by J. J. McAvoy
“Nana—”
“No. No. It’s fine. I get it. Everyone is grown now,” she said, obviously to further add to my guilt as she walked back to the door.
“Nana…let’s have our own welcome-back-to-Chicago dinner soon, I want to know all about what it takes to live to a ripe old age in this family.” I grinned, knowing she’d want to smack me.
“Call me old again you little shit, and you’ll never make it to thirty,” she replied, and I laughed as she went.
“Love you!” I yelled back toward her.
SLAM!
She’d slammed the door so hard it didn’t even close fully, slightly swinging back open, allowing my uncles to walk into the study. Neal grinned. “You called her old, didn’t you?”
“All I said is I wanted her to teach me how to live as long as she has in this family,” I said.
“Must you fight with everyone?” Declan asked, walking over to the bar.
“Yes,” I nodded. “It’s part of my charm.”
He laughed, walking over to me with a new drink. “You know I never thanked you for what you did.”
I took the glass, not sure what he was talking about. It must have been clear on my face because he added, “Helen. Back then…I was stuck. I wasn’t sure what to do. Your parents wanted things to be done quietly, your aunt was on the verge of a breakdown, and I missed my daughter. You took all the blame, and we got what we wanted. I got what I wanted. Don’t worry about Helen, I’ll talk to her later.”
I nodded, not wanting to rehash this. Luckily, my uncle Neal didn’t want to be out of the loop, either. He pointed to the 1937 Map of the United States Showing Routes of Principal Explorers and Early Roads on the side of the wall between the bookshelves.
“Sayalero is now in control of Miami. Rocha has Houston. Villalobos has from New Mexico to southern California,” Uncle Neal said, reading the lines on the map. Every year Ethan sent us information for the new code. Cartels and other mafia families that were trying to rise up against us, to steal our network for trade. The code matched the lines of the old map in our family study.
“They’re trying to cut us off in the south,” Uncle Declan added, staring at the map. “To do that and not fight each other…”
“Means they’re working together,” I finally spoke. “They’ve been ambushing our routes from South America, something they found out through Tobias, and the Italians backing Savino have been helping them. Dona had the ones she found out taken care of. But it still doesn’t change the fact that…”
“We’ve lost at least half the Italians,” Uncle Declan muttered.
“And the ones we have are now terrified because of your actions at the OC,” Uncle Neal responded, glancing over to me.
“I did what I had to do to stop the bleeding,” I replied, looking at the lines throughout the south. “Fear will at least stop anyone else from turning coat until Ethan gets back and figures out how to unite them again. The ones who did betray us and didn’t get caught, it’s only a matter of time until people begin to turn them over.”
“Fucking grunts…after everything we’ve done for them,” Uncle Neal grumbled as he brought his glass up to his lips, stating before he drank, “At least we always have the Irish.”
“That isn’t enough, Uncle,” I snapped, moving to sit on the couch, leaning back into the seat. “There is rebellion rising against us on every front. Don’t praise the Irish, they were just put in their place because of Ethan…they won’t try anything for the time being. But if it looks like we are losing, they’ll abandon us, too. I don’t trust them and neither should you. Things have changed from back in your day.”
“Back in our day, look at him as if we’re from the stone age,” Uncle Neal snickered, moving to sit on the couch across from me. “The drug wars never change, Wyatt. It’s always about who has the power, the money, and the drugs…and just like in our day, we have them. We just need to defend them.”
I grinned at that. “We do. But we need people, Uncle. The more people, the more power. A rich man isn’t powerful if he has no people. He isn’t a king if he controls no one.”
“So what is it you’re thinking?” Uncle Declan questioned, turning away from the map to face us. “We can’t trust the Irish. We can’t trust the Italians. Then what?”
“Family,” I answered back. “We trust family. You know I’m not the thinker. That’s Ethan.”
Taking the remote, I held it up to the map and clicked it once, watching as the glass over the map highlighted our state of Illinois before zooming into Chicago, breaking up the city by zones. “Before leaving, Ethan apparently was thinking about this plan.”
They both looked but didn’t seem to get it.
“He wants to spend almost five billion dollars redoing these neighborhoods?” Uncle Declan asked, glancing at the costs that were calculated in all of the zones. The amount of money he was willing to spend was insane.
“Is he trying to run for governor in a few years?” Uncle Neal snickered, shaking his head. “He really doesn’t need to do all of this.”
“You all really don’t get it.” I chuckled, enjoying the fact that, for once, they were the idiots in the room.
“Do explain, oh wise one, why your bother wants to spend a few billion redoing the ghettos,” Uncle Declan snarked.
“With pleasure,” I replied in the same tone, finishing off my drink.
“He’s recruiting,” I didn’t have a chance to say, because in walked Darcy, dressed in an all-black dress shirt and black trousers. Behind him was Sedric, dressed in grey trousers and a navy dress shirt.
“You’re both late,” I said, more annoyed that they killed my moment than anything else.
“Apparently, I needed a haircut,” Sedric muttered, running his hand through his shorter and styled black hair. “I feel like I’ve aged.”
