A Bloody Kingdom

by J. J. McAvoy

  “Is something on my face?” He frowned, wiping his nose.

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?” This time, he rubbed all over his face. “Now?”

  “Even worse.”

  “Daddy!” he hollered as I laughed, crossing his arms again as he lied back down. “Why don’t you make fun of Nari?”

  “Because Nari is good at comebacks.” She really was a fast thinker just like her mother, but she was shy. Mina wasn’t shy, she just preferred to only speak when she had something important to say. Other than that, she wore her emotions on her face.

  “I’m not good at comebacks,” he replied. “All the girls are. Helen is the best, she even got Nari.”

  “Nari and Helen were fighting?” Nari didn’t fight with anyone.

  “Yeah. Nari thinks Kevin from Plane Owl is the cutest and Helen thinks Ian is…they all look weird to me.” He yawned.

  Wait. “Nari likes a boy?”

  “Duh, Dad.” He frowned. She was kind of young for boys, right?

  “Do you like anyone?”

  “Yes, me,” he said seriously.

  Grabbing a small hand towel, I threw it at him. “You are just like your uncle sometimes.”

  “Uncle Declan or Uncle Liam?”

  “Both.”

  He grinned, “I want to be cool like Uncle Declan, be the best at video games like Uncle Liam, and as strong as you. Won’t that be cool! I’ll be Superman.”

  Good to know that the combination of the three of us is his version of Superman.

  “We get to eat ribs…” He sang happily, then stopped, sitting back up. “Mommy eats a lot. She’s going to take the best ones.”

  I couldn’t stop laughing; he was just too damn funny.

  “Daddy!”

  “Relax, girls take longer,” I reminded him, and he relaxed, leaning back. It was true though: for as tiny as Mina was, she could eat.

  He went back to singing. “We get to eat ribs, we get to eat ribs.” Six years, that’s how long he’d been in my life, and I could not imagine not having a son.

  “We get to eat ribs,” I sang along with him.

  THIRTEEN

  “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

  ~ Sun Tzu

  MELODY

  4:59 AM

  I stood waiting, watching each second pass on my watch. I thought about it: how I would do this, how I would start over dozens of times and could come up with nothing…nothing but my own past. I would start the same way my father had started with me.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  “Dona.” I shook her shoulder. She tried to roll away but I ripped the cover off of her. “Dona get up.”

  “Mommy—”

  “Now.”

  She rubbed her eyes, slowly sitting up, clearly confused. Her dark hair was a complete mess around her and she made it worse by scratching the side of her head. I wanted to brush it down for her but instead, I stepped back.

  “Take her,” I said to Fedel, who emotionlessly picked her up.

  “Mommy!” Dona panicked as he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Ignoring her, I held the door open for them, walking forward as I pulled my hair up into a ponytail.

  “Fedel? You’re holding on too tight!” She squirmed but he didn’t say a word, just kept walking, and I knew his grip wouldn’t loosen. “Mommy, what’s wrong? Mommy?”

  I could feel her starting to panic; it was probably because she was confused, but also because she was tired. Opening the door, Fedel walked quicker, shifting her into his arms before throwing her into the deep end of the pool.

  “MOMMY!” She screamed and a quiver went down my spine, but I ignored it. She was still better off than I was. No one woke me up with Orlando. I was grabbed while sleeping and thrown into the deep end, no explanation, nothing.

  “Swim, Donatella,” I said as she flapped her arms around uselessly. She knew how to swim; I’d made sure of it. At the moment, she was just scared. Wrapping her arms around herself, she stared at me, her wet hair sticking to her face. She didn’t move, just stared at me as I sat down on the pool chair.

  “Why aren’t you swimming?” I asked her.

  She frowned. “It’s cold.”

  “You will live.”

  She swam to the edge of the pool and got out. “I don’t want to swim.”

  Fedel picked her up with ease and threw her right back in, more harshly this time. The sound of her face hitting the water made my throat dry. It took a second but she swam back up, brushing her hair off her face, gasping out for air.

