by J. J. McAvoy
“In the beginning, you were just a stepping stone,” I confessed to him, as he washed my arm. “I planned to use their hate for your family to kill them. Then take your whole damn kingdom for myself. And start over at the top.”
“In the beginning, I planned on using you as my weapon,” he replied, flipping over my palm. “I’d use you to rein everyone in, draw my parents out, and then when you betrayed me—actually, I thought of killing you no matter what happened.”
“So, what happened?” I asked him.
He smirked, his eyes lifting. “I could ask you the same.”
“I know my answer.”
“Then give it.”
“You kept letting me know you were onto the truth but still trusted me anyway…always, without fail. Before, even last year. Even when you doubted, you always waited for me to explain. Why?”
“I’m insane.”
I laughed. It hurt, but I laughed. “I know. But even your insanity has a reason behind it. Why, Ethan? And don’t say love.”
He stared at me for a long time before saying, “Because your darkness had more light in it than my own.”
I didn’t understand. “Translation?”
“You are very entertaining.” He grinned when I glared at him.
I rolled my eyes. “Really? You risked it all for a little entertainment by me?”
“Yes.”
“Liar, unless you mean by entertainment, I helped distract you from the noise your head?” I pressed.
He frowned but said nothing.
Smirking, I sighed deeply. “Fine. But stop looking for entertaining people. That’s how you got attached to Ivy.”
His eyebrow raised. “Still jealous?”
“No reason to be jealous of the dead.”
“And yet, here you are.”
I wanted to punch his smug face. He brought my hand to his lips again and kissed my knuckles. “La mia anima, you know I was not myself. I thought you’d forgiven me?”
I pursed my lips and moved my other arm slowly for him to clean it, too. He chuckled and took it.
“That’s another reason; you make me laugh the most.”
“You don’t make me laugh at all.”
“My mother’s bullet hit you so hard you’ve become a bad liar,” he teased, and I couldn’t wait to be off this bed.
Rolling my eyes, I tried to ignore the burning in my chest. It hurt more now as I moved my arm. “If they are here, it means, they know the truth now.”
“Back to making plans?”
“It’s what we do.”
“Let’s do it after you get more rest,” he said, pressing the button for my morphine.
I stared stocked. “Ethan!”
“I will make time, Calliope, so just rest.”
I could already feel my eyes drooping. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to go back to my past. That hurt worse. All these years planning, it had kept me sane because it let me keep looking into the future. I made plans so I could get to happiness faster. So, I could get to just being worried about protecting him and our daughter.
I was so close.
“Calliope,” I heard his voice as everything began to fade. “You. That’s what happened. I’ve gotten so used to you; I can only come up with plans that involve you now.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
ETHAN
I watched her as the medicine set her back to sleep. She was in pain and pushing it down. I could see it clearly by the furrow in her brow. She was used to stuffing her real agony down. Calliope, the warrior. There were a dozen more reasons why I ended up in love with her. Curiosity was another one. When you are gifted or smart, things become boring or too easy. Calliope was always hard to decipher. Even when she was smiling or laughing, it was hard to know her true feelings or when she was acting. Even after all of this was over, I was sure it would take me years to decode her, to peel away every layer of darkness that had built up over the years.
But I wanted to. I was excited to see if she’d be the same or if she’d change when all the people who’d hurt her were dead. I wanted to see how she’d reconcile her past with our future. I was just so curious.
“You were willing to risk everything for her,” my father said from behind me.
His curiosity was becoming more and more of an annoyance. He was either asking questions or trying to get me to forgive Wyatt and the rest of the family, instead of reflecting on himself. Picking up the water basin, I moved back to the bathroom, and of course, like dog shit on my shoe, he stuck with me.
“Honestly, I didn’t really get it.” He went on watching me. “I know you love her, but I don’t actually feel the burning passion between you both.”
I dumped out the water. If I didn’t speak, he’d just go on. Years of him beside my mother made him a professional at the silent treatment it seemed.
“Just because we don’t love like you do does not mean we don’t love,” I answered, washing my hands.
“True. You two are weird.”
I paused, looking at him, and he grinned. “I didn’t risk it all on her; I bet it all on me. I let her have the power, the control, the freedom she never had with anyone else, and I knew she’d choose me in the end. And I was right.”
“So, you let her step on you and sat back as she terrorized this family just so she picked you in the end? It would have been easier just sticking with the first one.”
“If easier made me stronger, then maybe I would have gone that route, too. But it doesn’t. My wife wasn’t handpicked by my father with all the bells and whistles to make me great. It takes two people to run this family, and I needed the strongest person on my arm to do that. That is Calliope. She comes with a lot. But that means she can also handle a lot. But I rather take a punch by her today in public than lose everything tomorrow. I love her because I can rely on her—she doesn’t run or hide. Because she sees the big picture. She sees what everyone else can’t.”
She sees me.
