Vicious Minds

by J. J. McAvoy

  I slackened immediately, and he took the weapon from me. He reached over and put it in a drawer. I looked around the room, panic rising again.

  “Where is she?” I shot upright.

  “Relax,” he repeated, nodding to a small white and gold bassinet beside me on the rather large bed. There she was, fully cleaned, dressed in a light pink onesie and matching hat, even a blanket over her. I reached over to touch her cheek, smiling.

  Looking around, I noticed we weren’t in the attic anymore. It looked like another luxury hotel suite, with its own small living room, kitchen, and bathroom. However, the monitors and IV as well as the call button made our location obvious.

  “You brought us to a hospital?”

  “You need to eat. She’ll wake up soon wanting food too.” He spoke in a hushed tone. He placed the tray of food he had at his side, which I hadn’t noticed until now, over my lap. Chicken and rice soup, a bowl of fruit, and a large Italian salad. My gaze shifted to the kitchen, some of the same food on the counter, and then back to him. His tie was gone and his shirt was unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up at the elbows. His dark brown hair was uncharacteristically tousled .

  He cooks?

  “Yes, I cooked.” He answered like he could read my mind and handed me a spoon. “No chef here, but it’s good enough to be eaten. And yes, this this a hospital. But no one comes to this floor and no one can get in this room unless they have a code, or you push for help. This room specifically was where my grandmother would hide away after getting a few…facial updates, as she calls them. Believe me, it is secure.”

  “You brought us both here, cleaned her…” I glanced down at the light pink silk robe I now wore, “and me without anyone noticing or me waking up?”

  “What?” He grinned. “You thought only you could be so sneaky? My brother and I have done much harder things growing up. Now eat.”

  I took the spoon, eyeing him carefully before lifting the soup to my lips. I took a sip, kind of hoping it would be horrible, but sure enough it was very good.

  “You’re full of surprises, Mr. Callahan.”

  “You’re one to talk.” He moved to the other side of the bed, taking a seat beside the bassinet. He placed his hand on it and rested against the head board. He stroked her stomach gently. “We still need to name her.”

  I lifted the bowl and leaned back as well. “I can’t think of anything. I just feel like calling her beautiful.”

  “So, Bella then?”

  “God no, it reminds me of my sister.” I grimaced at the thought of her being anything like Bellarose. “But it should be something Italian, seeing as her last name is Irish.”

  He grinned, looking down at her and speaking softly. “Your parents are off to a bad start, aren’t we?”

  I smiled, taking another bite and really trying to think. “I want something strong, beautiful, that stands on its own but has a family feel to it. Something Italian so people know she is both Italian and Irish…technically more Italian.”

  “Why don’t we just name her Italy?” He rolling his eyes at me.

  “Fine.”

  He frowning. “No. I’m not naming my daughter after a country or a car. Those people grow up to be snobs.”

  “Fine.” I was licking my spoon when a thought came to my mind. “Your mother.”

  “No.” He shot me down quickly.

  “Why? Because you’re hunting her down?”

  “Why not Bella?”

  My eyebrow twitched and my eyes narrowed, but he just stared back. He looked as if he was saying he was willing to fight me.

  “My sister hasn’t done anything great. Your mother, on the other hand…and not just her. The whole Giovanni family is respected still in Italy, and even here. The family that grew from nothing to conquer the whole world. Naming her after your Italian side…”

  “And yours?” He was no longer listening to me. “The Orsini family is just as respected. Pick something from your family tree and then it would be like our families joining.”

  I knew this moment would come someday, but I never thought it would happen like this. I had daughter. My daughter. Both of her parents were here, both of them loved her…she was a product of that love and that warmed parts of me I didn’t think I had. So I faced him and said, “I lied to you, I’m not an Orsini.”

  ETHAN – AGE 24

  Chicago, Illinois

  Sunday, March 10th

  My mind went blank. I didn’t understand.

  “What?”

