by J. J. McAvoy
Liam had gone to get her—i.e. knock some fucking sense into her—leaving me alone with the rapist. That sounded horrible…for him. He was still gagged and bound to the wall. His was shirt ripped, his leather pants were almost to his ankles; he looked as if he just came out of a bondage club alright; it was overall a pitiful sight. His hair was greasy, his mustache seemed as if it were drawn on with a sharpie and his eyes were cold.
This was the piece of shit she didn’t want to face? I was expecting more.
“I don’t understand females, Monte,” I told him as I stared at Harvey, and ate my s’more.
“If you don’t, ma’am, there’s no hope for the rest of us.”
“How would you kill him?” I asked, causing Harvey’s eyes to widen as he stared at us. “If it was your lover he had raped, what would you do him?”
Monte glared at the man.
“I would take a page out of the Passion of fucking Christ, chain him to the wall and take his skin off with whips…and for the heck of it, I’d roll him in salt.” He spat at his feet.
“You can do better, Monte.” I smiled, drinking my milk.
“Crucify him upside down?” He grinned, looking down at me.
“I see someone’s been going back to church.” Monte wasn’t a very religious person, but every once in awhile, he would spend weeks at church. I wasn’t sure why, but hey, whatever worked for him.
The rapist mumbled, fighting against his chains as if that was going to help him. I wanted to watch him suffer slowly.
“I’m sorry, you have balls in your mouth. I can’t hear you,” I told him before taking a bite. He glared, barking out something I didn’t understand.
“I think he is insulting you, ma’am. May I demonstrate?” He seemed eager.
“Sadly no, it’s Olivia’s kill and she’s going to kill him, even if takes her all night.” I frowned. “But we can suggest it as an option. I’ve never seen a man crucified before.”
LIAM
I do not have time for this shit.
“Olivia Callahan, get your ass out here and kill this motherfucker, I have shit to do,” I yelled at the oak door. I could still hear her sobbing.
“You’re not helping!” Neal yelled at me, but the moment his eyes met mine, he backed down, as he should.
Staring at the two hundred year old oak door with the hand-carved family crest that my mother had imported from Ireland, I thought about how easy it would be for me to just blow a hole through it and drag her out. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I could feel my father’s eyes on me. He wanted to see how well I could handle the family. He was always watching me and it pissed me off sometimes.
Sighing, I took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Olivia, I don’t understand your pain, nor will I ever. Nothing I can say will reverse the shit you went through. However, right now you have been given a chance at justice very few people in this life get. You are a Callahan. We don’t cry, we don’t get even, we bend the scale in our favor and leave it there. I have too much to do to sit here and listen to you disgrace this family. If you’re not out of there in five seconds, Neal will divorce you. He won’t want to, but he will do it because I will make him. And his next wife won’t be such a fucking wuss.”
“You’re an asshole, Liam Callahan,” she yelled, bursting out of the room before storming down the marble hallway. Neal shook his head at me, his jaw clenched, before he followed after her.
Declan and my father just stared at me. “Is there a reason why you bitches are staring?”
“Nope, I will go…make myself useful.” Declan said and under his breath. I could have sworn the motherfucker muttered, “The mad hatter strikes again.”
MELODY
Hearing the door open, Monte and I turned to find Olivia, her face puffy and red, her eyes focused only on Harvey.
“I want to be alone with him,” she demanded.
Nodding, I looked to Monte, who walked right past her.
“That means you as well,” she snapped at me. Obviously, she forgot who had pushed her to this point.
“You’re funny,” I told her. “Now, hurry up and kill him, I’m running low on snacks.”
“Mel.”
“Olivia.” My voice dropped no longer joking.
Sighing, she didn’t say anything. Instead she took a chair allowing it to drag against the floor—metal on concrete—before she stopped and took a seat near me.
“I don’t know how to kill him. I want him to suffer. I just don’t know…” she added as she stared at Harvey, who only stared back like he was begging with his eyes.
“Easiest problem you could ever have.” I said, giving her a s’more. She stared at me like I was insane. “When a pregnant woman offers you food, you take it and smile.”
I knew they knew. The way Declan was treating me in the car, he had to have known, which meant Coraline knew, and if Coraline knew, they all knew.
Taking it, she took a bite and smiled. It was fake, but whatever, I was being nice, the least she could do was accept it.
“Monte said you should crucify him,” I told her.
She thought about it, sniffling slightly before shaking her head. “Too much effort and people. I want to be the one to kill him. It’s not a group project.”
It took me a second, but I smiled like the Grinch after he stole Christmas.
“Olivia, have you ever drilled through a man’s flesh?” I asked.
“What?” she coughed
“Neal, maybe you can show her,” I called out, knowing full well they could hear us, before standing up.
A moment later, Neal came with not one, but two drills. The emotion in his eyes—or better yet, the lack of any emotion in his eyes—was beautiful.
“She kills him,” was all I said, grabbing my plate and glass to leave. I wanted to stay, but drills always became so damn messy.
Liam stood outside the door, shaking his head at me.
