by J. J. McAvoy
“And because of that choice, they used your wife as a pawn and then disregarded her. So, was it still the right choice?”
“Yes, because she would never have been able to become my wife if I had chosen to fight. You wouldn’t be here. Neither would your sister. I wouldn’t trade the life I had with your mother for anything. And what she wanted for you, what we wanted for both you and your sister, was to get you out.”
I frowned, feeling my fist tighten. “You really don’t believe I can do it, do you?”
“I know you can do it. I’m scared of what doing it will cost you. Will I have to bury my son? It was your mother’s greatest fear. We did our best to keep you out of this family’s struggle because we wanted better, we wanted you to be better. Wyatt already has a grip on your sister. I will fight it till my last day, and I will fight you because I can’t lose you, too.”
My head snapped to the side to look at him in rage. There was a dark ring around his eyes that he covered with slightly tinted shades. He faced forward, though I was sure he knew I was looking.
“You—”
“You asked Helen if she was still dating Wyatt because you wanted to know if you killed him would she care. Yes, she would. And she is so distressed lately I fear she might hurt herself. And while you are smart, Ethan and Calliope are smart also. They will kill you the moment they sense you are betraying them. Do you want to live like that? Worry if your family will kill you or the people who hate your family? Let it go, son.”
No.
I wouldn’t.
“If you are not the head, you are the tail. If you are not the wolf, you are the sheep. The only way I can make sure they never treat us like sheep is to become the wolf—”
“No. Become the human, Darcy.”
“Killian,” I corrected.
He shook his head. “Killian is the wolf. Darcy is the human. I know what I named you. Be the human. You want to become big enough, strong enough that Ethan never uses you or any of your loved ones again. You want to a be wolf against someone who was raised as a wolf, thrives as wolf? You can’t win in this game. In this arena, you need to survive as a human, not an animal fighting to be the head, fighting against others, fighting to the death every day. Ethan’s path will always and forever be painful and bloody. No matter how smart or wise any of them are, none live long, happy lives. I don’t want that for you.”
I bit my tongue again. “There is no other arena—”
“Your mother had one in mind.” He chuckled, looking over to where her grave was. This was the first time he’d come here since her funeral. “She once told me that she could never beat Melody in anything, but maybe, just maybe, she could get her son to outshine hers. To live forever in history, and not in the shadows…” He casually looked over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “That her son would one day become President Darcy K. Callahan of the United States of America. Something no other Callahan could ever do, even when they wanted to.”
I looked into his eyes for a long time, and then the corner of my lip turned up. “Mom never dreamed small, did she?”
“Nope.” He smiled and hung his head as he inhaled slowly. “Honor her, Darcy. Make sure they always remember her. Make sure her name goes into history and overshadows the rest of us. If Melody can get her daughter a kingdom, we can you one, too.”
“Presidents have term limits.”
“True. But they are forever honored just the same.”
I frowned. I didn’t want this talk. I wanted vengeance, I wanted blood. I wanted…my mother back. Glancing over to her tombstone, I swallowed hard.
I wanted her to tell me all of this.
I really wanted her back.
And she wanted…me to be human.
“Dad.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t die anytime soon.”
“Same to you.”
I smirked, nodding and standing a bit taller.
23
“In each loss, there is a gain,
as in every gain, there is a loss,
and with each new ending comes a new beginning.”
~Proverb
ETHAN
It was 9 pm.
Gigi had long since fallen asleep in my arms. She held me like she was afraid I would disappear…again. As I held her, I wondered what scars I was leaving in her mind. Would they be the same as mine? Or would they be worse? I prayed they weren’t. I had come to the realization that I wasn’t a good father, but I loved her and wanted her as my child even still. Tucking her into bed, I placed my hand on her head for the longest time before kissing her forehead. I finally made my way to the other person I was not too good to, but loved and wanted anyway.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I reached our door. Would she fire a round of bullets at me, throw bottles, stab me? I did not care. I entered anyway, seeing that she’d changed from her funeral clothes into a dark robe. She sat at her vanity, rubbing cream under her eyes. She did not say a word as I entered. Closing the door behind me, I leaned against it, waiting.
Minutes ticked by, and she still said nothing. Instead, she rose from her chair and moved onto the bed, laying down and turning off the lights. Sighing, I allowed myself to sit on the floor in front of the door opposite the bed.
“Dino, Italo, Vinnie,” I spoke softly into the darkness of our room. “They are dead.”
“Did they die, or did you kill them?” she asked.
“I had to.”
“The only reason you would have to is if you needed to keep a secret. What secret? Let me guess, your parents aren’t dead?”
I opened my mouth to answer but then kept silent.
“It seems this kingdom needed more of my blood than yours.” She snickered and rolled onto her side. “Congratulations, Ethan. You won…all on your own.”
“You know I couldn’t have gotten this far without you, Calliope.”