  “I’m not an Orsini,” she repeated, placing her bowl back on the tray. “Not by blood, anyway.”

  “You were adopted?” No, I had seen her mother and her sisters, and she looked like them.

  She nodded and her grey eyes never left my own. I could tell she was trying to keep her voice void of emotion. “I told you my mother didn’t want me. That was true. But it wasn’t because she and my adoptive father don’t love each other. She was raped. You noticed how I barely showed until the last month or two…it was kind of the same for my mother. She had taken the morning after pill. She did everything she thought she was supposed to do. And then I think she started to lie to herself. She was in denial about being pregnant, she hoped it was her husband’s…but deep down she knew. When you look at us, you notice my grey eyes. So, my adoptive father knew. They kept me, but my mother had deep scars from that moment…which she often took out on me. Apparently, I have the same eyes as the man who attacked her. So, often, she would see me and try to kill me. Smothering, choking, poisoning, drowning, everything short of putting a gun to my head and firing. My mother tried to kill me many times, and everyone would just tell me to try to understand and keep this disgrace quiet for the sake of the family.”

  “So you did?”

  She nodded again. “What else could I do? I was child. The adults told me to be quiet and accept it, that she didn’t really mean it. So I did. Teachers started noticing the bruises, and I learned how to play with makeup to hide them, to protect her. Later I chose to go to military school. Anyway, long story short, sometimes I feel like a fraud calling myself Calliope Orsini…the Orsini name is a fake shield in my mind. I don’t want to remember all of that when I look at my own daughter. So like I said, we are picking from your family. A family she belongs to without any doubts.”

  That was that. She drank her water and tried to get up. Getting up off the bed, I walked around to her side and gave her my hand.

  She took it and held on to the IV pole. “I’m fine going to the bathroom. Stay with her, I don’t want her to be alone.”

  Ignoring her, I helped her walk to the bathroom. She didn’t fight me. She didn’t have the strength to. I opened the door and she went inside, holding on to the wall rails. Closing the door behind her, I leaned against it as I stared at our daughter, this innocent child who now had a death grip on my heart. I wondered what I would do for her…how far I would go for her. It reminded me of my own mother. I felt her…not physically, but in my memories, all of her hugs, all the time she held ran her hands through my hair. Her yelling, us swimming together, her teaching me how to shoot…her yelling. My father teaching me to drive, him giving me lectures at the most awkward and uncomfortable moments…him saving me from my mother’s yelling. All the times he’d just sit with me, said nothing, just sat down and did his work next to me. It made me laugh and smile until I remembered her death…his death…their fake deaths. I could feel that pain coming back but I pushed it back as I always did.

  But my pain is nothing in comparison to what Calliope had pushed down. I didn’t want to think of what her childhood must have been like because then I’d want kill her whole family…and they were now my family by fucking connection.

  “Come up with something?” she asked when she opened the door, and this time I didn’t have to guide her. She reached out to me to hold onto my arm.

  “Yes.” I helped her back onto the bed, lifting the tray and setting it over her.

  “Really?”


  I nodded. “Giovanna A. Callahan.”

  She grinned. “Giovanni…Giovanna. I like it. I’ll tell my family her name is Giovanna Siena Orsini-Callahan? Siena after my grandmother.”

  “I want to keep some family traditions. They can add as many names as they want. Siena, Orsini…whatever. But her name is Giovanna A. Callahan.”

  “Athena, then.”

  Right on cue, Giovanna woke up, starting to cry. Calliope reached over, picking her up from the bassinet.

  “Hi, Giovanna. That’s you, Giovanna Athena Callahan.” She kissed her forehead before undoing her robe and pressing the baby to her breast again. She latched on like a little vacuum.

  “Father Macrae has cancer, and it’s progressing fast. I think he wanted to do something big. I heard the nuns speaking about it. That’s why he came to Chicago. He wanted to die as the man who condemned Ethan A. Callahan.” She rocked Giovanna. “I didn’t know beforehand, but when I found out I put something in his cup which would irritate his throat and give him a bad cough.”