“What?” I asked, turning to watch from the safety of the window.
Coming up behind me, he wrapped his hands around my waist. We were in public and it was odd to me that I wasn’t pushing him away. But for some reason, whenever he was near, I felt calm. I felt relaxed.
“You’re ruthless, wife,” he muttered.
“Someone has to be, why not me?” I replied, leaning into him as I watched Neal hold Olivia’s hand. She went for the bitch’s belly button. That was going to hurt.
“What had you so stressed earlier?” I murmured, but he didn’t answer. He just rubbed my stomach slowly. “Liam…”
“Everyone out,” he declared and I hadn’t even noticed everyone, but in a flash they were gone.
Turning me to him, he kissed me and I reacted by dropping my plate and glass before I regained my senses and pushed him away, slapping him across the face.
“Fuck, Mel!” he snapped, grabbing his face. “You need to check that shit before our kid comes.”
“You need to stop distracting me when I’m talking about work, damn it. What the hell is going on?” I yelled back.
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “Firstly, your mood swings are driving me insane. Secondly, it’s about your grandfather.”
I froze. “Orlando’s father died years ago.”
“Not him. Ivan, Aviela’s father. He signed as witness on the marriage contract between my father and Natasha’s mother. For some reason, he wanted them married.” He frowned, staring at Olivia and Neal. He looked jealous, like he would rather be drilling into a man’s spine than dealing with this.
Standing beside him, I watched silently. “Why? What does he gain from your father marrying Natasha’s mother?”
“I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “But the only way we will find out anything is to see the Briars. We have to go to Ireland.”
I couldn’t help but groan. “You do know they will most likely retaliate for everything that happened to Shamus.”
He turned to me, leaning against the window just as blood splattered upon it. “They will.
But we have no other choice. We need to find out what’s happening.”
“Fine.” I sighed. “But Olivia and Neal will have to stay. We still have Senator Colemen to deal with. He needs to become the President. Now that Chuck is dead, we won’t have to worry about the market for a while. Roy is going to have his work cut out for him as he tries to prove his worth.”
“Who the hell is Roy?” He glared, and I just rolled my eyes.
“Our new mule. Breathe, I was just sucking you off wasn’t I?”
He grinned like the pervert he was as he eyed me. The moment he took a step toward me, I stepped back. “Slow down. When are we leaving?”
He didn’t listen. Instead, he pushed me against the window. I felt someone slam over and over again on it. Frowning, Liam glared at the blood stained window, where Harvey was screaming for help. Reaching to the intercom, Liam snapped, “Will you keep the motherfucker off the glass? Jeez. I swear people don’t know how to kill correctly.”
“They’re having fun. They could use it. Maybe Olivia will finally stop being a pain in the ass.” I smirked.
They’d let him out of his chains just so they could watch him beg for his life, and they called us fucked up.
“Where were we?” He turned to me.
“You were about to kiss me against the bloody glass,” I replied, and he nodded before lifting me up and pressing me against said glass.
“So, Ireland?” he sighed, staring at me.
“Will you wear one of those ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish’ shirts?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.”
I kissed him.
“Maybe,” he whispered when I broke away.
I kissed him again. Deeper.
“Maybe.”
“You’re cheating, Liam.” I glared at him.
“Yes I am.” He smirked, kissing me again.
FIFTEEN
“Handsome and brilliantly rich;
their fatal flaw is murder.”
—Abigail Gibbs
NEAL
If you had told me a year ago that I would be watching my wife drill into a man’s spine, I would have laughed in your face. Olivia was not a killer. Olivia didn’t want to kill, but apparently she was into torture.
“You laughed.” She sneered over the buzz of her drill. The pig screamed loudly, and as he tried to crawl away from her, his voice, like his bones, was cracking. “I told you to stop! I begged you to stop, and you laughed!”
The blood that splattered all over her face made me grateful that I had thought to get her a mask and goggles. She looked like a wild butcher. She looked liked a monster. She looked fucking sexy.
She snapped up, staring at me. “Why did you stop?”
Why did I stop? I thought, looking at the blood that dripped from the head of my drill.
“It’s your kill, babe,” I told her, taking a seat against the wall. I felt the blood lust; that Callahan blood lust that begged for me to finish him off, to cut his head off and drill into his eyes. It was that blood lust that drove my father and Liam. It was in our DNA. Callahans and blood went hand in hand. If we weren’t in the mafia, we would all probably be serial killers.
Olivia stared at me, pulling her drill from his spine causing a sickening pop to echo around the room. Placing it on the ground, she walked over to me, and took a seat by my side, where she belonged.
“Is it always like this?” she asked, as she rested her head on my shoulder. Harvey wasn’t moving. He may have been dead. From what I could tell he had seventy-nine drill holes starting from his ankle to his shoulder blades. I did my best to keep her from his neck and head; he shouldn’t die that quickly.
“Like what?”
She sighed, pulling the mask from her face. “I don’t know. Is it always this easy? This simple. Just kill and not regret it? There he is, the man who caused me so much pain and enjoyed every moment. It was easy. It was so easy to kill him. But I hated him. Is it always this easy?”