That was the reason why I was always able to believe in her.
Even from childhood.
Calliope could see me. All my faults, weaknesses, and darkness. She saw it, and she skipped and hummed alongside me. She never abandoned me, and I couldn’t let her.
“We might not have seen your big picture, Ethan, but that does not mean all of our ways were wrong or that the rules were wrong,” he had the audacity to say.
“If your way was so right, Liam, then why did you spend your whole life building this, only to run away to protect it?”
He just stared at me, and I truly wanted to know. If his ways were right, if his way was better than my way, then why was he in the shadows? In my future, the only way I was leaving my family was by death, and I wouldn’t die young. But I couldn’t also just take my wife and go running around the world, doing whatever the hell I liked. “Your way only worked for you. Your present is not the future I want. Grandmother, for example—to live and guide as long as she has—is what I want. Why didn’t you pick up that trait from her?”
He was silent for a very long time, and I walked passed him. “I’m starting to think you really don’t think you picked up any of my traits.”
“I did. It’s the ‘never forgive a brother’ trait,” I shot back. And any and all the amusement fell from his eyes.
“Every day, I don’t know if I should be proud of the man you are or worried,” he said on his way out. “I’ll keep thinking about it.”
“Whatever you decide won’t change me now,” I replied, taking a seat back at Calliope’s bedside.
I was who I was.
They didn’t have to agree.
They didn’t have a say.
I wasn’t their child anymore.
12
“I've lived and seen enough to know
how difficult it is to settle for a small life
when you're destined for greatness.”
~Darren Shan
WYATT
The music was so loud that m
y skin vibrated.
The air was filled with screams of excitement, and the dance floor was packed with bodies, not just the people in the rafters and private booths. Bottles with sparkles were carried by half-naked women while girls hung from the roof, dancing. It truly was as the name said, The Play-Pen. And its king and creator stood at the topmost level surrounded by women, bodyguards, and drinks. They danced and drank and relaxed as if nothing else in the world mattered except the good time they were having.
When I reached the only elevator that led to where he was, two large bald men stepped in front of me, glaring down like wild dogs looked at an intruder before attacking.
“And you are?” they asked.
I pointed to the man up above. “His cousin.”
They looked me up and down strangely, so I handed them my ID so they could clearly see Callahan behind my name. They didn’t seem to care. One of them held his arm out to me, while the other made a call. Then—because that wasn’t insulting enough—they took a picture of my face. It was only when the phone beeped did they step aside and let me through.
Feeling pissed the fuck off, I stepped inside, ignoring the itch in my fingers to bash in their skulls. But the problem wasn’t them. No, respect was taught from the top. Which meant that in this place they were taught that the only Callahan who mattered was him.
He was playing a game, and he didn’t seem to care.
“Welcome to the king’s view,” two women said to me when the elevator opened, handing me a glass of Hennessy, while the other led me forward to the seating area, where Darcy—Killian threw up stacks of hundreds so he could dance underneath it.
Who the fuck was this person?
Did the name change come with a brand-new personality?
“Aye! Wyatt!” He grinned, coming over to me and putting his arm over my shoulders. “Girls, say hey to my big cuz.”
“Hey, Wyatt!” They said in unison like they were in stripper’s choir.
Ignoring them, I looked to my cousin, Killian, as he grinned, dancing. “We need to talk.”
“Party first, talk later,” he said, pulling me forward, and I wondered if this was his way of grieving.
When he moved to leave, I grabbed his arm.
“Not later, now.”
The smile on his face dropped, and when he looked at me, I realized very quickly, this was all just façade. The man staring back at me at this moment was a real monster, and he was telling me to let go or else. That was how he rose so quickly out here. However, I wasn’t all these bitch-ass newbies. I was born in this game, too.
And who the fuck did he think he was dismissing me.
He understood that.
“God, you are always so fucking serious.” He laughed, his smile resurfacing. He handed the remote that I hadn’t noticed he’d been holding, nor did I know what it did, back to one of his girls before motioning for me to follow him to an office behind the seats. He and I didn’t say a word when we were inside, and I noticed the a glint on the glass. It was one way. Meaning we could still look out at the club, but they couldn’t look in. I assumed it was also soundproof. Everything in dark, wooden tones, less flashy, and more…the him I knew.
“Well, what is it?” he asked, drinking and sitting back against the desk.
“You heard what’s happening with the family?” I asked, moving to take a seat on the leather couch, kicking my foot up onto the coffee table.
“Aye! Put your fucking feet down, you savage, that shit is expensive,” he hollered at me and grinned. There was my cousin.
Raising my hands in defense, I moved my feet back down. “And here you were throwing stacks of hundreds over women; I didn’t think you cared.”
“Again, what is it, Wyatt?”
“And again, I asked, did you hear what is happening with the family, Killian?”
“What is there to hear?” he shot back. “People are shooting the family; people are coming for the family, same ol’ same ol’. What does that have to do with me?”