  So that was it. I huffed, annoyed. “How weak. He tried to attack when he thought had nothing left to lose. Meanwhile nuns are selling babies, and the Pope is hiring assassins. Hypocrites…all of them.” I shook my head.

  “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints,” she teased with a grin on her face.

  I rolled my eyes at that, still somewhat amazed at how beautiful she looked. How all of this felt.

  “Giovanna Callahan…Calliope Callahan.” She froze when I said their names. It wasn’t the first time I had said it, but after what she told me…it meant something different now. Leaning over, I placed my forehead on hers. “Calliope Orsini is just your mask. The person you really are, the one nobody can take or taint, is Calliope Callahan, mother of my daughter and my soon to be wife. You, me, her…we’re a family…a family we choose happily.”

  She nodded and smiled. “You know Giovanna means ‘the Lord is gracious’, right? That’s a perfect message for this Sunday.”

  She laughed and so did I.

  Because I had my family.

  La mia anima and il mia Tesoro. My soul and my treasure.

  Chapter 12

  “I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark.”

  ~Andrea Gibson

  ETHAN - AGE 26

  Rome, Italy

  Friday, April 25th

  Something was wrong.

  I knew it.

  I felt it.

  Like the breath of a hungry wolf on the back of my neck, I could feel the danger looming over me. It made the hair on my arms rise and chest tighten. I looked around the café, but only saw my men, as well as few tourists happily talking amongst themselves. My gaze shifted to the street, however it was more of the same tourists taking pictures in front of…everything from the water fountains to the buildings themselves. It was busy, but Rome was always busy, and this wasn’t even peak tourist season. Even still, my people were in the crowds, amongst the tourists, and furthermore this was my country, my mother’s country. No one would dare try anything here. So why? Why did I feel this pit in my stomach? Why did everything feel like it was slowing down, as if I were watching my last few moments of life? What was this feeling of dread?

  “Ethan. Ethan?” I looked over to her, the brunette sitting across from me, smiling stupidly. She reached over and put her hand on my mine, and instinctively I pulled it back and sat back in my chair. “No need to be so distant now, not after last night.”

  The moment she said that, the memories tried to force their way to the forefront of my mind, but I pushed them back.

  “You wanted breakfast, so order breakfast, Klarissa.” I let my disinterest show, lifting my phone from the table.

  “I said I wanted to treat you to my favorite breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I focused on the phone in my hands.

  “You know the colder you are, the more I like you.” She giggled and lifted her hand, calling over the server who was standing by attentively. He rushed over the moment she did, and she didn’t even let him speak before ordering. “I’ll have a prima colazione, with cappuccino and cornetto, what about you, baby?”

  The moment she addressed me, my head snapped up to look at her, to see if maybe she’d lost her mind and sure enough, she stared at me, completely oblivious to how close I was to ripping off her head and throwing it in the street for the birds. Instead, I looked to the server.

  “You may go.” I directed, and he nodded, leaving just as quickly as he came. When he did, I turned to her, lifting my hands to warn her carefully. “You will address me as Ethan or Mr. Callahan, am I clear?”

  She flinched, pulling back some, and nodded.

  “Excellent. When your food comes, eat quickly.” I went back to my phone already dialing…for the third time this morning, since I’d missed her two calls last night. She never called twice. So I knew it was important. However, she was not answering.

  Something—

  “…. say Roma!” I heard voices, laughter, and the sound of water on the other end of the line. “Let’s get something from the café.”

  There it was again…that dread. Looking over to the street again, I saw them. A group of tourists pointing to this very café. And in the distance, between the archways of the gallery across the pavilion, she stood in long, V-neck floral white dress, her long brown hair wavy, her grey eyes staring directly into mine.