I thought about it and nodded. “Yes. After your first kill it becomes easier and easier until it’s second nature. There is a line in the world. There are those who can be fucked with, and there are those who cannot be. If people knew their place, then the world would be safer. I just think of it as regulating.”
She didn’t say anything and I wasn’t sure how to take that. This was the part of me that I did my best to hide from her. The Callahan blood, the part of me that thought it was okay to cut out men’s tongues if they spoke badly about our family. Yet here we were, watching her rapist bleed out. Liam would want this room cleaned and re-cemented to hide all the blood.
OLIVIA
I felt nothing but relief and that was so odd to me. I expected anger, pain, guilt—any emotion at all, but nothing else came. Was it really so easy to kill people? Or was it because I knew they were evil. With them gone, I felt no need to ever walk down this road again…so what kept Melody and Liam going?
“Can we go?” I asked Neal. “He’s dead. Can we go? I just want a shower.”
He nodded, reaching behind his back before handing me a gun. “He’s going to die anyway if he hasn’t already, but just add the final nail.”
Taking the handgun, I turned back to Harvey—my rapist. My monster. Standing, I walked over to his body, looking down at his head when he moved.
A dry sob broke through his lips, his whole body shook like mine shook after that night. He looked up at me covered in his own blood.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He sobbed softly.
“No, you’re not,” I told him before firing into his skull.
Taking a deep breath, I almost jumped when Mel walked into the room clapping slowly.
On her face was a wicked smile. It was worse than how she used to glare at everyone. Her smiles were mocking smiles; like she knew something you didn’t and she was going to use it against you.
“Welcome to the family.” She smiled as Liam appeared behind her, placing his hand on her waist.
He glanced around the room and shook his head before staring at Neal, who stood up under his brother’s gaze.
“We’re going to Ireland,” Liam stated. “You and Olivia will be staying here. Can I trust you to keep an eye on this while we’re gone?”
I turned to Neal. He loved Ireland. He wanted us to go there this summer, but King Liam would not allow it. Now the ass was taking his wife. However, Neal didn’t look bothered, he looked at his brother with pride. I would never understand their relationship.
“Yes. I will look over everything. Declan told me something about the new prices and our new contact. I will watch over that and Senator Colemen,” he replied.
Mel’s eyes narrowed in on him. “We will be coming back so don’t get used to siting on our throne.”
“Of course not.”
Here I was, standing in a room full of killers and I was one of them. I was a Callahan. God help whoever stood in this family’s way.
SIXTEEN
“I’ll kill you in a few minutes. It’ll be good for you.”
—Frederick Weisel
LIAM
“Are we staying in the castle?” Coraline asked, grinning out the plane window. “I haven’t been back there since we got married.”
I turned to stare at my brother, who smiled so widely I was surprised his teeth didn’t fall out as he watched Coraline in her own personal wonderland.
Apparently they were doing well.
“I’m not sure. Boss?” He turned to me.
Rolling my eyes, I shook my head, knowing they would not be happy with where we were going to be staying.
There was silence throughout our large cabin. We were only three hours into an eight-hour flight to Dublin, and I knew I was going to lose my mind.
I should have gotten a larger plane.
After Colemen was president, I was taking Air Force One, damn it.
“Liam,” my mother said slowly, breaking away from her private conversation with my father to address me.
“Don’t
tell me…” Sedric trailed off, straightening his tie as he glared into the side of my skull. I could feel the rage he was trying to bottle up.
“Don’t tell him what?” Coraline glanced between us, as if she was seeing two very different outcomes of my answer.
Declan glared, his eyes narrowing, body stiffening, but he nodded.
“Liam…”
“We’re staying at Shamus’ house in the village,” I snapped, pinching the bridge of my nose. For the love of Christ, why couldn’t they shut up?
“Shamus’ house?” Coraline repeated softly. “As in, Shamus, who’s everyone believes was murdered in our house, the man who lives in the hills of Ireland with his men…his very loyal men.”
I glared at her. “No, Coraline. I mean Shamus, the ghost of mafia past. What the fuck?”
She frowned, leaning back into her seat, causing Declan’s eyebrow to twitch as he stared at me.
However, there was a small snicker from the woman in front of me. Glancing at her, I noticed she hadn’t been sleeping like I thought.
“I didn’t know you were awake.” I sat up, grabbing her hand.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Who could sleep with all the noise you people are making.”
“My pregnant wife could.” I replied, causing her to pinch my wrist. Taking her other hand, I kissed them before sitting back.
“So, Shamus’ house…” She smiled, leaning back as well. “A bit morbid, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t help but groan, hearing a few ‘thank-yous’ from the peanut gallery that was my family.
“Not you too, wife.”
“Morbid, but not bad. After all, the Romans killed and made it their own home—”
“Yes and the Roman Empire fell,” my father cut her off sharply, causing the smiles on both of our faces to drop as we turned to him.
My mother shook her head at him, flipping through her magazine as if there wasn’t a possibility that I would take a dagger to the side of my own father’s face.