The Blackthorn Syndicate

Chapter 12 - Noah

I didn't know what bothered me. The fact that I had perhaps misjudged the girl or the fact I could not see through the façade.

She ate her meal quietly, nodding or smiling every now and then in response to Willow. Last night after dinner, when the girl had left for her room I had asked Willow to come to my office where I had thoroughly interrogated her for every piece of information she had gathered for me.

Willow was frustrated by the end of it, I was more so.

"God help you Willow if I find out you have withheld anything!" I had raged and Willow had frowned back.

"I don't understand why you are so fixated on her! We literally didn't talk all that much! She's just really shy! Besides, why would you expect her to be forthcoming? We are strangers!"

I had lost my cool at that.

"We are not strangers Willow. I am a gangster, your other brother is a gangster and you are the sister of a gangster as well. She is the daughter of Henry Callahan and information is currency, so you are going to start from the beginning and tell me everything. I don't care what you think is or is not important. You will tell me everything as it is to the very last breath."

Willow had been right, there wasn't anything important but I had found one thing.

The girl liked to cook.

Once Willow had left in a fit of anger when I prodded more I had thought over that one piece of information in my head. In London's upper society, cooking wasn't particularly something the rich liked to do simply out of judgement. It implied perhaps they weren't rich enough to afford a cook and in the new world post war, everyone wanted to be wealthier than the next.

I had sat for hours thinking over that one detail. Was it actually the truth or had the girl said it on a whim? But, the detail was so insignificant there was no reason to lie.

I don't know why I analysed this one piece of information over and over again. I imagined her covered in flour with a tray of cookies, I imagined her stirring a pot of stew. Something more than the stoic appearance of a prim and proper girl, so composed.

A sense of excitement had filled me last night at the thought of getting under her skin the next day. When she would have no one to spend her birthday with but things hadn't gone as expected.

Today was much like yesterday. The girl had woken up at five and read the newspaper in the living room with a cup of tea. The only addition was the pen she had asked for to do the crossword puzzle.

I hadn't gone to her, instead I had stared at her from the shadows as she silently read the paper before going back to my office. Henry Callahan hadn't called again but he had dropped off a small present that was now in my office drawer.

Like I said, it was too early to reward a dog yet to be disciplined. Besides, it was early to conclude Esmeralda's indifference; it was just the beginning of the day.

However, as dinner ended and the girl showed no sign of acknowledgement of her birthday I had found myself wrong once more.

She really didn't care.

I loved my sister and no matter how far I was, I could never imagine missing her birthday. She had high expectations and would always tell me what all her friends had gotten and how they had big parties or visited lavish places.

But the girl before me just spent the day in her own company. She had not once asked me to visit her father or go anywhere. Besides, she didn't know she was a captive. Requesting any of those things would have been fine.