by J. J. McAvoy
“And he can make that back before the month is over!” he snapped, glaring into my eyes. “You want to prove it? Hurt them in a way they can never recover. You can’t kill all of them, but you can kill one of them.”
“Grandpa.” I gasped.
“It doesn’t have to be Ethan. But it must be more than an appendage,” he said, lifting the arm and giving it back to me. “You have a week. Give me a body and you will have your time.”
I stared at the dark circles under his eyes.
“What?” he questioned. “Did your job become hard all of a sudden? That’s odd. Because you’ve never hesitated before? Are you having a hard time choosing? Or is it—”
“Keep the arm; it’s a gift,” I muttered, stepping back toward the door. “I’ll get your body.”
“Calliope,” he called out from behind me. “No tricks. Don’t want anyone coming back in the final act with a surprise for me.”
I didn’t reply, walking out of hell as fast as I could.
I had set myself up for this.
I knew it from the very beginning. The only thing that would satisfy him was Callahan blood.
Both Ethan and Gigi’s faces flashed through my mind. I wanted to sink into the concrete under my feet and hide from my crimes, past and present.
But all I could do was keep going forward.
ETHAN
I could see a thick, black cloud and orange glow of the fire rising from the elementary school from over a mile away.
“How much did they get out?” I asked Monk.
“Not much…about a quarter, Boss. We just didn’t have enough time. The feds were able to get it from the other houses.”
I said nothing, staring out the window at the glow. I was amazed they were able to get as much as they had. There was no possible way for them to be able to clear out the whole school. Nor should there have ever been a reason for it. What the fuck was the point of paying moles if they only saved me a quarter of my investments? A ten-minute heads up meant they had either just found out about it themselves, or they were made.
I tried to close my eyes when I heard the sirens behind my car.
“What the hell?” Monk mumbled, meeting my gaze in the rearview mirror. There were certain license plates the Chicago PD knew to simply ignore. So, either this cop was new and didn’t get the memo, or he was a moron looking for a fight he would not win.
“Pull over,” I commanded.
When he did, the car followed, parking right behind us. Switching off my phone and tablet, I placed them onto the seat beside me. The officer walked annoyingly slow but finally managed to get to the driver’s side window.
“How can I help you, officer?” Monk asked him.
“This car was identified leaving the scene of a crime,” he answered and then glanced back to me, his shades so dark I could see my own reflection in the glass. “I’m going to need to see identification from you both.”
“Officer, I can give you mine, but my boss—”
“It’s fine, Monk,” I said, taking out my wallet I tossed it up front.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to both of us before walking back to his car.
“Did you get his badge number?” I questioned Monk, leaning back into the leather seat.
“I did. You want me to dial it in, sir?” I looked through the side mirrors back at the cop. There was no possible way this car would have not only been identified, but used at a crime scene.
“Sir.”
“Do it,” I said just as the cop started to make his way back, but this time he didn’t go toward the driver’s side. He came toward the passenger side. Monk immediately reached into his coat.
“Calm down,” I said to him, if this cop wanted to kill me, he would have done it earlier. Even if he were a fake cop, if he’d gone through this much effort to look this real, he should have been smart enough to know when and where was the best chance to kill someone.
He tapped on the window, and I slid it down.
“Mr.…Calla…Callahan.” He still managed to butcher it through that thick accent of his. “I’ma need you to step out the car for a moment.”
“For what reason?”
“My reason,” he shot back.
I hope it was a good enough reason to die, I thought, opening the door and stepping out. The man was almost my height, a bit shorter, and he was fit, another odd thing for a cop, especially one with grays in his hair and chin. He looked me up and down, the sun’s glare reflecting off his shades.
“And what is the reason for this officer?” I pressed again.
Randomly a smile broke across his face as he pushed the sunglass down the bridge of his nose, allowing me to see his green eyes.
“That would be rule number one.”
Dad?
LIAM
He stood there like time had frozen. In a way, it felt like a movie, like I’d stepped back in time and got to look back at myself, only slighter taller, grimmer faced, and no sense of humor.
“Why don’t we step inside my office?” I nodded to the car I’d borrowed; he didn’t even bother looking.
“Better yet, you step into mine, because the only way I will ever end up in a cop car is dead,” he said coldly, and it kinda reminded me of Mel—how sweet.
“No need to be such a drama queen about it. You might want to let your man know, though.” I nodded to the driver, who was still very obviously holding a weapon inside his coat as he tried to size up this conversation.
Ethan tapped on the window, never looking away from me and never letting any emotion cross his face.
“Yes, Boss.”
“Get out…Officer…” He glanced down at my badge, so I held it out for him to see properly. His jaw cracked to the side. “Officer Allahanc and I need to talk.”
“Yes, Boss.” The lanky boy came hopping out.
Ethan opened the door, entering first before I followed suit when the door closed. The very first thing he said was, “Allahanc? Really?”
