Vicious Minds

by J. J. McAvoy

  He poured himself a full glass without ice and took a seat behind his desk. He kicked his feet on top of the desk and took a sip. I glanced over at my uncles who sat quietly on the couches. Across from them were our cousins. Darcy simply shook his head at me and Sedric’s mouth dropped open. So I went on.

  “And she’s on her way here because her senile grandfather kidnapped her daughter to bring to you because he wants you to take responsibility for your fucking actions despite the fact that this woman apparently isn’t a fan of yours.”

  “I think it’s more about him getting to be part of this family again. He was a big fan apparently,” Ethan answered, drinking again.

  What the fuck? How the fuck was this real life?

  “What happens if she asks for her daughter and doesn’t want to stay?” Darcy asked, and Ethan paused, looking up from his glass. I prepared to duck.

  Ethan’s grip on the glass tightened. “Why would you ask me such a stupid question? My daughter is staying where she belongs. That is here. That is all.”

  “Ethan, other than the fact that this woman kills people for a living and she is coming here under the belief that someone stole her daughter, we know nothing about her,” I stated, trying to see if maybe I understood wrong or maybe he knew something he wasn’t yet sharing.

  “She kills people. We kill people. We already have something common.”

  “We sell drugs. That’s different from assassination,” I reminded him, not sure what the hell was going through his mind. It was like he was in his own little world. Which wasn’t out of the character for him, but I’d never seen that look in his eyes before. It was like a storm was brewing.

  He laughed, and he finally focused on me; “Why do you sound scared? It’s not like you, brother. Don’t you want to know who wins this showdown? Mafia versus Assassin. It’s like a movie.”

  Maybe he was having a mental break? It was just too much for one day and he couldn’t process it?

  “Just so you know, in the movies when it starts raining outside and an assassin is on their way to your house, that usually means you’re not making it to the next movie.” Sedric told him.

  “And not to play the race card,” Darcy spoke up, and we all knew where he was going. “But I am the only black guy here.”

  “I’m Asian,” Sedric reminded him.

  “You’re half-Asian.”

  “You’re half-Black!” Sedric shot back.

  “I’m half-Italian,” Ethan said to them, making them both look at him. They were shocked he jumped in but didn’t miss a beat.

  “You’re white,” they both said.

  “I know,” Ethan drank some more. “I just thought we were sharing obvious facts with each other.”

  “Are you all done?” I asked them, truly feeling as if I’d lost my damn mind. His behavior, even before this, when he’d picked me up at the hospital…it was off. That plus all of this…and our parents. I wondered if I really died and this was just the beginning of hell?

  Fuck it! Fine!

  Reaching over I took the bottle of brandy and drank straight from it, cringing before speaking again. “Ten million on the mafia.”

  Ethan raised his eyebrow at me. “You always did make safe bets.”

  “So you have a plan.”

  “Welcome her with open arms?” The fact that I didn’t know whether or not he was being honest was the reason I often lost my cool around him. He gave me a headache. This family… “Why can’t one thing be simple with you?”

  “Says the man in love with his cousin.” He snickered, but stiffened when he heard Uncle Declan exhale deeply behind us.

  Son of bitch did that on purpose.

  “I have a question,” Uncle Neal boomed, kicking his feet up on the table and never was I more I grateful to him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “No, not for you.” He pointed to Darcy. “Isn’t it only in horror movies that the black guy dies first?”

  “Uncle Neal!” I snapped. Fuck me for thinking he was going to ask something serious. Ethan just rolled his eyes.

  “What? I want to know. If it’s not, then who would be the first to go?”

  “It’s a trick question,” Uncle Declan replied, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling sharply. “Nine times out ten there is no Asian in the movie, so the black guy dies first. One out of ten times there is an Asian, but he blends with the white people so the black guy still dies first.”

  “Mom told you that, didn’t she?” Darcy asked.

  “This joke has gone on way too long,” I told them. Ethan just sat there happily like a drunk cat. “We’ve all lost our motherfucking minds.”

  Chapter 19

  “And the women answered one another

  as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands,

  and David his ten thousands.”

  * * *

  ~1 Samuel 18:7

  SEDRIC

  “This is a bit much,” I murmured, mostly to myself. It had taken all of two hours for our home to become an armed fortress. It reminded me of the Terracotta Army, aka the eight thousand sculpted soldiers that Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, had in his tomb. Except it wasn’t eight thousand soldiers, it was a hundred men with guns, which might as well have been eight thousand ancient warriors. They lined the halls and filled the courtyard out back and out in front. None of them seemed to understand why they were called, but they stood tall, proud, and eager to prove themselves anyway.

  Which made all of this even more ridiculous. What was Ethan thinking?

