by J. J. McAvoy
She frowned at me as I reached into my jacket to pay her for the information she’d garnered. However, she put her hands up, shaking her head.
Rolling my eyes, I took out the monopoly money, making her frown, confused again. “I knew you’d try to reject it, so I had it wired directly into your account from a private account.”
She made a face and I grinned, turning from her and walking out of the exhibit, trying my best to bite down on the rage threatening to break free from my lips.
Kill him.
Kill them all.
The words repeated in my mind as I exited out of the building through the security entrance.
***
The sun was just coming up by the time I got home and into my bedroom.
Toby was sitting on the edge of my bed and yawning. He glanced over at me, a happy grin on his lips. “I missed you. Where did you go?”
I stared at him. I wanted to grab anything I could get my hands on and bash his face in. I wanted to strangle him with my sheets. And I couldn’t…not now.
“I went for a ride,” I said, taking off my leather jacket and throwing it on the couch along with my jeans before walking to my bed.
“What did you need to think about?” he asked as I lay down on the bed.
“You.”
At that, he turned back to me eyebrow raised, “Me?”
The secret to lying was the truth…telling people just sprinkle of the truth with fiction mixed in. “You hit me.”
His mouth dropped open, “You hit me first! Twice!”
I had to force myself to grin at that even though the very sight of him made me sick, “I didn’t say I didn’t deserve it. Nor did I say I was mad you did.”
“So what were you thinking about me—?”
“You should have done it a long time ago,” I told him seriously, “If you want to stand beside me, you can’t always take my shit. I was thinking how if you fought me in private then maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to try and speak for me in public or force my hand… It’s good you’re growing.”
He snorted, laying back. “So you’re saying all I have to do is take you in the woods—”
“No more woods, that was not comfortable,” I cut in quickly. He rolled on top of me, grinning.
“I think we’ve both grown… Someone is a little affectionate this morning.”
Rolling my eyes, I tried to push him off but he didn’t budge, “Don’t you have work to do? I’m still the boss and can sleep in for another half-hour.”
“Five more minutes, ma’am.” He smiled before kissing me.
Reach into the pillowcase, take the knife, slit his throat! the voice in my mind screamed, but instead I kissed him back, forcing myself to bear it for now.
I’d play along.
I’d let him and Savino think I was sitting in the palm of their hands. Then I’d get to Ethan.
DONATELLA - 14 DAYS AGO
“I know what you’re up to, Savino,” I said, sitting across from him at The Vocelli, one of his many restaurants throughout the city, Toby standing right behind me.
Savino ignored me, cutting into his duck and spreading it around the sauce on his plate, finally shoving it into his mouth, his tongue yapping like a dog.
“You can either work for me, or die trying to get a slice of what was never yours in the first place.”
He snickered, licking his lips as he asked, “What’s the difference between working for you and working for your brother?”
“For one, you aren’t kissing the feet of the man who killed your daughter,” I said coldly…so coldly that he seemed to freeze then glared up at me, nostrils flaring. I smirked, reaching for my knife and fork. “Don’t get pissy with me; you’re the one who asked a question you weren’t ready to hear the answer to.”
“Get the fuck out!”
“Why would I do that? I haven’t even touched my steak,” I asked him, stabbing the meat on my plate.
“I’m not asking you again!” he yelled and pointed his fork at me. “Take her out of here!”
I looked around the mostly empty restaurant at the ten…no, twelve men all around us, none of them moving. It took him a minute to realize that, too.
“Are you deaf!” he yelled, spitting duck out of his mouth.
But still they didn’t move.
“That awkward moment when you thought you had bought my men, and they ending up giving that money straight to me,” I said as if I were speaking to myself, lifting up my wine glass. All I had to do was look to one of them, the very same men he’d demanded drag me out of here, and each one of them lifted their guns, pointing them at Savino. He froze, staring at them blankly. “Don’t feel bad…” I said, leaning back in my chair, bring the glass to my lips, “My family has always made being powerful look too easy. It makes people like you think you can be the same. Truth is many of them might even like you. Might even believe you and want to support you. But unfortunately, their fear of me…of the Callahan Family… outweighs everything else.”
