That Thing Between Eli & Gwen

by J. J. McAvoy

~ Saul Bellow

  LIAM

  He was somewhere in the crossroads of being scared fucking shitless and desperately anxious. I had seen a lot throughout my life, and I say that knowing damn well I was only thirty-six years old. But thirty-six in mafia years had to be the equivalent to at least sixty years for normal people, give or take a year. Nevertheless, glancing at my son, sitting quietly beside me, his hands reaching up to fix the tie around his neck every few minutes, was still strange as fuck.

  “Ethan.” I didn’t bother facing him, scrolling through the email Declan had sent me, but I heard as his whole body shifted towards me.

  “Yes, dad?”

  “Is something wrong with your bow tie?”

  He paused before speaking “Uhh…I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?” I glanced over to him and he quickly answered.

  “No. There is nothing wrong with my bow tie.”

  “Then stop fidgeting.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I wasn’t sure which part confused me more—the fact that I was the father of a nine and half year old or the fact that I was the father of nine and half year old who looked completely identical to me, the same unruly brown hair, sharp green eyes, even my damn nose and ears, Ethan had them all. My mother sometimes would even call him my name by accident; even Neal and Declan had started to call him Liam Jr.

  Each time they did, he stood a little prouder and in return that made me proud. However, if I wanted him to be named after me, he would have fucking been named after me. There was only one Liam Callahan, now and forever. I did not think this out of jealously or pride—I earned my name, my Melody earned her name, so he would have to do the same…starting now.

  “Sir,” Fedel nodded to me as I stepped out of the Rolls Royce. Fedel had changed over the years; the death of Monte had really gotten to him. His black hair was cut in a buzz, his olive skin tone had gotten only a little lighter in all the years he had been here, but that nothing in comparison to his behavior now. He took no chances with anyone, he hardly spoke unless necessary and there was darkness in his eyes I was familiar with. Where I went, he went. He was now my right-hand man; Italian, Irish, it didn’t matter anymore; we were beyond that.

  “Glass Emperor Hotel,” Ethan read when he stepped out beside me. He craned his neck up and stared at the silver skyscraper in front of us.

  Without a word, I walked ahead with Fedel and three other bodyguards surrounding us. No one spoke to us as we entered, not the hostess or the valets, only offering a short nod before moving on to whatever they did for a living. Those in the marble lobby were confused but moved out of our way as if they were water and I was Moses.

  “Out,” Fedel told the elevator attendant staring wide eyed at him.

  “I…can’t leave my post,” she foolishly said.

  Before Fedel could move, an older man with gray-black hair—George, his nametag read with the words manager underneath—stepped forward. “Keri, it’s time for your break.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything and stepped out. As she did, the rest of us stepped on.

  “George…find another post for her,” I said. H mouth dropped open as the doors closed on her face and we shot up towards the penthouse suite.

  “Why did I do that?” I asked Ethan.

  He thought for a second. “Because she didn’t listen?”

  “Worse…she didn’t know who I was, now she’ll never forget.” If she simply didn’t listen, I would say she was brave…stupid, but brave.

  “Presidential Suite,” the automated voice spoke as the doors opened again. The cream colored marble floors right outside the suite were so polished that I could see my reflection in them.

  “Not yet,” I said when I saw Fedel reach in his jacket. A smile crossed my lips as I walked towards the music.

  One of my men walked towards the door, already pulling out the master card to get in.

  “Knock first,” I said. Fedel’s eyebrows bunched together as he moved to stand in front of both Ethan and I—though just like I thought no one bothered to answer. They clearly couldn’t even hear over the music; the guards glanced back to me. “No one can say I didn’t try.”

  The moment the door opened, it felt like I was hit with a wall of sound. The music was so loud it hurt. Inside, women of every race were dancing on couches, the pool tables, ‘dressed’ in G-strings and bras or nothing at all. All around them were fancy new toys, watches, and motorcycles; they even had the audacity to dance on the money just laying around…my money.