  “What’s wrong?” I said into the phone. Something was off. Her posture was odd; her shoulders were hunched slightly. She didn’t reply. She just reached up to what must have been a Bluetooth in her ear, turned, and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.

  Calliope?

  I wanted to call out, but all I could do was stand, nearly knocking over the server who came with Klarissa’s breakfast.

  “Ethan?” She tried to get up, but again I held my hand out for her to stay where she was. I looked over to Tobias who got up from his table.

  “Sir?”

  “Wait for her to eat and then return her back to the house,” I ordered, taking my blazer from the chair.

  “And you?—”

  “I’m going for a walk. No one is to follow me.”

  “Sir.”

  I stepped into his face to look at him directly. “No one is to follow me, am I understood?”

  He nodded, and I walked through the iron gates on to the cobblestone streets, crossing the pavilion to where she had just been. The closer I got, the clearer it became that she hadn’t left anything there. I dialed again but it didn’t even ring before I got a text.

  Via Margutta 54A,

  Spagna, Rome, Italy

  It wasn’t far from here, maybe a seven-minute walk at most, however I took a longer route, making sure I wasn’t followed. I walked through neighborhood streets, something I remembered doing with my mother when I was child. Not in Rome, though. It was a good way to see people, our people, our way of life, on display and unfiltered. It was relaxing, but as I walked I couldn’t shake this feeling. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I the closer I got to this address the more I instinctively knew this would hurt. Whatever it was, this would hurt. I tried to think of what it could be, but for some reason my mind was blank, like I subconsciously did not want to know. Despite my dread and hesitation, my feet led me all the way to a townhouse on the corner of the street, the building itself partially covered in red flowers, as if they were fighting to swallow the house whole. Walking up the steps, I opened the wooden door, and pressed the button for 54A, which opened the second door inside, allowing me access to the staircase.

  When I got to the door I paused, and as if she sensed me there, she opened the door. The emotionless look she wore earlier had intensified; her grey eyes looked lifeless, like she couldn’t see me…or maybe she saw right through me. She said nothing and stepped to the side, letting me in. She closed the door behind her, but it was more like she was securing a vault. From the outsid
e, it looked like normal door, but inside it was made of steel, with an automatic keypad.

  I waited for her to acknowledge me; to explain what was going on. She did neither. She walked a few steps into a kitchen furnished in wood and stone and announced, “Giovanna has an ear infection; she’s resting in first bedroom. With the medications, she isn’t going to remember much of the day. If you want to see her, now is the chance.”

  If I want to see her? What the fuck did that mean? I didn’t ask now, instead I put my jacket down on the couch and turned to walk down the hall.

  “Wait.”

  I turned back to her and she was holding a blonde wig and thick rimmed glasses.

  “I’m not wearing those.” I was sick of wearing a disguise when I went to see my own damn daughter.

  She didn’t bother asking. She met me outside the bedroom door and put the glasses on my face before shoving the damn wig on top of my head, packing my hair inside. She was concentrating hard, and even though she didn’t smile or even look at me, I found her cute. Just as I was about to reach out and touch her, she backed away from me, walking down the hall without another word. I watched her go for a moment before I reached for the doorknob. A green light blinked right beside it and the door opened. There in the middle of a large low platform bed, holding on to a stuffed lamb, was my little girl. Her dark brown hair was neatly tucked behind her ears, which were a little red, and she had an ice pack on her forehead. I stared at her for a few beats, listening to her soft snoring. Walking inside, I heard another beep, and I looked over to the mirror mounted on the wall where another small green light went on.

  What happens if it isn’t green? Do I fall through a trap door? Ignoring it, I sat down beside her, brushing my hand on her cheek.

  “Tesoro mia, perdonami, (My treasure, forgive me.),” I whispered softly to her, placing my hand on her forehead and luckily, she wasn’t burning up. “Papà avrei dovuto essere qui, (Dad should have been here.) Sei forte, (You are strong.).”