“That’s the point,” Darcy replied. He shook his head as he walked in, moving to the bar just as his father did. “No self-respecting man should be walking around with in his hair in a ponytail.”
“Someone is just jealous of my God-given good looks,” Sedric grinned as he threw himself on the couch next to me.
Darcy snorted, kind of the same way Nana had. “Yeah, that was the real reason… deep down I’m dying to be a twenty-five-year-old half-Korean man with a ponytail and no rhythm.”
“What is going on, and don’t you have workouts today?” Uncle Declan cut Darcy off as he sat on the arm of the couch beside me.
Darcy looked at his father for a minute and then back down at me. “Are you going to tell them or not?”
“Seeing you came late and cut me off before I could, have at it, Cuz,” I replied.
He drank first before saying, “I’m retiring from the NBA.”
“You’re what?” Uncle Declan repeated slowly.
“Dad, I’m retiring—”
“I heard you the first time,” Uncle Declan shouted at him. “I’m trying to figure out why a healthy twenty-four-year-old retires from something he loves.”
His eyes shifted to me. “Would you care to explain, Wyatt?”
“I can speak for myself, Father,” Darcy snapped back at him. “But I’m not able to answer your question because I don’t know why a healthy twenty-four-year-old retires from something he loves. After all, I don’t love basketball. I played because Ethan told me to do something outside of the family. I’m stopping because Ethan asked if I could come work with the family. It is my family, too, isn’t it? I have a right to choose whether I want to be in the family business or not, don’t I?”
Uncle Neal sighed, trying to cut in. “Darcy, this isn’t a game—”
“When has it ever been a game?” Sedric questioned, his tone much more serious as he sat up, looking to his father. “Father, you’ve been training us since we were children. How to fight, how to shoot, what it meant to be a Callahan…what it means to the family of the Ceann Na Conairte. You taught us to be loyal. So here we are. Why are you confused? You made us
this way.”
Silence.
It was so thick and heavy that it was suffocating.
“Uncle Neal, Uncle Declan,” I spoke up, leaning forward. “You married outside of the Irish. Just like my father. Except the only difference was that my father worked to bring the Italians up, too. They spent millions to make sure no Irish or Italians found themselves living in the ghettos. They uplifted their people. Uncle Neal, you said things never changed in the mafia, that isn’t true. You changed them. Both of you did. The Irish and Italians keep thinking we need them. But the truth is, they forgot why they need us. Ethan’s plan is our parents. The Blacks and the Asians are our people now, too. Our family is mixed. Our people will be mixed. Sedric and Darcy already have the star power, people love them. No one will think twice if they find out they are retiring to dedicate themselves and their ‘inheritances’ to fixing ‘their communities.’ In fact, people will love them. While that is happening…”
I looked to Darcy to let him explain, but also to make sure he understood as well.
“While you all are taking care of the southern cartels, Sedric and I will be building our own…when you build up the community, gangs break up. A lot of them are lost, and society isn’t going to take them back…they’re going to need a new leader.”
“You’re going to have them follow you,” Uncle Declan replied, his voice emotionless. “You’re going to be the head of former Black gangs, and Ethan is going to be the head of you, making him control the Blacks, the Asians, the Irish, and the Italian. Is he going to have you marry a Spanish woman, too, so we can have the whole diversity spectrum?”
“No one is making me do anything—”
“Okay,” snickered Uncle Declan, clearly not believing him.
I got up from my couch and placed my glass on the coffee table. “I’m guessing you all are going to want to talk. Fine. Take the day and have your father-son time. But remember this isn’t negotiable. This is happening. So get over whatever it is all of you need to get over because every moment we waste is the moment our enemies grow bolder…seeing as one of them already put a bullet through my sister-in-law’s skull, I doubt any of us want to see what bolder is.”
“Wyatt—”
“See you all at dinner,” I cut off Uncle Declan. I didn’t want to hear it right now.
This was the new order.
The mafia evolved to survive, and this was our next evolution.
SIX
“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
~ Plato
DARCY
Whenever my father wanted to have one of those man-to-man talks with me, he took me to the garage, where there would always be something wrong with one of the cars, which he and I both needed to fix. Unfortunately for him, I blind-sided him with this news, so he didn’t have time to prepare a car.
“Dad—”
“Get in,” he said, nodding to his favorite black 1969 Ford Mustang. Rolling my eyes, I moved over to the passenger side. “No, you’re driving.”
He tossed the keys to me.
This is new. I thought but didn’t question him as I moved to the driver’s side. I got in, putting the key to the ignition.
BANG!
I couldn’t help but jump, frantically looking up to the windshield only to see the shattered impact of where his bullet met the glass…the bullet from where the impact would have gone right through my eye. He fired again and again, until the windshield was covered in nothing but cracks, making it almost impossible to see out of it. I couldn’t move…not until the windshield started to cave under the pressure of the tire iron in his other hand. The window held until he finally broke through, glass pouring onto the dashboard. Only when he could see my face did he stop. I opened the door, stepping out just as he shucked the tire iron across the garage. His hair disheveled, his chest rising and falling as he tried to calm himself down.
