by J. J. McAvoy
“Over the last year, she took the reins and has proven herself to be a guiding light, an unmovable force of change and good. Providing us with so many unique and creative ideas, such as the one we are all here to partake in today. She has donated her time to uplifting women and children, as well as created over two hundred new opportunities for orphan teens across the state, allowing them not just to see, but to be a part of fine arts. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the distinct honor and privilege of introducing one of the kindest and most charitable women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, Chairwoman of the Chicago Women’s Association of Fine Art, Calliope Orsini Callahan, please help me welcome her to the stage,” announced Fatimah Gupta, the wife of the former mayor of Chicago, the man Ethan had killed and hung from a bridge. She turned to welcome me up onto the stage with the fakest smile on her face.
Ethan, always the public gentleman, gave me his arm to help me stand from the table. I could see the amusement in his eyes at her introduction. But I ignored him, and I walked forward and took the stage’s stairs as everyone else applauded. There, Fatimah held open her arms to me and me to her. We kissed each other’s cheek, and it almost reminded me of Judas as he kissed Jesus. Not that I was Jesus. But Fatimah had made a lot of silver on the death of her husband over the last year, milking every eye for sympathy, support, and power. Playing the grieving widow despite the fact that she’d been in a very serious affair and was even pregnant with her lover’s child, to which she passed on as her dead husband’s. And knowing that made her tolerable.
“Thank you, thank you,” I smiled, nodding as the applause died down. “To say that I am grateful to the Chicago Women’s Association of Fine Arts, for making me their Chairwoman, would be a lie. When they asked, I did not think I was qualified, especially after being a member for such a short time. But after seeing the amount of paperwork, I now understand why they gave it to the new girl.”
Few chuckled while others just grinned at me.
“When we announced an auction of women for this year’s fundraiser, I was lambasted by women’s rights groups and other female empowerment leaders for creating an atmosphere of sexism—words of one, Molly Wright, on Twitter this morning. Another said it was archaic and downright unoriginal.”
“Boo…”
“No, don’t boo.” I shook my head. “I do not believe in booing; I believe in money. And if they could pay a figure large enough not to hold this event, an amount that provided hundreds of services which promoted and uplifted artists, managers, curators—both male and female—all over this city, I would have taken that offer. But they did not. So here we are. Women of free minds and free will…” I grinned, glancing over at Ethan, “seeing how much our spouses are willing to pour out for us. I’ve already informed mine to call the bank and give them a forewarning.”
That got more laughter. A few men even lifted their glasses to Ethan as he shook his head. Finally, he just nodded, a small smirk on his lips.
“But in all seriousness,” I spoke, drawing their attention back to me. “Fine arts, in fact, all art, I would argue, has always been centered around one thing…beauty. The appreciation of beauty in our humanity. From Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Artists have looked upon women in the flesh and said this beauty must be remembered for all time. The beauties here today for this auction may be forever cemented in history. The top three givers, will painted and displayed in the Chicago Museum of Fine Arts by the world-renowned painter, Antonello Torre Di Bello, who is here today.”
I motioned to him, and he rose from his seat to a round of applause.
“So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please open your wallets and let us begin. Fatimah.” I stepped aside so she could start.
She moved forward, but before I could walk down the stairs, she said, “Mrs. Callahan, where do you think you’re going? You’re obviously our first contestant.”
I shook my head. “My husband has a tendency to go overboard. I wouldn’t want to make anyone else feel uncomfortable right at the beginning—”
“One dollar!”
I turned to see Ethan holding an auction paddle in the air with a full grin on his stupid mouth for that embarrassing offer. I cracked my jaw to the side, my eyes narrowing on him. Looking back to Fatimah, I smiled and nodded. “I guess I’m first, and the starting bid is one dollar. Obviously, I’m unloved.”
“Very well. Two dollars!” Ethan yelled.
I was going to kill him later.
If he wanted to play like that. So, would I.