  “Ladies!” I called out when Fedel cut the music. “I’m giving you one minute to find some fucking clothes, grab as much money as you can and get the hell out.”

  “Who the fuck are you! How do you just walk in here?” Some half-drunk Asian man shouted as came out from behind the bar. He had shoulder length black hair, and a scar under his left eye,; on each arm were two more women. One by one his bodyguards came from forward, some with the Tàiyáng tattoo on their faces, others on their necks or arms.

  “In my defense, I did knock,” I said as my bodyguards tried to clear the room. However, these women were either too stupid or too scared to move, which proved they either knew who I was or knew whose party they were at and what would most likely be the outcome of this.

  “Your minute is up—get out,” Fedel snapped.

  “I asked you who the fuck are you people? And how the fuck did you get into my building?”

  “Your building?” I smirked at that. “You are a child, how can you own anything?”

  He threw his glass and grabbed the gun from his bodyguard to point it right me. Finally, the females in the room screamed, running like naked rats out of the room.

  “Nǐ zěnme kěyǐ? How dare you come into my house and motherfucking speak? Do you have any idea who I am? How powerful I am? Me, Tàiyáng Ruò Jiàn—”

  Before he could finish, he reached up to grab his neck and the gun dropped from his hands. He fell to his knees no less than six steps from me, his face slowly turning blue. He glanced back at his guards to, from what I could only assume, order to kill me, but one by one they fell to their knees.

  “How dare I?” I whispered and crouched down in front of him. He reached out to touch me, but Fedel caught his hand. His eyes watered with each deep breath he tried to take. “You come to my city, put bad drugs on my streets, fuck in my hotel and ask who am I?”

  Grabbing his neck, I pulled held him tighter. “You should be careful of the questions you ask Tàiyáng. Ruò. Jiàn. Because you will not like my answers.”

  “My—father—”

  “You’re on your knees, that means you are at my feet, does that seem like position from which you can threaten me?” I wanted to rip his goddamn head from his shoulders for making me do this on today of all bloody days. “I warned your father. I made sure he got my message, keep your fucking drugs out of mycity, and yet what do I find? Your drugs in my city. Now what am I supposed to do about this, Tàiyáng. Ruò. Jiàn? If I don’t kill you, it looks like I’m a bitch, and as you can see my son is here, so that I can’t have that. If I kill you, I’m going have to kill a lot more people later. Personally, I do not mind. But you see my wife is the governor and her platform is safer schools, safer streets, and all that.”

  “Pl…ease…”

  I released him and he fell back, his body starting to shake. I rose to my feet and nodded to Fedel who bent down and opened the idiot’s mouth to pour the antidote down.

  “Ethan.”

  “Yes, dad?” he asked, softly stepping up beside me.

  I handed him my gun and he didn’t took it without question, pointing it at the man my guards were now holding up. The bravado he had shown only minutes ago was fading, replaced now with tears.

  “Please. Please! No! Anything you want…I’ll give you anything you want,” he said as he sobbed, spit coming from his lips, “Forgive me. Yuánliàng wǒ! Yuánliàng wǒ!”

  “Ethan.” When I called
his name, he fired, but his hands were shaking so badly, he missed completely. “Congrats, you killed a lamp.”

  “I—”

  Snatching the gun from him, I fired not once but twice, both bullet towards his crotch, his body cringing, before it buckled forward as he screamed out for his father. Paying him no mind, I turned to my son looking him dead in the eye.

  “People like him,” I nodded to the fool behind me, “are the reason you should never be proud to called Liam Jr. You can only stand behind me for so long before you have to stand up by yourself. It is better you learn this now before you end up like him bleeding on someone else’s hotel floor, crying out forsomeone else to save his pathetic life. Do you understand me?”

  His nose flared a little, his eyes hardened, his fist clenched, but he nodded. “I will never be like him.”

  I saw it.

  The same thing my father saw in me, I now saw in him and I could not help but feel pride at that.