“Why?” He finally turned back to ask me, his eyes hard, pissed. He looked ready to beat the living shit out of me. I glanced back over at the car…guessing that was the reason he beat the shit out of his car instead.
“I’m your son,” I answered back. “I know that. But for the last five years I haven’t felt that way.”
His eyes narrowed on me. “What does that mean? Why wouldn’t you feel like my son? If you know you are.”
“Because you stopped acting like it,” I replied, unbuttoning my shirt as I assessed the damage he’d done. “When I was younger, you were never easy on me. You made me learn how to fight. You pushed me. You made sure I always knew what was happening in the business and what I could do to be useful. And then Ethan told me to find something not related to the family to do…and all of a sudden, you stopped being my coach, and my mentor, and just became a fan. Do you realize over the last five years, most of all our conversations revolved around my games?”
When I glanced up, he was still watching me carefully, not saying anything. That meant he was going to let me speak my mind before tearing into what I said. “It was superficial. All of our conversations were superficial, and I started to feel like an outsider. While I could see you felt more and more relieved that I wasn’t part of the darker side of the family…the more relieved you were, the more pissed off I got. My whole entire life you fed me stories of how great this family was. The power behind being a Callahan, and then I was cut out from it…and you fucking cheered, Dad!”
“I was trying to fucking protect you!” he hollered back at me.
I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly at that. “Bullshit. You were othering me. Do you how many times I’ve wondered if I wasn’t black, would you be so quick to expect me to accept that I wasn’t part of operating the family business.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now, Darcy? Have you lost your goddamn—”
“You were supposed to be the Ceann Na Conairte!” I hollered at him, and his eyes froze wide. “After your father, it was supposed to be you. But because he was murdered when you were young, Sedric stole it from you, and he stole it from me. Which is why we take orders from Ethan. If you didn’t want me to be a part of the business, then you should have claimed your birthright, but you didn’t! You let Uncle Liam take it. And I think part of you did that because of Mom. Yeah, we wanted the Italians on our side. Yeah, Uncle Liam was already expecting it, but deep down, I’m 100% sure you put up no fight because back then the Irish weren’t going to accept a Black woman as the wife to the head of the Irish. You took a knee and bottled up your own ambition for peace. So maybe you don’t think about it, but I do. I think about it all the time.”
“You think of being the Ceann Na Conairte?” he asked slowly.
Clenching my fist, I nodded. “Yes. I think about how, if my father had just fought, if he had been a little bit more selfish, a little bit more power hungry…I’d be Ethan. I wouldn’t of have had to play a fucking sport I didn’t like. I wouldn’t have idiots talking to me all motherfucking hours of the day. I wouldn’t have to pretend I’m fucking joking when I threaten people. I wouldn’t have to walk around like a goddamn sideshow!”
Impassioned, pissed even, I paused for the briefest moment. Just long enough to catch my breath before I continued unleashing my anger. “I wouldn’t have people talking behind my mother’s and sister’s backs because I’d kill them. I’m too fucking smart to be anyone’s goddamn entertainment. For five years I’ve felt like a monkey with ball. Powerless, crippled, a bloody joke, everything you taught me a Callahan should never motherfucking be!”
Taking off my shirt, I threw it on to the ground before picking up a crowbar and moving to take the shattered windshield off.
“There is nothing I can do to change the past now,” I said to him without bothering to look over at him. “And who the hell am I to fight Ethan for Ceann Na Conairte? But I am done being a fucking sideshow. People will learn to respect me, not because I’m your son but because I’m Darcy Callahan. There is just as much Irish blood in me as there is in Ethan and Wyatt. I am
not different from them. I want the same things they want, and that’s power. And the one place they can’t break into, I can, so you can be damn sure there’s not a force on this bloody earth that’s going to stop me from taking over those gangs. Not even you.”
Yanking off the windshield, I glanced up. He wasn’t there.
“Wear gloves, you idiot,” he barked, now standing to my left, handing me a pair of work gloves before putting on his own. “Yes, your highness, I’m going to call you an idiot. Because only my idiot son would wait five years to come out as a power-hungry bastard like the rest of us.” The corner of his lips turned up as he fought a smile.
“I am what you made me,” I replied while fighting back a smile.
“True. Honestly, I made you into a halfway decent mechanic, too. I really loved this car.” He frowned, looking over his own destruction. “Look what having children does to a man…it’s so fucking stressful.”
“Is that why you’re graying so much?”
He glared down at me. “Would you like to die today?”
I laughed. “See you in hell then, Pops, cause we both know Mom will cut you to pieces. She loves me much more than you.”
“Bosses don’t rely on their moms—”
“Because their mothers are either dead or dying. My mother is alive and very good with knives—”
“Will you shut the fuck up, goddamn! Have a little respect, and let your old man threaten you a little bit, Jesus Christ.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
And even as we began to focus on the car, I couldn’t help but sigh…in the back of my mind I saw it. I was finally out of the damn cage. I wasn’t going to be a side character in this family any more…I was moving to the main stage.
SEDRIC
“So what Darcy said, but replace Black with Asian,” I said to my father as I cleaned inside the chamber of my sniper riffle.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked, turning off the camera for the garage before sitting across from me, lifting the pistol.