by J. J. McAvoy
He rolled his eyes, turning on his phone turning it to me. The moment he did, it began to ring, and on the caller ID Ethan’s name came up almost immediately.
He looked back at me as if I had done something.
“Don’t ask me. I was demoted, remember,” I mocked.
“I’m not interested in what he has to say,” he snapped, ignoring the call.
“Do you think I give a damn what you’re interested in.” The voice coming ceiling above us. My eyes widened and I looked to Killian, whose expression mirrored my own.
“You bugged my fucking club? Are you motherfucking kidding me?” he snapped, glaring up at the ceiling.
“Obviously, not.” Ethan’s cold voice responded. “And now that you and the other one have finished your little chat, check your phones.”
“Excuse me? I’m not taking orders from you,” Killian shouted back, and how fitting it was to see him yelling above him. Like a man fighting with a God.
“Very well, I’m recording, so if you die, your sister won’t blame me for this one. Good luck with the men coming to kill you,” Ethan’s said flatly. Seconds later the television screen came to life, zooming in on the security camera.
“You accessed to my security feeds, too?” Killian snapped.
“Is that really the pressing matter right now?” I asked him. “We have people coming to kill us.”
“Yeah, because of his wife!” He pointed to the ceiling.
I wanted to punch him. I swear to God I wanted to punch him…wait? Was this how I sounded to Ethan?
“Yes, yes, everything is my fault. I heard you’re going to fight, or am I going to have to prepare two caskets? There is an escape map on your phones—”
“I have men here, too, Ethan. It’s only four we aren’t—”
“Don’t interrupt me.” Ethan’s voice harsh. “The men you’ve hired were bribed. The rival gangs you’ve been associating with, they are planning to join me tonight. Doesn’t matter what your skin tone is, where you are, or what you call yourself. If your last name is Callahan, they will try to take you down. If it were as easy as splurging money and opening up a few clubs in that area, Killian, I wouldn’t have sent you. It took us generations to build the hold we have on the Irish and Italian families, decades to gain their loyalty. But keep trying to come for me, Killian, and the people around you will set you up like they set up your grandfather. Good luck.”
The video feed went dead.
“You had to piss him the fuck off, didn’t you,” I snapped.
“Shut up,” Killian sneered, moving to the glass.
“Is the elevator the only way out of here?” I asked him.
“The second escape isn’t finished yet. There is a safe room.”
I exhaled slowly before taking my guns out. “The cops will shut down your club for a while after this.”
“Tsk.” He sucked his teeth angrily, pulling out his guns as well. “This whole godforsaken city is like Gotham without Batman. We can never have any good things.”
I snickered. “On three?”
“On three.”
ETHAN
I watched as the shooting began on my screen, from the chair in my office. Between the three of them—Wyatt, Killian, and Italo—for backup, they should be okay…but then again, who the fuck knew. I did my part, not that those sorry bitches would see it.
Rising from my chair, I moved over to the side table, lifting the kilo of cocaine and putting it on the scale.
“This brings back memories.”
I lifted my head, frowning. It really was like I was fucking being haunted. Once I got rid of one, the other appeared like the ghost of the bothersome parents past.
“You’re studying the actual plant?” she asked as she touched the red coca plant. I had kept it on the corner of the desk while I checked the grades of the last batches I’d managed to collect. Her eyes scanned the table. “You are studying a lot, it seems. Heroin, cocaine, morphine, succinylcholine, that last one is a bit heavy say. El ángel caido? What is this again?”
“Melody.”
“Mom,” she corrected.
I frowned, turning to her, and she turned to face me, her head lifted high. “If you want to be a mother, then your son is currently in the middle of a shootout in a club. If you’d like to call him and walk him through it, by all means, my desk is open.”
“What?” She gasped and looked to my desk as I focused. “I’ll leave him for now, trusting you’ll protect him.”
“Trust after having no trust is useless,” I muttered, cutting a line. “If you don’t need anything else, you may go.”
“I’m getting very sick of your motherfucking attitude, Ethan.”
“Is that so? I’m am sick of you interfering, so I can relate,” I said, cutting another line, not bothering to look up.
“What the fuck do you want us to do? How long will this hostility last? You asked us to come into the safe house with you. We came. You’ve been sitting around and doing nothing for days except bark orders. We have complied. And still, you treat us as if—”
“You work for me,” I replied, scooping the coca into the tub and testing it. “I’m treating you as if you work for me. Actually, I’m treating you better than that because if someone who worked for me kept bothering me like this, I’d cut off their nose. What do I want? I’ve already said. I want you to wait. Why is that hard for everyone?”
I looked at her, staring into her brown eyes.
“What do you want me to do? Hug you? Chat about the good ol’ days when you were alive? I’m working. How often did you come to chat with me when you were working? I barely saw you as a child, except for when you came to kiss us goodnight or before you left in the morning. You were always busy. I tried not to bother you and not to cause trouble for you. Can you not show me the same courtesy?”
“You hate us that much?”
I didn’t answer, looking at the now red tube annoyed. Someone had fucking laced this shit. That made it half what it was worth. How many times did I have to keep correcting these morons? How many fucking times?