  “Two more minutes until she gets here.” Darcy checked his watch as he stepped up beside me at the top of the stairs

  “You guess,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  I looked him, still baffled. “You don’t think this is insane? Ethan has called one hundred men to face one woman who he knows nothing about other than some old Italian mobster with dementia told him she’s an assassin. What if he was just speaking out of anger? What if she has no plans to fight and just wants her daughter back? He hurt his cause by putting this much pressure on her. Maybe she’s afraid of the family and didn’t show herself before. Maybe I’m understating her and she’s Lara Croft meets the Terminator. Option one: she magically figures out how to kill all of us and get her daughter and Ethan loses. Doubt it. So option two: she dies, and Ethan kills the mother of his child. Making him 3 for 3 in one goddamn year, and mentally screwing up his daughter….so he loses. So again, this is insane. And not how Ethan does things.”

  “You’re right.” He nodded, leaning on the railing and watching the men below us. “But like always you’re being logical at the wrong time.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “If this seems crazy to all of us, don’t you think it seems crazy to him too? Ethan’s trying to prove a point, you heard him in there, he said she made him look like a fool. So now he’s trying to show her who the boss is. All of this is a show. He’s not out to kill her…yet.” He checked his watch again. “You have to give her credit though, it takes a lot to get under Ethan’s skin like this.”

  “Yeah, just one illegitimate child—ah…ouch!” I snapped, rubbing the back of my head. “What?”

  He looked at me as if wanted to smack me again. “Do you really think calling his daughter illegitimate is something he’s not going care about?”

  “That’s what children out of wedlock are called, Darcy—”

  “Yeah, in 1930.”

  “Or in the mafia!” I snapped back. “But whatever, I won’t say it. I can’t wait for this damn day to be over so we can get to work…real work. We’re just standing post over the men in black over here. It’s not like she’s just going to walk through the front door—”

  DING

  DONG

  DING

  I didn’t want to turn towards the door, so I just looked forward into his brown face. “She did not just use the front bell.”

  Darcy huffed, fighting bac
k a laugh, and the men at the door looked to us. He nodded to them as I whispered. “I really hope she has a punchline and not a gun.”

  It felt like the air was electrified. The black hair on my white arms rose as the front door creaked open. The dense sound of rain beating down on the concrete became louder as the door opened wider and the cold air flowed into the foyer. I couldn’t see her under the large black umbrella nor could I hear what the guard said to her. However, he took a step back and she walked inside, closing the umbrella. The first thing I noticed was her wavy chocolate brown hair with highlights that stopped at her shoulder. She stood there smiling politely at the guard as she took off her long trench coat, revealing a fitted black turtleneck sweater with black wide leg black satin pants and red heels. Not exactly battle gear.

  She said something to the guard, making him look to us. I glanced over to Darcy whose brown eyes narrowed at her and I knew what he was thinking.

  She was beautiful.

  Not just beautiful, but almost angelic…innocent. Big grey eyes, bright pink link lips, and an oval face with two small beauty marks: one under her right eye and the other beside her lip. So much for Ethan getting drunk and screwing some ugly waitress. We knew it wasn’t possible but still…fucking annoying. Even when he wasn’t trying, the man slept with goddamn Victoria’s Secret models.

  “Hi.” She waved her hand slightly, trying to get our attention. “My name is Calliope Seraphina Orsini, I’m Giovanna’s mom. I called earlier to say I was picking her up at this time.”

  Beautiful.

  Soft spoken.

  A kind smile.

  Everything about her depicted the image of a good person, a Hallmark channel type of person. But that was the thing that put me on edge. Good people don’t find our family. Good people don’t sleep with us, and good people don’t carry and keep the child of mobsters, hide them, and then demand that child back so gently when they are taken away.

  “Welcome to Callahan Manor, Calliope,” I spoke up, leaning on the rail. “Our cousin informed us you’d be coming and that you should already be aware that Giovanna is not going anywhere…after all she’s a Callahan and like I said, this is Callahan Manor.”

  “Is Ethan here so we could speak like adults about this?” she asked, still politely looking between us.

  “If you wanted to speak like adults, why didn’t you give him a chance four years ago? It seems odd you are expecting a courtesy you didn’t offer him,” Darcy questioned.

  “I see.” She frowned and exhaled. She looked around the foyer before taking a few steps forward, and the guards who moved towards her fell to their knees. They lifted their guns but before they could even say anything one by one all of them fell like dominoes.

  “What the—” Before I could get the words out, I coughed. Over and over again until my legs weakened. Searching out Darcy, I saw him on his knees, gasping for breath. Casually she walked up the stairs, her heels clicking on the marble as she towards us while my vision blurred.

  “Don’t worry, the poison is only temporary,” she said as she pressed the button for the elevator.

  How?

  I wanted to ask, but my voice was no longer working. When she the doors opened, she stepped inside and spun on her heels. “What floor?”

  But I couldn’t answer.

  “Oh well, I’ll figure it out then. And thank you for the welcome Sedric, Darcy,” she said and started to hum to herself. As the doors closed, she let go of something on her umbrella. It was the fucking umbrella. Fuck!

  NARI

  When the elevators doors opened, she was gone. Her bag, her coat, umbrella, even her Gucci red leather pumps with studded bumble bees were there, but she wasn’t.

  “Look up,” I ordered the guard as he moved into the elevator, holding the mask over his mouth and nose. He checked the ceiling. I expected her to drop down, but he just shook his head.