  “I don’t care if you want to swim. Top to bottom.”

  “Mommy!”

  “Now!”

  She took a deep breath, moving to the edge of the pool before taking off. I wanted to smile at how naturally good she was, but my face felt frozen. She swam smoothly from one side to the other.

  “Happy?” she snapped angrily at me, trying to get out again, but she paused the moment she saw Fedel hovering over her.

  “Do it again.”

  “What?’

  “Do it again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Mommy!”

  “Now, Donatella!”

  She smacked her hand on the water but did what I said, this time, faster, faster than me at her age…but this wasn’t about speed. She’d learn that the hard way.

  “Again,” I stated when she finished.

  “How many!”

  “100.”

  “Mom!” Her mouth dropped open.

  “You’ve done two, only 98 more to go,” I stated. “You stay in there however long it takes, Donatella.”

  She bit her lip, her green eyes glaring at me as the water reflected in them, but she swam anyway. It wasn’t possible for her to get to a hundred yet, but that wasn’t the point. It was to break her, to make her so weak she couldn’t stand, so weak she felt sick. Swimming on an empty stomach with no prior training, with her furry pajamas weighing her down—this was going to hurt…a lot, and it was just a start.

  It took ten laps before she had to stop, gasping out for breath. Again she looked to me and there must have been something on my face because she looked hurt but didn’t say anything, just went back to swimming.

  “She has probably another ten laps in her before she sinks. Get ready to jump in,” I told Fedel, and he just stepped out of his shoes.

  I was wrong.

  She was weaker than I thought. It wasn’t ten; it was six. She did six more laps before her legs cramped up and she cried out.

  “Mom—” She tried to call out at me before her head dropped under the water. My heart dropped. I gripped the edge of my seat, but I didn’t move. Fedel dove in and even though I knew she wasn’t under for long and that he would easily get her, I still held my breath.

  She coughed when he brought her back up and pulled himself over to the side. She pushed up off him, trying to stand even when she could barely breathe. She made it an inch before her legs gave out and she fell to the ground. She cried out, rolling into a ball.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked her, but she didn’t reply. Kneeling next to her, I shoved her onto her back. Staring up at me, she grabbed her heart. “Does it hurt? Does it feel like your heart is about to explode and your legs are gone? You feel like you’re going to die?”

  She nodded, her lip quivering, but she couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down the sides of her face.

  “Well, let me tell you a secret my father told me: when you feel like you are dying, that’s when you know you aren’t really dying. You’re growing. Get used to this feeling, Donatella, because you’re going to be growing a lot from now on. Get up, we’ve just started.” I stood as two maids walked in with a change of clothes and her breakfast: bread and enriched milk.

  8:27 AM

  “Stop it!” she yelled at me, throwing her hands in the air. “I’m tired! My legs hurt! My hands hurt! Everythin
g hurts!”

  “That’s sad, do you want me to kiss it and make it feel better?” I mocked, circling her in the ring. “Our poor little princess. Her legs hurt, her arms hurt—oh no!”

  Her face bunched up, and like a raging bull screaming, she ran to me blindly. All I did was step to the side, stretching out my fist and hitting her right in her mouth. Her head snapped to the side, her whole body went down hard, and she didn’t get back up.

  “What the fuck, Melody!”

  I knew that voice. I didn’t even bother looking at him and in a flash he was in the ring, kneeling down beside her as I untaped my hands.

  “Dona? Sweetheart! Dona!” he yelled, shaking her, but she was out cold. Rising from the ground, he wrapped his arms around her as he glared at me. “Have you lost your motherfucking mind?!”

  “Good morning, Declan.” I smiled.

  “She’s your daughter! Your daughter and you just beat the shit out of her.”

  “Now that’s an exaggeration,” I replied, grabbing my water bottle from the side of the ring. “That was the first time I hit her this whole match. It’s hardly a beating. Besides, I slowed down right before I hit her jaw. It’s going to be sore as fuck in the morning when she wakes up, but it wasn’t too bad. She probably would have gotten up if it wasn’t for the fact that we’ve been training all morning.” When I spit the water from my mouth, he stared at me, mouth open, completely at a loss for words.