“A pawn is a pawn, Ethan. Don’t give me credit. I got played like the rest of them. In the end, I won and lost. I am Mrs. Callahan. Only you are not the Mr. Callahan I thought you were.”
“You know you are different. You are now the only one in the world who knows the truth about me…what really causes my headaches. Who I really am.”
Calliope didn’t say anything.
She wouldn’t say anything else.
She was upset. She needed time and space.
After all, it couldn’t be easy to love someone with my disorder.
“Calliope, I have a headache,” I whispered because I did, in fact, have a headache, but also because I was greedy and selfish.
It took a few minutes.
Actually, a lot of minutes. But slowly, she rolled out of bed, going to her trunk and pulling out a bottle before crossing the floor of the room, like a shadow of death. She stood over me, looking at me with those cold gray eyes of hers before she tossed the bottle at me.
“You enrage me.” She frowned.
Dripping the liquid into my throat. I hung my head before I said, “I enrage myself.”
When she moved to walk away, I grabbed her hand. She didn’t fight, and I pulled her down to the floor with me, wrapping my hands around her waist gently. She sat rigidly, not allowing herself to relax in my arms.
“My grandmother…” I bit back the pain I was feeling in my throat, resting my head on her shoulder. “She left words for me.”
“Yes. If you want to hear them, you’re going to have to let me go.”
I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to let go. And I didn’t want to hear the words.
“I should have made it back faster,” I whispered.
I expected her to blame me. To say she was right, I shouldn’t have left her behind. If had let her come, Nari wouldn’t have let Roman inside, Roman wouldn’t have used our daughter, and I wouldn’t have lost two of my family members.
“It’s my fault. I failed.”
“You saved them,” she whispered, and I lifted my head off her shoulder to lo
ok at her. But she didn’t look at me. “If you never trusted me, if you were…if you were less of a man, and I didn’t love you…the Orsinis would have gotten their revenge, and none of them would have ever know how or why. It could have been done by me. Or someone else working for Siena. No matter how much they tried to make you doubt, what they did, you chose, and you saved this family. Whether they realize it or not.”
I had no words, slowly my arms fell from her, and she got up, walking to her vanity and grabbing her phone. When she came back to me, she lifted it so I could see the recording.
“I wanted to delete it,” she said. “I wanted you to feel the pain of no closure, too.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because seeing you weep might make me hate you less,” she replied, dropping the phone in front of me before taking a seat right across from me. She was serious; she wanted a front-row seat to my pain.
The part of me that always wanted to fight, to win, to have the last word was beat back by the part of me that needed to hear from the woman who had raised me when everyone else had walked away.
Picking up the phone, I pressed play, and the moment I heard her voice say, “You’re okay. I’m so happy you’re okay, Ethan…”
My iced-over heart shook, and tear swelled in my eyes.
No, Nana, I am not okay.
CALLIOPE
He hung his head as he listened for the third time.
Each time he heard it, he pressed rewind and started from the beginning again. He didn’t sob uncontrollably. He didn’t make a sound. The only proof of his grief was the very few tears that silently fell from his face.
This was not what I wanted.
I wanted him to scream out in pain. To kneel over in grief. Instead, it was like ignoring the meaning behind her words and using them instead to tear himself down. He was going back to the dark corners of his mind and blaming himself over and over again. Telling himself, “This is what happens when you aren’t good enough when you aren’t worthy of leading.” How did I know? How was I so sure? Because I knew him. Because I also spent a lot of time reading about disorders to figure out my mother. No one else, except Evelyn, seemed to realize it. Not his doctor brother, not his parents, not the Irish or the Italians.
They all thought his intense anger, his detachment, and paranoia at times were normal. They didn’t realize the reason why he was also so controlling, why he fought so hard to bring his brother back, why he didn’t want to let go of Dona, it was part of his feared abandonment. They couldn’t see it because violence, anger, coldness, and being controlling were expected in this family. Even for the moments they didn’t understand, when Ethan acted completely out of character, when he seemed impulsive or reckless, they all just assumed he was doing something toward his master plan. The truth of the matter was many times, Ethan was covering up for his recklessness to make it look like that’s what he wanted to do all along. But he could only do so much and control so much. The irony was that he could control all the world, but he, at times, couldn’t control his own mind.
And he could never show that weakness to his family. He would never say the words because the words could destroy him. It didn’t matter what decade or century we were in, no one, not even his family, would trust him to be Ceann Na Conairte if they knew there was something even slightly off with his mind. He was born to rule, raised to rule, expected and pre-destined from childhood. He’d rather suffer silently than ever admit to it.
Even I could never say the words out allowed, so instead, when I felt him getting to the edge, sometimes I simply asked, “Do you have a headache?”
It was my way of asking if he needed medication, seeing how he sometimes skipped his medication or simply lost track of time. Under enough stress, the first sign he was slipping was a headache. Sometimes I didn’t bother asking; I just gave it to him. But even I didn’t catch everything, especially when I was away from him for such long periods.