I glanced down over at Dino, who stood behind him, toward the corner of the room. However, he would not look at me—the traitor.
“Mr. Callahan, apparently you are blind to your blessing,” Antonello Torre Di Bello said, lifting his paddle. His blue eyes glowed like a superhero. “Twenty thousand for the beauty with the gray eyes.”
At that, I winked. Because that took balls. Normally, no one else would bid against a Callahan, especially Ethan Callahan, to his face…over his woman. But since he did, everyone else no longer felt afraid to.
“25,000.”
“25,000 to the man in a gray suit.” Fatimah finally remembered to do her job.
“50,000.”
“50,000 to the man on the right.”
I stopped listening, quite frankly, all of these numbers were far too low, and I was very annoyed Ethan had put me on this fucking path. I did not like standing up here for any longer than a second. I had told him that in the car. Which was why he was supposed to start at two million, and then I’d giggle and walk off as he settled on five.
And here we were just getting to $200,000. Ethan did not raise his paddle. Instead, he was scrolling through his phone. The son of a bitch was doing this just to piss me off. Oh, I was going to most definitely hold another one of these and let him be bought by some unattractive woman with frog lips.
“We have $350,000—”
“$3,000,000.”
There was hushed silence across the room, and I looked back to Ethan, even though I knew it wasn’t his voice, to see if maybe someone had bid while he pretended not to care. But the look of rage in his eyes told me that was not the case. So, I turned again to see a woman dressed in a three-piece white suit, red Christian Louboutin pumps, and large black Christian Dior sunglasses over her face, holding up a paddle. Her dark hair, with a single streak of gray in the front, stopped just below her shoulders. Everyone stared like she had paused the room with a remote control. Even though they didn’t know who she was, they felt who she was.
“$5,000,000,” Ethan’s voice broke through the silence.
She titled her head and smiled. “5,500,000.”
“6,000,000.”
“6,500,000,” she said back.
Ethan rose from his chair. “7 million dollars.”
“7.5,” the woman replied, crossing one leg over the other.
“Ma’am,” Ethan said as he walked across the small aisle toward her. “My wife and I are having a little spat. And I would not like to spend so much today. Will you do me a favor a bow out?”
“No.” She replied easily.
“$50,000,000.” Ethan raised his paddle.
Ugh. Fuck, now people would be talking about us wasting so much money.
“55 million dollars,” the woman retorted, rising from her chair. “Sorry, Mr. Callahan. My husband and I’ve taken a real interest in your wife. So, unfortunately, it is you who will have to bow out.”
“My father taught me a Callahan always gets his way.” Ethan’s voice was icy.
“And here I thought a Callahan only ever got a bullet.” She smirked.
Shit, this was spiraling. I moved to the podium to speak when Ethan pulled out a gun. Which made Dino and every other guard do the same.
“You would know, wouldn’t you Mother?”
She took off her glasses to gasps in the room, but I was more concerned about the red light that wa
s shining at his temple and the other on me.
“Did you really think we’d let you both do this?” she asked.
“Ethan!” I screamed, trying to move, but it was too late.
BANG.
The sound sent a shiver down my spine.
“Ethan!”
ETHAN
“Ethan!” Calliope screamed, jolting up from bed, eyes wide and crazed, looking to the left and the right of the room before turning back to stare at me, lying in bed beside her.
“Oh, God. It was just a dream.” She exhaled with a hand over her heart. “A fucking dream.”
“Dreams are good things. Nightmares are bad things. So, was it a good thing that happened, or do you mean it was just a nightmare?” I replied.
Her head whipped back to me, glaring. And instead of using her words, she took the pillow from behind her and threw it at my face. Catching it, I put it back where it belonged beside me. She ran her hands through her hair, thinking for a long moment, taking a deep breath.
Closing the book, I put it on the nightstand. “What happened in this nightmare of yours?”