  “She’s a child.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me that as if I wasn’t the one who gave birth to her.”

  “That might because it’s hard for us to tell if you know it or not!” he hollered back. “I didn’t say anything when you trained Cora because she wanted this. But Dona does not—”

  “If I gave Dona everything she wanted she’d live off strawberry cakes and dye her hair pink. You don’t give children what they want, you give them what they need.”

  “So you gave her a right hook?”

  I nodded proudly. “Yep. The very first one of her life and now she knows what it’s like to be hit. She knows it’s painful but survivable. Today she learned her body is stronger than she thinks. All in all, it’s a good day. So will you let her sleep it off in her room or will you keep bitching to me about how she’s a delicate flower who needs to be protected from her evil mommy?”

  His jaw clenched; I could see him gritting his teeth. “Liam is going to—”

  “What am I going to do?” Right on cue Liam walked in, dressed in black shorts and a sleeveless black shirt, Ethan to his right and Wyatt to his left. Both of them were confused until they saw Donatella.

  “Dona!” They both tried to run forward, but as expected, Liam grabbed the collars of their shirts, pulling them back so hard that when he let go they fell on their asses.

  Ethan jumped right up, glaring at him. “Dad—”

  “I told you to stand beside me; where do you think you’re going?”

  “Dona is—”

  “Done with her training for the day; you two are not, so stay still.” He glared at Wyatt.

  “No!” Wyatt yelled, turning away from him, and once again Liam pulled him back, harder this time. When he let go, he smacked him so hard he was back on his ass. Ethan’s eyes widened as he stared between them.

  Kneeling beside him, he grabbed his shirt. “When I give you an order, son, it is not optional. You listen or you get knocked on your ass. Are we clear?”

  Wyatt didn’t speak.

  “I said, are we clear?”

  “Yes—”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said YES, SIR!” Wyatt yelled at the top of his lungs.

  “Brilliant. Now get in the ring, both of you,” he stated as Declan got out, still holding Dona as if she were a piece of precious glass.

  “Daddy,” she muttered, waking up faster than I’d expected. Maybe I hit her a little too gently? “Ouch!” She spit blood from her mouth, once again earning me a cold look from Declan.

  Never mind.

  “Daddy—” She reached out for him and this time, I glared at Liam. Emotionlessly, he stared back at her, and she dropped her hands slowly. “Daddy?”

  “Declan, get her ice,” he stated, and to everyone else, he must have looked like a coldhearted son of a bitch, but to me, he looked like he was the one in the most pain.

  Stepping out of the ring, I also ignored Ethan and Wyatt. The fact that they looked to us so often for affection and were shocked to not get it proved two things to me: first, we were good parents, and second, we had babied all of them for far too long. When I had taken Dona that morning, Liam had been awake. He hadn’t said a word as I changed and got ready. There was nothing left to say. The shooting had changed everything. We couldn’t protect them every second of the day; it wasn’t possible, no matter how badly we wished it was. We could, however, make them protect themselves…as best as children could, anyway. I took Dona first and early just so Ethan and Wyatt could see her in this state. They fought each other, but now Liam and I were the enemies, the ones hurting them, and their sister. They’d have to work together to beat Liam and I almost pitied them. Liam hated to lose and was not going to go easily.

  We are going to need a lot of ice.

  LIAM

  11:45 AM

  Parenthood had taught me three things about myself.

  First, it is possible to unconditionally love four people at the same time.

  Second, despite loving my wife’s strength, I was still a bit sexist.

  And third, I was far more sadistic than I’d thought; I should not have enjoyed beating the shit out of my sons as much as I did.

  “Damn it!” Ethan yelled when I sideswiped his legs, sending him to the mat once again. I had lost count of how many times that was now.

  “Ugh!” Wyatt screamed like an ape as he ran toward me. He kicked and punched like a madman while I just laughed, putting my hand on his head to hold him back. Ethan got up behind me and tried to hit me, but I outstretched my leg and kicked him right in the nose before punching Wyatt in the gut, gently of course—not to him, but for me, it was gentle.