“What? You don’t like it?” I snickered, polishing off the badge before taking off my sunglasses.
“I just simply think it’s moronic, for a man who is supposed to be dead to be using an anagram of his legal name as his disguise.”
“Exactly, so moronic no one would even think about it, and therefore, it’s the perfect disguise.”
“Wow,” he whispered. “Wyatt really is just a copy of you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment on both sides, especially considering how much effort you went to in order to get him back on your side.” If he loved the carbon copy of me, that meant, by default, he had loved the original. Even if he didn’t want to admit that now.
“I can’t take all the praise for that.” He frowned. “After all, you and mother were in Boston, too. Tell me, I’ve been curious to know, how does it feel to play fucking God and watch as your children suffer from afar?”
He was barely at the tip of his rage; I could feel it. Even though I expected it, feeling it was a different matter altogether.
“I didn’t come to justify my actions to you, Ethan—”
“How could you? They are unjustifiable, Liam.” He cut in with a coldness that I was prepared for but was still stunned by. The memories I had of my son and the man that was beside me were clashing.
“As are many other shitty things I’ve done,” I declared. “Just like many other shitty things you’ve done. Would you like an apology? If so, I think you should write it, so you can pass it down to your daughter when she wonders why the fuck her father wasn’t there for the first moments of her life.”
“Do not compare us. Being gone in the beginning, during a period she will not remember, is different than vanishing before our eyes.”
I clapped for him. “That is some nice bullshit spinning there, son. You almost sounded wise. Being gone in the beginning? What the fuck does that mean? Where does the beginning start and end? No matter what, you missed your daughter’s life—”
�
�I will not abandon my daughter ever, just to go gallivanting across the world—”
“That gallivanting we did saved your motherfucking life, more times than you could even dream of knowing,” I snapped.
“I will just have to take your word for it, huh? You abandon us and then tell us it was for our own good. That you saved us.” This time he clapped. “Bravo to you, then. They should carve you both out of fucking gold, and bow down to how bloody smart you both fucking were.”
“Ethan—”
“Spare me your bullshit, Liam. Maybe it will work on Wyatt or Dona…oh, especially Dona. Maybe it will erase the years she spent unable to eat, weeping at an empty grave, torturing herself every motherfucking day, trying to live up to a memory of a mother who just threw her away. You both broke us all, to the point where we wished we were dead. But hey, at least you guys defeated the invisible monsters. However, I wanted to know, if you could save us so many times while you were dead, why the fuck were you so weak when you were alive? How the fuck did every other goddamn Callahan manage to raise their children before you?”
There was a way I had hoped this would have gone. It was a stupid and impractical dream, but nevertheless, I still hoped for it. However, the reality was, there was no going back, and he was going to have this hate no matter what I said. He was justified, too.
“I came today to warn you about Calliope and her whole family,” I said, getting to my point.
“I don’t give a flying fuck why you came, Liam. Just go back under the rock you came out of, until I’m ready to kill you.”
At that, I did face him, and there was nothing on his face. “Kill me, you say?” I snickered at that. “Just me, or your mother, too?”
“My parents died a long time ago. You’re just strangers with their faces.”
I nodded and dropped a phone between us before placing my shades back on. “If you do manage to get a chance, son, remember what I taught you, twice—”
“Twice in the head, once in the heart, don’t worry, I don’t miss, Officer Allahanc,” he sneered.
I looked at him, and I saw the little boy who beamed with pride and stuck out his chest, once upon a time simply because someone called him Liam, Jr. Who would have thought that little boy would become this man that could threaten his own father so easily?
“No matter what your feelings are about your mother or me, don’t let it cloud you from seeing the truth—Calliope’s betraying you. Do you think today was an accident? Do you really think that you started to lose face the moment she came into your life by accident? She’s pretending to help you with one hand and destroying you with the other. She won’t just take you down; it will take down the whole family, Ethan.” I tried once more to reach him as I got out of the car.
“You don’t seem to understand, officer,” he stated. “You are nothing…no one to me. But the woman you are slandering is Mrs. Callahan, my wife, and the woman who stood beside me when everyone else left.”
“Stood beside you? Really? Then as your business burns, where is she right now?” I asked him.
“I do not answer to you. Nor am I blind to anything. I am not a child in need of your protection anymore, Liam. So, stay the fuck out of my car and take your shit with you.”
He tossed the phone at my feet, his lanky driver coming to close the door before walking back over to the driver’s side. Just like that, they pulled back onto the main road and down the street.
I stood there for a moment before heading back into the trooper. My heart rate rising, I slammed my hand against the staring wheel.
“He hates us,” Mel whispered from the back seat, still just lying there.
“We already knew that,” I said, turning off the communications which had let her hear everything, too.
“He hates us so much that he won’t listen about that woman,” she sneered. “I never thought he’d be the one to be blinded like this.”
“As long as we told him, we can count on it to eat away at him. There is nothing more painful than being betrayed by a lover.”
“And you know that how?”