  “Tàiyáng Ruò Jiàn, when your father asks who did this to you, tell him I, Liam Callahan, accept his apology in advance. Tell him if I have to deal with the Tàiyáng family again, I will show no mercy, and you will lose your other head,” I said as I watched the blood pour from him. He sobbed and curled into a ball on my floor.

  “Sir, it’s almost time,” Fedel reminded me.

  Sighing, I nodded, already heading towards the doors with Ethan beside me. He peeked back at him once, a frown turned his lips downward, but said nothing until we were in the hall once again.

  “Uncle Declan?” Ethan said with a grin. He ran up to the man who was dressed in a fitted dark suit, shirt and black tie. His dark brown hair was cut shorter on the sides and longer on the top, styled by who I could guess was Coraline. There was no way in hell he’d put effort in coming here if our family didn’t have to. “Uncle, why aren’t you in a bow tie?”

  “Because apparently he and the grim reaper share a closest,” I answered for him.

  He snickered and messed up Ethan’s hair. “Unfortunately, not all of us can pull off the James Bond look as well as your father, Ethan.”

  The corner of my lips turned up. “Well, at least you know.”

  He rolled his eyes, the smile on his face fading when he focused on the door behind me. “Everything good?”

  I didn’t reply, but on the elevator as it arrived. When Ethan moved to get in, I held my hand out shaking my head. “Your job now is to go with your uncle and fill him in before dinner starts. I can count on you, can’t I?”

  “YES!” He stood straighter and nodded so seriously I wanted to laugh. A grin spread across Declan’s lips and his eyes met mine. I knew exactly what was going through his mind and I was sure he knew what was on mine as well.

  The ride to the penthouse suite was short. The two men already standing at the entrance did not say not word, only opening the suite room for me. I didn’t give a shit about how nice the room looked or how good the view was. The moment I saw her, dressed in a sinfully tight long cream gown that hugged each one her curves and hung off of her shoulders, which exposed the top of her back, nothing else mattered. She stood on the terrace, staring out at the city. Before I even realized I was behind her, brushing her hair over to the side with one hand and gripping her waist with the other, I kissed the top of her nape.

  “Careful,” she said, “my husband will be here soon.”

  Kissing up her neck, I bit the top of her ear and whispered, “don’t push me, Melody. I’m not above hiking this dress up and fucking you in front of all Chicago.”

  “Ahh…” She moaned when I grabbed on to her breasts, both of us frustrated over the amount of fabric between my palm and her skin. I was already hard for her and the way she pressed into me, I’m sure she knew.

  “Liam—we…can’t…now.”

  Godfuckingdamn it.

  Taking a deep breath, I let go of her and she grabbed on to the rail in front and tilted her head back.

  “14 days, 3 hours, 20 something minutes, I think we’ve broken our record.” She turned to face me leaning against the rail, a growing smile on her face.

  “Not having time to have sex is not a record I want break.” I frowned and placed my hands on either side of her. Two weeks. Two god-forsaken weeks—that was how long it had been since I had sex and I was starting to lose my fucking mind. Between both of our “jobs” and our kids, we didn’t have time. Before, we always made time…didn’t matter what was going on. “Acting like an adult and being reasonable is doing nothing but giving me blue balls. I’m far too sexy to be suffering from blue balls.”

  She laughed, freely, and openly, but only ever for me and our children. “I wouldn’t say nothing. From what I hear The Mad Hatter is as terrifying as ever. Meanwhile, Bloody Melody is stuck in bureaucracy, and slowly losing her goddamn mind.”

  “Honestly babe, I really don’t give a fuck right now,” I said and her eyebrow twitched in annoyance. “Because…all I want to hear is our bed slamming up against the wall, you moaning underneath me and my heart racing as I slam my cock into you over and over and over again.”

  Her brown eyes filled with lust. “Someone is confident in his abilities.”

  “Well, you keep coming back for more, so how can I not be?”

  “Then tonight it better go down exactly as you describe, Mr. Callahan.”

  Cupping the side of her cheek, I couldn’t look away from her lips. “Or you’ll do what, Mrs. Callahan? You want me as badly as I want you, I bet you’re getting wet right now.”