“Enough,” I said, reaching out and grabbing his wrist, stopping him from rewinding the recording again.
He froze and didn’t raise his head to me. Reaching over, I lifted his chin, forcing him to look up. His green eyes were red and void of anything but tears. “You’re not playing fair, Ethan. I’m the upset one. I’m the betrayed one. Why do you look so much more broken? I said to weep, not break down and hate yourself.”
“You’re right. It’s not fair. Your life was harder. So why am I like this?” he whispered, searching my eyes. “I’ve been watching you, trying to copy you. I try pushing the thoughts away, but it doesn’t work. Tell me when will I stop being so damn pathetic?”
I rested my forehead on his, kneeling between his legs. “You are not pathetic.” I had my moments, too. But it wasn’t the same; he knew it, and so did I.
“I feel weak,” he muttered, determined to berate himself.
Fine. “You are weak. And I like you that way. You already come from good stock, money, and power; let me have one fucking strength over you and stop being so damn selfish about it. I’ve covered and accepted everything you’ve thrown at me so far, haven’t I?”
He chuckled before he wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. “You told me once to join you in your insanity, and instead, you’ve joined mine.”
“You see how nothing goes my way in the end!” I frowned, letting go of him, but he stayed on me.
“You’re Mrs. Callahan, aren’t you?” he replied
“Yay.” I rolled my eyes and lopped my finger in the air. “It’s been a very stressful job of late.”
“It’s always been stressful—”
“Don’t lecture me. I know. And like I said, I am still mad at you, so be sad but be considerate about your sadness, okay? I’m not just going to forgive you. You need to know there are consequences for betraying me.” I huffed, trying to pull his hands off me, but he only held on tighter. “Ethan, let go of me.”
“I can’t. You are making me feel better.”
“I will bite you—” I was cut off as he pushed me onto the floor, undoing my robe. “No, don’t you dare. I am not in the mood….” My voice trailed off as he shifted, placing his ear on top of my still flat stomach.
“If it’s a girl again, let’s name her after my grandmother,” he whispered.
“It’s going to be a boy.”
“How do you know?”
“Just a feeling.”
“Hopefully…you’re wrong,” he whispered.
“Why? You only want girls?”
“They last longer…” He was quiet for a long time before speaking again. “If it’s boy, we…we can name him after my father…on second thought, let it be a middle name. I don’t want him to end up like him.”
“How did your father end up?”
He didn’t answer.
He just lay there, quietly listening to my stomach while also lost in thought.
This was not how I wanted this night to go. I planned to ignore him for months or even years. I would play the good wife and do as he asked, but I wouldn’t let him get close anymore. I wouldn’t allow myself to be open with him. I’d be cold as ice.
That all fell apart in seconds.
I truly was in love with the son of a bitch.
I really was going to always forgive him.
What a pathetic pair we were.
ETHAN—FIVE DAYS AGO
He bled so badly that his shirt was soaked from the gash on the back of his head. My mother and I held my father as he escaped what was left of the burning mansion retreating into the woods. Dino and Italo were both in front of us, leading us to where the helicopter would be waiting.
“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.” I could hear her whisper to him even though he hadn’t responded since we had dug him out. His pulse was weak. His body already felt like a dead weight around my neck.
“How much farther?” she called out. “We need to get him to the doctor!”
“It should be—” Before I even answered the question, I s
aw the dark-green military chopper in the clearing up head.
Vinnie was already standing with the doors open; but, before we could take another step, Dino and Italo both turned back, guns pointed directly at us all.
“What the fuck are you doing?” my mother sneered. “Move now!”
“Don’t bark at us!” Dino sneered, stepping forward as Italo took a few steps back. Never once did they drop their aim. “This is where our journey ends, Mr. Callahan.”
“So, you are betraying me in the end?” I asked them.
“No,” Dino replied. “We kept up our end of the deal. Now we want to make sure we get out. I’ve been watching Mr. Callahan. You’ve got trust issues. You use people, and then you dump them. We aren’t getting dumped.”
“He needs a doctor!” my mother sneered.
“That is not our problem, lady.”
“It will be when I hunt you down—”
“Ethan,” he called out me, “we don’t want problems. Not with you, not with your family. It’s over. Like I said. We just want to make sure there are no surprises. Once we go, you won’t find us, and we won’t look for you. Let’s call it a family secret.”
“Fine but leave us the helicopter, and you all go on your way,” I demanded.
“No can do. We need space to make this getaway possible,” he said, taking a step back as the helicopter blades turned, the force of the wind picking up grass and tossing leaves. “Good luck and tell Calliope we said goodbye. Look out for our favorite sis, okay?”
“You sons of bitches!” my mother screamed, drawing out her gun; however, Italo fired first…only they didn’t hit her but me.
“Ethan!”
The weight of my father’s body and the force of the bullet sent me to the ground.
“Ethan!” My mother came, putting pressure on my stomach. They shot me because they knew she’d back down to try to take care of my father and me.