“Knock yourself out, you little…” She didn’t finish her words; instead, she walked out.
I smirked, sort of wishing she’d said whatever she wanted to say.
MELODY
I was at the limit of my tolerance.
In fact, I was about one step away from beating Ethan with a broomstick.
“Melody.” I heard someone call my name. I had to be hearing things.
I paused in front of the closed door. Frowning, I opened it, and sure enough, Calliope sat up, drinking water from a cup with a small straw. She looked up in anticipation when she saw me.
“Will you get me some grapes?” She batted her lids.
“I will strangle you,” I snapped. Who the fuck did she think she was talking to?
“Just kidding.” She grinned, opening her blanket to show me that she’d already had a bowl of green grapes. She could only eat with one hand right now. Today was the first day she’d managed to sit up and be completely alert.
I turned to leave.
“He’s planning something,” she said from behind me, and I paused. “I’ll explain more if you sit with me for a bit.”
“You do know I’m the one who shot you, correct?”
“Shit happens—ahh.” She winced when she tried to shrug. “Seriously, though, sit with me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“I dislike you…a lot.”
“Why?”
This was the fucking reason why. “You are annoying.”
“Your husband was annoying, too, but you got over it,” she shot back before popping another grape between her lips.
“How do you know that?”
She patted the seat by her bed. “Let’s have a mother-in-law, daughter-in-law heart-to-heart.”
“Comments like that are why you annoy me,” I said, moving to sit on the couch farther away.
“How would you
like me to talk then?”
“How about don’t talk?” For some reason, even her voice bothered me. Her face, her hair, her body, everything about Calliope bothered me.
And just like that, she stopped talking, eating her grapes in peace. Another annoying trait. I rolled my eyes.
“What is his plan?”
“Ethan never has one plan in his mind. He’s always processing and readjusting them. A lot is going on in there.” She motions to her head.
“I know that. What’s the one he is currently working on?”
She stared at me like I was still not getting it. Shaking her head, she sighed. “Right, it looks like he is making them tire out their resource by attacking the Callahans at different places, then after I have regained enough strength, we’ll go to Italy and end the fight once and for all. I’m sure he’s trying to figure out whether we should bring Gigi with us because he doesn’t trust anyone else to watch over her. Or put his grandmother at risk by leaving Gigi with her. He really loves Evelyn and considers her the only family he can trust right now, besides Gigi and me.”
“Evelyn knew we were alive and didn’t tell him. Why didn’t he count that as a betrayal?” I asked, annoyed again.
“Because Evelyn didn’t abandon him. She raised him and supported him. Coraline focused more on her own kids and Wyatt. She didn’t understand Ethan very well. I think she might have even been afraid of him.”
“And Evelyn does? Understand him?”
“No, but even when she doesn’t, she tries to reach out and support him anyway. She never backs down from him and knows he cares, even when he says nothing or makes a mistake. Ethan probably forgave her for lying about you all the moment he found out. Part of him sees her more as his mother than you.”
My eyes narrowed at her, and she smiled.
“You are jealous.”
“Jealous?”
She nodded. “That’s why you hate me, and you are not happy about Evelyn being the only one he will forgive.”
“Do not guess my feelings, little girl.”
“Don’t make them so obvious, old lady.”
I frowned, and she smiled wider. “Ethan loves you, Melody. A lot. He’s grateful for everything you’ve done. He wishes he could have thanked you for all that you taught him over the years. He knows he wouldn’t have survived and become the man he is today if it weren’t for having for a mother like you.”
My throat felt dry for some reason, but I didn’t let her see. Her gray eyes watched every move I made.
“Did he say all of this?”
“He doesn’t need to.”
I scoffed. “What is with you two and doing that? As if you can read each other’s minds?”
“When everyone is wiretapping our home to eavesdrop on our conversations, we had to become good at speaking without speaking.”
“It’s annoying.”
“Your problem, not mine,” she replied, popping in another grape. “As I said, Ethan loves you. However, he also hates you.”
“Hates me?” I scoffed. “And here I’ve done nothing but love and defend him.”
“Then why did you abandon him?” she asked casually as if she expected me to answer her like it was not a heavy question.
“Oh, you don’t want to answer.” She went on when I didn’t speak, “Fine. That’s your cross to bear. So, bear it. Did you really think there would be no ramifications for dropping the whole world on his shoulders? He wasn’t even twenty—”
“My son was older than I was. He was smarter and stronger—”
“And weaker in another way, too. But you don’t see it because you are so confident that your son is the best and he lives up to it, right? You all broke him so he could be king, and now you are upset that he doesn’t run back into your arms? My existence annoys you because it reminds you that Ethan isn’t mio bel leoncino. That he will never look up to you like he did when he was a child like you were the sun, the stars, and the moon. You were, then you left him in darkness, and now the sight of you only irritate his eyes—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, rising from the couch. “You may think you know everything. But if you did, you wouldn’t have ended up with a bullet in you.”
“And if you knew everything, you wouldn’t have fired the gun.”
When did I allow myself to be spoken down to by the likes of her? Ignoring her, I moved back to the door.
