented it all the same. Where I was born was occupied by the British, still under the crown that despised us. So, we carved a place for ourselves here, in this “New” York.

But we were more than Irish, weren’t we? We brought our own brand of evangelical pride, as dictated by my father who had a flare for the insanely dramatic. An insanity that had served a purpose, when my mother was around to soften his edges. Now, unchecked, he was just an old bastard who was chomping at the shadows where his tired, gray eyes couldn’t see.

Black is the color of my true love's hair…

Why did those words flash through my mind now? I pursed my lips, thinking of my Muse.

My mother had loved that song, even though she and my father had golden hair. I wondered if my mother sang it to me because she knew that my love would be a raven-haired thing, with eyes as dark as coal.

In many ways, Isla Green had always been close to death. If not because of the Irish mob, then for the delicateness of her physical form. She was ailed by headaches, pains, and fevers. A thing no one could ever diagnose.

My birth had been a miracle, as every other one before and after me ended in a miscarriage. I was the only one that made it past the first trimester.

Her frailty gave her insight into the afterlife, I was sure of it. It was like she straddled this world and the next. She must have known that Kira would be the one for me.

Chapter nine

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