“Nothing,” she whispered, moving to get out of bed when I caught her wrist, pulling her back next to me. She did not meet my gaze.
“Since the auction this morning, you’ve been in a haze. Are you all right?”
She was silent for so long I thought she had forgotten I was here. Slowly she turned to me, her face confused, “I don’t remember the auction.”
“What?”
“I remember getting into the car, arriving, then all of a sudden, I was back.” The frown on her face deepened. And I could see the sweat on her neck. “I think I blacked out. Why would I blackout? Something is wrong. I know myself. I’ve missed something.”
Reaching over, I placed my hand on her forehead. “You have a fever.”
“A fever?” She reached up to touch her pulse and looked over to me, eyes wide. Quickly she broke free from my grasp, rising to go to the foot of the bed. There she lifted the ottoman, digging through it as quickly.
“And what are you doing?”
“I think someone poisoned me!” she snapped angrily, opening a small music box and pulling out a glass vile of some yellow liquid.
“Calliope! It is just a fever!” I hollered when the madwoman drank whatever the hell was in that bottle.
“I…I do not just get blackout fevers.” She gasped before her body started trembling so badly that I rushed over, grabbing her right side to hold her up. “If I vomit red, I’m wrong, if it’s black, I’m right…care to bet?”
“You are insane,” I muttered to her, helping her up. She could speak; instead, she collapsed in my arms. “Calliope!”
Trembling, she turned over, coughing out black blood onto the side of the bed, upon seeing it, smiling, gasping out for air, her hands balled into fists as she spat out curses. “Fucking Melody.”
So, it wasn’t her that was insane.
It was me.
Me for briefly forgetting exactly the type of woman my mother was. Picking up my phone, I dialed one number.
“What is—”
“Get here now!”
3
“Stab the body and it heals,
but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
~ Mineko Iwasaki
ETHAN
“What the fuck did she take?” Wyatt asked, cleaning his hands as he rose from Calliope’s side.
She’d passed out almost immediately after coughing up that black vomit. Now she lay on the bed, shivering, her face so red it looked as if she had broken out into hives from the base of her neck all the way to the top of her head. It was clear she was in pain.
“Since I’m not an expert in poisons and the bottle was not labeled, I don’t know,” I replied, gripping my wrist only to stop myself from putting my hand through the fucking wall. “How is she?”
“Fine, or at least as fine as one could be after being poisoned. A fever is the body's way of fighting off whatever it is that attacked her system. I gave her some general antibiotics, seeing as I don’t know what she took. I’ll know more in the morning,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulders. “And here I thought she was nearly indestructible.”
“Are you amused?” Because I fucking wasn’t.
“That is not what I meant—”
I grabbed his shirt, bringing his face close to my own. “Little brother, even now, almost a year later, I know you still dislike her, and you do not trust her. So, do not lie to my face and tell me that was not what you meant. Fix her and then go back to pretending you trust me.”
His face bunched, his teeth grinding. “You keep asking all of us to trust you without giving us the reason to do so.”
“The reason is we are family!”
“Really?” he snapped. “Really! Aunt Coraline was fucking family, too; she trusted you, too, and now she’s dead! And the story we were told doesn’t make sense to me or anyone else for that matter. Not then, not a year later! Ever since Calliope came to our house, it has been like we are cursed. Uncle Declan is so depressed he doesn’t speak anymore. I had to give him a fucking feeding tube when he stopped fucking eating. Darcy…sorry, Killian rarely ever shows his face around here. This family has fallen to shit, and you never even blinked. You just kept pressing on, as if everything is perfect. And now she’s a little sick and you’re ready to fight? Where was all that energy before?”
Idiots.
All of them.
They were idiots who could never think beyond their own understanding. They could not rationalize. They could not see what I saw, and so they pissed all over everything every fucking time.
“As always, little brother, your mind is not where I need it to be.” I released his shirt, pushing him to the side so I could sit at her bedside.