“You do know you are part of this family, right?”
“And you know this family killed my mother, correct?”
I thought he’d spoken to Helen. Exhaling, I sat up straighter. “Killian, your mom was sick.”
“Says who?” he spat. “Calliope? Ethan? Some medical report they gave you? I don’t trust a single fucking thing they say anymore. And I hope she dies, the last picture of her being her laid out in the street like a fucking dog for what she did to my mother.”
I said nothing because there was nothing I could possibly say to his anger. Instead, I shifted. “Uncle Neal has been trying to reach you. Your family phone is off.”
“Oops.”
“Killian, this is not a joke. You are at fucking risk—”
“And I know the fucking risks. Just like I know that if you are being sent around by Uncle Neal, that means you’ve been demoted, cousin. What, gone are the dreams of you being Ethan’s right-hand man, or is it dog?” He chuckled, and once more, that feeling crept up inside like poison.
Breathe.
Let it go.
He’s grieving. Let it go, Wyatt.
“Ethan’s dog?” I snickered, nodding. “Isn’t that what you wanted to be.”
“I’ve become much wiser of late.”
“Is that so?” I snapped, rising up to look out at his playpen. “It’s amazing how people wise up while sucking up to other’s people’s money and power.”
“Other people’s!” He stood rounding his desk. “This family belongs to me just as much as it does you. If fact, some might argue it belongs more to me.”
“Why is that?” I turned back to him.
He gripped glass tighter. “You know fucking why!”
“Oh, is it because you think your father stepped aside for my father?” I laughed, shaking my head. “You aren’t wise, Killian, if you think that.”
“Is that so? Let’s check the order again—”
“No one gives fuck!” I hollered at him. “Your father didn’t step aside; he was pushed! He was goddamn pushed! And you know why? Because your father was fucking weak!”
He threw the glass he held in his hand, only to grab my shirt, slamming me up against the glass with a gun pressed to my head. “Say that again?”
“No fucking problem,” I said, pressing my gun into his stomach. “Your father was pushed out of the way by my grandfather, for his own son. Why? Because he could. Not because my father was more special but because my grandfather could. Because your grandfather died. Great Uncle Killian, your namesake, was shot down. So, no-one could protect or fight for his son. And Uncle Declan, his son, knew that there was no way he could win. Everyone was used to my grandfather. He’d groomed my father, and my father groomed my brother. No one gives a fuck about who should have been! None! None of them are loyal to us! They are loyal to the one who holds the most fucking power at the time. And they would prefer it if we all died! That is why we stick together! That is why we are family! That why we need to fucking hold the line.”
“Who are you to tell me about holding the line?” he hissed. “Are you not the one who pulled the trigger on Ethan’s bitch?”
I might as well have been. “Hence the demotion, and I was pushed over the edge because I too felt rage over your mother. She raised me. She took care of me. She dedicated her life to this family, and that’s how she ended up. I wanted Calliope to die so badly that I didn’t care about anything else and fucked up…I broke the line. I betrayed my brother because I loved your mom as my own. And I love your sister still and wanted to make up for not saving her. Now you are pointing a gun at me.”
“This is Ethan’s fault.” He hissed, his hand shaking. “We are at odds because of him. He’s not fit to rule.”
I shook my head. “If he weren’t ruling, I think we might have already been dead. He’s a cold son of a bitch. He’s arrogant and vicious, but his plans frustratingly always work out.”
“He stepped on my mother for his stupid pla
ns.”
I shook my head. “Did he, or did she lay down like always? That’s who Aunt Cora was…she would do anything for the family. It wasn’t him or Calliope who ended her. It was cancer. That’s not anyone’s fault.”
He released me and stepped out. “You’ve always been the good one at talking. That’s why Ethan sends you out. Even now, you are attached to his strings even if you don’t realize it. I have to break free. I’m going to do my own thing.”
I dusted off my shoulders. “I know more than anyone else. The more you try to get free of Ethan, the more stuck you become. I’m not sure how it happened, but it happened. It’s either his side or death.”
“Let it be death then.”
“And Helen and your father?”
“And that’s the fucking problem!” he hollered. “Why is it my family is threatened if I don’t listen?”
“Because that’s how it goes! What are you expecting to happen? That we can all just not listen and do whatever the fuck we want and he just keeps quiet? Why? Why would he protect us if we don’t protect him?” It felt like I was yelling at myself, really. What was I expecting to happen after I joined hands against him? For him to say thank you, brother? I was blind, now I see?
What was I expecting from him? This was how it’s always been in this family. If you are against the family, you die…and the family ruled, no matter what he did. That’s why we called it a kingdom. And kings protected their family when they were loyal…or killed them if they were not. That’s how history went.
“Thank you for stopping by, Wyatt.”
“I’d rather not step on your turf wars and embarrass myself,” I bit back. “So, turn on your fucking phone on.”