  “She’s not here—”

  “Is the latch undone? Maybe she climbed out?”

  He reached up for the latch, and again I expected to see her drop down, but she wasn’t there.

  What in the hell—I froze at the tap on my shoulder. It wasn’t possible. I watched her on the camera feed. I saw her get into the elevator and it was three second ride—”

  “Just because you don’t turn around doesn’t mean I’m not still behind you, Nari.” Her voice sent chills down my spine.

  Spinning, I lifted my leg and just before it connected her face, a needle was plunged into my calf. I screamed at the fiery pain as it shot up my leg. She pulled out the needle and I couldn’t move it. My whole leg went stiff as if it was encased in cement. She closed the distance between us, and with her perfectly manicured nail she pulled the mask off my mouth.

  With a smile on her face she said, “When you’re about kick with your right leg you pull your left arm back. You should train more so something like this doesn’t happen to you again.”

  This bitch. “I’m…going…to kill you…”

  “You don’t have that kind of power. But I never want to discourage anyone from their dreams so keep at it. Who knows, in forty years you might make me break a nail. Good luck.”

  With the softest touch she was able to push me onto my ass. She walked around me, and I tried to move but I couldn’t. I wanted to rip her eyes out. She was worse than Dona.

  I watched as she walked back past me again, this time putting her heels back on. She’d gotten everything she’d left in the elevator.

  How?

  HELEN

  Light-headed, I opened the door to my room only to see the guards outside my door now all laying in the hall. In the middle of it all stood a woman looking down at her phone. She glanced up at me, her eyebrow raised.

  “Isn’t this Wyatt’s room?” she asked, confused.

  “Who are you?” I retorted. The men on the floor were still breathing. If she wanted to actually kill them, I’m sure she’d already have done it.

  “Calliope Seraphina Orsini, Giovanna’s mom. You don’t look well.” There was concern in her voice and she looked me over.

  I stared back at her and nodded. “I have the flu. I’ve been asleep most of the day, so I haven’t been updated on whatever the hell is going on right now. However, it looks like we aren’t doing very well.”

  She giggled and tilted her head at me as if I were some adorable child. Or her little sister. “Not at all. But in your family’s defense, I’m very hard to stop, and it seems your cousin isn’t really in this to win; he just enjoys making me play this little game of his.”

  “That sounds like the man you had a child with. So, on that note, good luck, I’m going go back to sleep now.” I nodded to her.

  “Good night,” she said as I closed the door. I didn’t move, instead listening against the wood of the door for her footsteps when I heard it...

  Tap

  Tap.

  “No, Helen, I haven’t moved, because I know you’re going to want to stick your head back out. And that’s going to make me think you’re up to something, and I really don’t want to have to put you down too. You seem like you’ve already had a rough couple of days.”

  “Is the concern in your voice real?” I asked.

  “No. I just met you, why would I be concerned?” she answered honestly. “However, it doesn’t make what I said any less truthful.”

  She was right, and if she’d gotten this far into the manor it meant either Ethan was letting her come or she really was that hard to stop…maybe a little of both. My hand still ached. My head was on fire and the world was spinning, so I locked the door and loudly let her know I wasn’t coming out.

  The odds of anyone who wasn’t family walking the halls of this house against our wishes and living to tell the story were slim to none. An enemy walking through our house was a death sentence. Even when we had parties, people never went where we did not allow. For her to walk through this house the way she did…it meant she had no fear. But was that her nature or just confidence
in this situation?

  “Ugh, my head,” I grumbled, crawling onto Wyatt’s bed. Just as my face hit the pillow I froze.

  The only way she’d know this was Wyatt’s room without ever being here is if she had blueprints. But there was only one set of blueprints and they were sketched by Ethan himself.

  How the hell?

  BUZZ.

  BUZZ.

  “Hello?” I said into my cellphone.

  “Are you okay? Don’t open the door.” Wyatt spoke quickly.

  “I’m fine, but why?”

  “Calliope, Giovanna’s mom is outside my room. She just took down the guards there.”

  “I know. What do you mean just? She left a few seconds ago.”

  “What? I’m watching the cameras now, the door just opened—”

  “Wyatt, that already happened. Something must be wrong with the camera…shit.” I muttered, sitting back up remembering how I saw her on her phone. “She’s hacked into my network and delayed the time on the feed, Wyatt! She’s at least thirty seconds ahead of all of you. What is going on? Is she a hacker?”

  “Try assassin.”

  I pulled the phone from my ear to just stare at it. Placing it back I said, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to repeat that one more time. I think my brain was rebooting.”

  “A.S.S.A.S.S.I.N, assassin,” he spelled and repeated for me. “Ethan is letting a crazy woman walk through our house, putting our guards to sleep. Why? I don’t fucking know!”

  I tried to think. Again, if this was such a big deal Ethan wouldn’t care if I was half dead, I’d be fixing the damn cameras.

  “Wyatt…do you think they’re flirting with each other?”

  “In what universe did anything I say sound like flirting?” he replied, baffled.