“She blinds you, Ethan. I wish you could see what everyone else sees.”
“Get out.” I growl.
He stood there.
“I said, go before I suspect you poisoned her yourself.”
Sighing and muttering under his breath, he took his things and walked out of the room. When he was gone, I placed my hand beside her cheek.
“Apparently, we miscalculated, la mia anima,” I muttered, brushing the hair from her face. “And what happened to you being good with poisons?”
I waited for her witty comeback, but there wasn’t any. She lay there, shivering. The more I stared at her, the angrier I became. Angry with her for being in this position. Angry at myself for not noticing at all…and angriest at the people who did this to her.
Ring.
Ring.
“What is it?” I said, lifting the phone.
“Boss,” Dino Tacinelli said, “there are no tapes of today’s auction, anywhere. There isn’t even a cellphone recording posted online anymore.”
“What you mean is someone erased them.”
“Yes.”
I snickered bitterly and hung up. Of course, it would not be that easy. Nothing was ever easy in a war. Especially a civil one. However, I—like Wyatt said—did not see the world like everyone else because I was not like everyone else. My parents, brother and everyone else, seemed to forget who I was. They could erase all the tapes in the world, but they could not erase my mind. Sitting on the bed beside her, my back up against the headboard, I closed my eyes, rewinding to this morning.
HOURS EARLIER
“Sold, to that handsome young gentleman in black!” she called out and grinned.
Rolling my eyes, I just drank, watching as she nearly skipped, high-fiving a few women until she got back to our table, taking her place beside me.
“Do you ever get tired?” I asked her.
“Nope.” She winked, snatching the cherry off the rim of the glass and popping it into her mouth. “It’s my superpower.”
“Of all the things you could have as a superpower,” I replied as the waitress brought Calliope a drink, but she waved them off. Then thought about it and took it
, anyway, eating the cherry off it and giving me the drink. “Why did you have them serve Hawaiian mimosas if you do not like pineapples?”
“Because your mother always had them served since they are more expensive. If I changed things, it would like I was petty and trying to overshadow her memory,” she whispered back. “Give me another year or two and this menu is changing.”
PRESENT
My eyes snapped open as I realized what had happened.
No one had slipped anything in her food or drink.
She didn’t drink.
The poison was inside the cherries.
The antidote was in the mimosas or the pineapple. When she cursed my mother, I thought my mother had somehow disguised herself and come this morning. But that would be too risky, not with all of our men and a few of our family around. Not after what Calliope had done the last time they had come too close. No, she’d said, “Fucking Melody,” because the poison was from her Hawaiian mimosas.
Somehow, someone knew Calliope disliked pineapples and was sure she would not change the menu.
Glancing down at her trembling body, I exhaled deeply. Yes, we had miscalculated…we kept the rest of the family in the dark to keep them out of this. And now they were against us.
Fucking traitors.
WYATT
“How is she?” was the first thing Helen asked when I entered the room.
“She somehow figured it out and gave herself some antidote.”
“How?” she sneered, angrily throwing the washcloth in her hands into the water basin beside the bed before her head whipped back to me. Her brown eyes were furious, tired, and still full of grief.
Walking over, I put down my bag, kneeling in front of her. “Helen, sweetheart, I know you’re upset, but you can’t keep going like this.”
She pushed me away. “How am I supposed to keep going, Wyatt? How? Look at my father!”
I didn’t want to.
The man who now lay in bed beside her was not the uncle I knew. The uncle I knew was alert, always ready to give advice, to bust my balls—he was strong and lively. Not this broken man who lay in bed. He’d lost weight, refusing to eat most days. He’d nearly killed himself the first week after Aunt Cora had died. If not for Helen’s hovering over him, rushing into the bathroom when he didn’t reply, he wouldn’t have lived. Ever since then—for a year—she’d spent all her free time watching over him…and planning the downfall of Calliope Callahan.