  “Urgh…” They groaned, cupping their wounds as they gasped for air on the ground.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” I smiled, stretching. “It looks like I got two little pansies as sons. Maybe we should bring Dona in to help you two?”

  I loved how their eyes glazed over with anger and frustration. Even though they were in pain, even though it was not possible for them to win, they got onto their feet anyway. They couldn’t really move because of the aching in their legs, yet they were up and still willing to fight anyway.

  “What now?” I asked them, waiting.

  They yelled…again…grinning at me…again…only to get kicked back on their asses.

  “Stop it!” I didn’t yell at them, but Dona did. Holding an ice pack to her face, she climbed into the ring. The first thing I noticed was how her legs twitched; I also saw that her mouth was swollen, and worst of all, her eyes were red. She stepped in front of me, glaring at me with so much anger I wasn’t sure what to say to her. She looked like her mother.

  Instead of yelling at me, she turned around and faced Ethan and Wyatt. “Stop being stupid!”

  “Stop calling us stupid! You can’t even spell it!” Wyatt hollered back at her, wiping the blood from his nose. Dona’s fists bunched up and she pulled her leg back to kick him, but Ethan stopped her.

  “Why are we stupid now, Dona?” Ethan asked. Dona stopped, but before speaking, she turned to me.

  “Time out,” she said.

  “Time out? Who said they get timeouts?”

  “Dad. Time out,” she stated forcibly, moving to the corner with Ethan following her. Wyatt didn’t get up from the floor, just lied there.

  “Wyatt!” she screamed again.

  “I’m comin’! I’m comin’! Jeez!” he grumbled.

  What the fuck? It was the onl
y thing that came to mind as I stepped back into my corner, torn between wanting to laugh and staring in amazement.

  “She’s a little boss, isn’t she?” I turned to see Cora, her hair pulled into a ponytail, smiling at them. “She reminds me so much of Melody, it’s remarkable. Today, her mother beat her into the ground; Declan came to me pissed at how much Mel had pushed her, yelling not to let Helen get any ideas. Yet here Dona is holding an ice pack to her jaw trying to help her brothers. She’s a lot stronger than anyone gives her credit for. I am shocked, however, that you are allowing her to train. I thought you’d be as hardheaded as Declan.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, leaning on the ropes. “Did Declan ever tell you about our aunts, Fianna, and Abigail?”

  “No, you know Declan has issues talking about all that. But Evelyn told me they were murdered.”

  “They weren’t just murdered. They were tortured. Fianna died before Declan’s father so I barely remember her. I just knew that was the first time my father and uncle worked together, killing dozens; they razed the city in anger.” Just like Ethan and Wyatt, my uncle and father were always fighting. When my father left home, it actually worsened, but Aunt Fianna’s death brought them together again.

  “Evelyn said that Declan’s father died shortly after that,” she said softly. “The life of a mafia family.”

  It was true.

  “My Aunt Abby was the wild child. She loved life. She spent her days traveling everywhere; each time she came to see us she brought us something new. For his thirteenth birthday, she got Declan the tooth of a baby tiger and I was so jealous. She would put on plays for us in the backyard and force us to be her co-stars. She was amazing and my father loved her to death. My mom would joke he loved Abby more than her, so the day they murdered her and sent him her head…he broke down. That was the first and last time I ever saw my father cry…no, weep. He told me he had failed as a brother, as a man, and as the leader of the family; he said he couldn’t wait for the day I would take over. It scared me to see my father like that, defeated. Now all these years later, I understand. The world is cruel, but it is especially cruel to women. When that woman isn’t related to you, it’s just a travesty. When she is…there is nothing worse. So.” I took a deep breath, facing my own daughter as she grinned at her brothers. “As always, my wife was right. I want Dona to put up a hell of a fight if she ever needs too. I want her to put the fear of God into anyone who comes her way. I just don’t want to see her stumble to get to that point.” Even so, there was nothing else I could do.