I glanced up into the rearview mirror to see only redness in her eyes. What caused it? Lack of sleep? Anger? Or tears? She’d never admit to the last one. However, she’d spent all of her time hacking, listening, and tracking every move Calliope had made since we had found out about her.
“If he can’t do it, we’re going to have to,” she whispered.
“And then he really may kill us,” I whispered, taking off the damn hat and tossing it to the side.
“We failed him by letting her get this close. Whatever the cost, even if he hates us… She needs to die.” Her nails dug into the seat.
“If he does kill us, at least we know we’ve had a nice run,” I muttered, starting the car.
“I’m not ready to die.”
Whoever really was? I thought. “If anyone had told me it would be Ethan that would fall over a woman, I would have laughed so hard, I’d be crying.”
“Maybe that’s why we didn’t see it coming,” she said, lying back down. “Because he was so smart, so gifted, so cold, we kept treating him like he was Superman and not simply a man. That woman saw it and wiggled right in like a goddamn virus.”
“The sooner we get rid of her, the better.”
Ethan would overcome this. If not, maybe it really was left for the second son. I couldn’t tell her that, though.
She loved Wyatt and Dona. But Ethan, as her first—her faith in him was almost biblical. She’d drag him to greatness, even if it killed her. I loved Ethan, but I couldn’t let him destroy the whole family over a woman, not when my own father gave his life to make sure the family survived.
I gripped the steering wheel in annoyance, pain, and anger. “He’s stupidly going to fight to protect her, isn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
Closing my eyes, I nodded slowly and bitterly. “We are going to war again, Mel. I knew we had one more fight, at least. I just wasn’t expecting it to be with our goddamn son.”
“You know what they say, die a hero or live long enough to become a villain,” she muttered from behind me.
“We started off villains, so maybe we’ll end up heroes,” I tried to joke.
But she closed her eyes. “No one is going to win in this war, Liam.”
Yeah, I had the same fucking feeling.
Goddamn this fucking woman to hell for this shit.
15
“It seems to me, that love could be labeled poison,
And we’d drink it anyway.”
~Atticus
ETHAN
“This is my room?” Gigi gasped, jumping up and down even as she held my hand.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes!” she screamed. Letting me go and running toward the large, teal-blue, clam-shaped bed in the center of the room, where my desk once sat. It was covered in every stuffed animal of the sea, and she dove into it like she was actually going to swim. Laughing, she jumped up and down on the bed, holding the fin of one of the stuffed dolphins.
“Gigi be—”
“Thank you, Daddy!” She jumped and rushing to her, I caught her in my arms, holding her to my chest.
“Gigi, you could have gotten hurt.”
“Nope.” She giggled, grinning up at me. “Daddies have to catch you.”
I stared at her little face, the sparkle of complete innocence in both her brown and green eyes. I felt a tightness in my chest, but I just held her tighter. “Is that so? Who made that rule?”
She shrugged. “That’s just the rule.”
“Got it,” I replied, sitting down on the bed with her. “Are there any other rules daddies should know?”
“How to make chocolate waffles.” She broke out of my arms and jumped again but luckily slower and gentler to reach more of the stuffed animals.
“Well, I know how to make those.” Well, I remembered how they were made. “Waffles are your favorite, right?”
“Favori
te morning food. Then—”
“Meatballs!” I finished for her, and she grinned, nodding. “Mommy said you like the color blue the most?”
“No.” She frowned, shaking her head, which made her curls swing around her face.
I frowned, too. “Not blue?”
“I like the ocean color,” she told me.
“Isn’t that blue?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s sparkly blue. Sometimes it's pink and orange.” She hugged the walrus, now rocking back and forth.
So, she liked the reflection of light on—never mind that wasn’t the point, I thought before I got distracted.
“Did you have fun today with Nana?”
“Nana showed me pictures!” she explained, then pointed to her nose. “Daddy has my nose.”
Snickering, I flicked her nose. “No, you have my nose.”
“And ears.” She held them out for me to see.
“All Nana did was show you pictures?”
“No, we went swimming again, and we walked Priscus and Verus, and we made cupcakes, but then Uncle Wyatt ate all of them before you could, Daddy!” She angry-squeezed the stuffed animal to death in her arms. “Nana said to forgive him ‘cause he’s sick,” she muttered. And she wasn’t pleased with that.
“You and I can make cupcakes later.”
She lifted her head, freeing the stuffed prisoner in her arms. “Really?”
“Of course. We’ll do everything together. But right now, lie down. I have a surprise,” I said, lying beside her.
But instead of listening, her head was over mine, all of her hair falling around her face. “A surprise, Daddy?”
“Yes, and you won’t see it until you lie down.”
She immediately plopped down next to me. And I pointed above her bed.
“I don’t see, Daddy,” she replied.
“Wait for it.” I reached back and pressed the button above her bed, and the moment the lights turned off, she gasped even louder than before.
“It’s fishes, Daddy!”