  She glared, but she didn’t deny it. Instead she brushed my hand off her face and changed the subject. “What happened with our guest in the Presidential suite?”

  “He was treated in a very un-presidential manner, but lives,” I said and I could not stop myself from glancing down the length of her body.

  Twenty-minutes…all we needed was a good…

  “And…” She grabbed my chin and lifted my head back up to meet hers. “What did he say?”

  “He cried out for his father like a bitch. I’m guessing he came here to prove to his father and the rest of the triad that he had balls…I took them away.”

  “Everything in me says to kill him, Liam. To kill them all now before this escalates.” She said and crossed her arms over chest, pushing her breasts up, obviously to torture me. God. After all of these years, I was still addicted to her. “We have spent a long time slowly building a balance, Liam…we can never—”

  “I know,” I said seriously. I kissed her forehead before resting mine on hers. “And if anything comes against us, we will do what we have always done.”

  “Fight?”

  “Win.”

  TWO

  “We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”

  ~ Margaret Atwood

  MELODY

  At eighteen I became the first ever female Boss of the Italian Mafia and to this day I can still remember, the shock, the horror, the disgust on their faces. How dare a woman try to lead them? It was not possible. It was not plausible and in their eyes, it was sin. I did not know my place. So one by one, they sent men after me, or brought men to replace me and one by one, I tore them down. I spared no one. No mercy. No fear. Just death. Not just to them, or the ones that sent them, but their families, their neighbors, and even their mailmen. I didn’t just kill them, I wiped them off of the face of the goddamn earth as a lesson to the next motherfucker who thought he could stand against me. It was lesson learned very quickly.

  By twenty-four, I was married to the next Boss, the Ceann na Conairte, of the Irish Mob, Liam Alec Callahan. The Italians and the Irish were like water and oil. Our families had been at war with each other since their grumpy asses come off of the boat in the 1850s. To say our first meeting was anything but love at first sight would be an understand statement. I shot him. I’ve shot him a couple times in our marriage, to be honest. I’ve bruised ribs, broken fingers, and spit blood from my lips in my battles with him. He wa
s just like the rest of them. He saw my breasts and for some reason thought that meant I wasn’t capable. But he too learned.

  Now at 33, I stand as the most powerful woman in the goddamn state.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, please join me in welcoming my personal friend and our Governor, Melody Nicci Giovanni Callahan,” the Mayor spoke into the microphone. His body turned towards me as he and the rest of the guests clapped.

  Liam rose as I did, kissing my check quickly before I moved to the podium in the center of the stage.

  “I don’t have friends, Benjamin. You should remember that,” I whispered into the ear of the old man as he congratulated me, gripping tighter on his hand. He smiled for the cameras, but in his blue eyes, I saw a mixture of fear and hate, something I was not only used to, but proud off. Benjamin Weston, the fifty-seven-year-old, lanky, white-haired snake, who tried to move heaven and earth to make sure I didn’t get re-elected.

  Standing behind the podium, I couldn’t get past the irony, our enemies, the police, were being fed by our own hands now. Meanwhile, Liam and I were the ones who drove them to the brick to begin with.

  It seems they have learned their lesson as well.

  “Five years ago,” I spoke into the microphone, “the people of this great state elected me as their governor in the hope that a better and safer state would be in their future. Today, with the help of community organizers, congressmen of both parties, the mayor’s office and staff, along with the Chicago Police Department, we are finally seeing that future. From the beginning, I understood the key to a better society has always been the safety of its people, this safety could only be brought about by the support of our brothers and sisters in uniform, who put their lives at risk every day, not only in Chicago but all across Illinois. This is why I passed the Roman Bill, which not only increased the pay for police officers, but all other civil servants. On top of that, we have provided better healthcare benefits for them and their families. In doing so, the number of civil servants has doubled in the last five years, but best of all, the crime rate across Illinois has dropped by sixty percent. It is a great honor that I welcome representatives from police forces all across the state here tonight in celebration. Thank you all for your service.”