“I am not the enemy! I just played one to get you here because we need you here to finish this. I don’t need to heal 100%. I don’t want to wait, either. I want this over.”
“Do you think I give a shit what you want?” I did my best not to holler. “You are Pandora’s box of lies, betrayals, and misery. A tool now rebelling on your makers. I don’t care how sad your past may have been. Your life means nothing to me.”
“Duh. I know. I’m counting on the fact it means something to your son to get you to help me—”
Turning around, I marched up to her bed, kicking the side of it, which sent her bed down, and I grabbed her morphine drip, hunching over her. “Listen to me very carefully, just because my son fucks you and calls you his wife doesn’t mean I won’t kill you. Don’t use my son against me, and watch your tongue when you talk to me, or I will cut it out of your mouth.”
She stared up at me, completely unbothered. “Then do it. You wouldn’t be the first mother I had who tried to take my life. I’m not scared of you. If you want my respect, then respect me, too. I’ve done nothing but help your precious son.”
“Oh, please, you’ve all but used him to save yourself—”
“Isn’t that what all marriages are? People coming together to save themselves? Emotionally. Physically. Financially. Isn’t that why Liam married you? To save his family? Have you treated your husband perfectly?” she sneered. “No, I’m not perfect, but I am perfect for Ethan. And he is perfect for me. So, get over yourself because unlike anyone and everyone you’ve ever faced before, you can’t win, Melody. Not unless you want to give up on your son.”
I pressed the damn morphine drip button, wishing I could kill her right this second.
“What is going on?”
I froze, hearing Ethan’s voice behind me.
“Your mom was just helping me. I wanted to rest a bit more,” she lied, looking directly at my face. “Thank you, you for the help, Mom.”
I dropped the drip and turned back to see both Ethan and Liam standing together, looking at me.
Saying nothing, I marched out of the room, going to the bathroom, stopping up the sink, and then turning on the water. I watched the bowl fill all the way to the top before putting my head inside. I stayed there, trying to calm myself down.
I couldn’t shake this anger, this frustration…this hurt.
That’s what it was…hurt.
I was hurt. My son, my little lion, was no longer little, and now he was swiping at me. It fucking hurt. And that girl…it was her who somehow brought up that hurt.
Coming up for air, I brushed my hair from my face, breathing in slowly.
“Grandma?”
Jumping, I turned to see Gigi staring at me wide-eyed, holding a stuffed dolphin. I just started at this little one like she was an alien. Then she grinned wide.
“I wanna try!”
“No,” I snapped at her.
She pouted.
“No,” I repeated.
“Grandma, you are no fun.” She huffed angrily.
“I know. I am very mean. So, stop coming around me!”
“No!” She stuck out her tongue at me before running down the hall. And when I heard a snort, I looked out the door to find Liam trying not to laugh.
“She has such a strong personality. She reminds me of both Dona and Wyatt wrapped into one.” He chuckled.
“Is that why you spend all your time teaching her schoolwork during the day?” I muttered, grabbing the towel to dry my face.
“Yes, it reminds me of a much simpler time. Plus, she’s adorable and sweet,” he added.
“Her mother…” I froze, trying to get her damn words out of my head. “I dislike her.”
“You would have disliked anyone Ethan was with,” he admitted. “I hate Dona’s husband, too. But you told me to get over it, cuz it was the best we could do.”
“She knows I can’t fucking kill her. She’s hiding behind Ethan! I want to cut her tongue out,” I snapped and kept rubbing my face, ignoring his jab about Gabriel. The man was a prince; what more could we ask for? “She knows a lot about our past, Liam. Her father couldn’t have told her all of that, right? Where did she get all of this information—”
“Melody, why do you keep thinking Ethan would not tell his wife about his past, our past? She is his wife.”
I froze, staring at him.
“I know,” he whispered. “We’ve spent our lives acting on our own. We were our own bosses. Only sharing with family. And family was only determined by us. It’s weird. We haven’t technically ruled the family in years. And yet only now do I feel like I’ve lost the power, which means Ethan’s right. This whole time, we’ve been in his way and caging him. We aren’t in control anymore, Mel. We are foot soldiers now. That means, even if you don’t like her, you have to rest in knowing that the boss chose her as his wife.”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. “Who the fuck are you? When did you have this epiphany?”
He chuckled and leaned into me. “We might not be the bosses anymore, but we are still family. Ethan won’t come to us. So, use Calliope like she tried to use you. Get close to her. She likes talking, then let her talk. Learn what you want from her.”
“We aren’t here to be friends. We are here to kill her family...at least that is what I thought, but our little brat of a son won’t share his plans with me.” The moment I said it, he stared at me. And I realized once again…he didn’t have to share his plans with me. Which meant if I wanted to know, I had to get Calliope to speak. Oh, how I hated this. Frowning, I looked back up almost to the point of desperation. “Can’t you do it?”
“Gigi likes me. I’m teaching her Irish history. And she’s telling me a lot about what we’ve missed over the years. She’s my mole. So, you work on her mother, and I’ll hang out where I’m wanted.” He winked, and I threw the towel at his face.