Well trained dogs never leave…not even if their owner abuses them.
Licking his lips again, he put his fork and knife down, leaning back as I did, folding his hands over each other as he gave me his attention. “If you were going to kill me, I’d already be dead.”
“Who says you aren’t in the process of dying now? I could have already poisoned your duck… It tasted off, didn’t it?” I finished the rest of the wine in my glass, never taking my eyes off him. “My father always told me not to play with my food… But seeing the fear in your eyes right now makes me wonder just how much further I can push you.”
Still he didn’t reply but he did swallow slowly, the lump of his Adam’s apple pressing against the collar of his shirt.
“Ms. Callahan—”
“Call me Donatella,” I cut in, holding the glass closer to my face. “You and I are about become much closer.”
“How so?”
At that, I stood up and Toby, who hadn’t said word since arriving, pulled out my chair to make room for me to move. “I hold your life in my hands. How much closer can you and I possibly be?”
He opened to his mouth to speak, but I cut in once more.
“Your choices are to run to my brother, and he’ll kill you most definitely; work for me and one day I might kill you anyway because I don’t trust you; or third, you can try running away and you’ll die by whoever Ethan or I send after you.”
“All of those choices leave me dead—”
“So make me trust you Savino,” I replied, already walking to the door.
“You didn’t tell me what you wanted,” he snapped at me.
At that, I paused, slowly turning back to him; “I thought it was obvious… I want what you wanted… The only difference is, I can get it. I rule Chicago and soon everyone will know it.”
He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t wait to hear anything else. Toby held the door open for me as I walked outside.
“There is no coming back from this once you start, Dona,” he said gently, at the door.
Reaching up, I put my shades on; “Everything I am, everything I’ve gone through, has been for this one moment… Lamb to Leopard, Butterfly to Eagle, Golden Fish to White Shark. Once you’ve become something strong, why would you want to go back to being something weak?”
I could see it once he stepped in front me… The smallest niggle of fear in his dark eyes before it was quickly replaced with lust. If he only knew…leopards, eagles, and sharks all ambushed their prey. Then maybe…he’d be smart enough to run. Maybe he’d see me for what I was. What I was going to be…
The death of him.
FOUR
“And when her halo broke,
she carved the two halves into horns.”
~ Jordan Sarah Weatherhead
DONATELLA - PRESENT
I hadn’t told Wyatt everything.
It hadn’t even been that long and yet, in a little over a month, I felt I liked I had aged years.
<
br /> “Hell…” Wyatt whispered, stepping up beside me, facing the bloody carnage I’d left for all the world to see. I knew he was thinking of what to say, how to make light of this, but words failed him. I, on the other hand, was filled with words.
“It was so easy… All I had to do was convince them that Ethan wasn’t for the Italians anymore. After he married an Irish wife, people were already thinking it. I stepped in to that gap, whispering how I’d take over, that I’d kill Ethan and make my twin brother a puppet for the Irish…then I’d rule Chicago. And they made me Don.”
“What makes you think I’d just listen to you?” he tried to joke, and I looked over to him.
“What makes you think I would have given you a choice?” Or better yet, he wouldn’t have done it just to fight me.
He sighed, shaking his head again, trying to find the right words, but once again I beat him to it…slightly changing the topic.
“Do you remember Doval?” I asked him.
“Doval?” He turned to face me. A second later it was like a light bulb turned on in his head. “It was wolf-dog you took care of when one summer while we were in Ireland.”
I nodded, “Only… I didn’t know it was a wolf-dog.”
“You thought it was Siberian Husky,” Wyatt snickered and I elbowed him. Immediately, he put on a straight face, before adding, “He had Lyme disease, which then gave him severe kidney disease. At that point, there was nothing anyone could do to save him; you didn’t lose hope, though.”
He said that as if it were something to be proud of.
“I didn’t lose hope because I was ignorant. I wanted him to live, so I didn’t care what anyone said, which is why, when mom put him down, I vowed to get my revenge.”
“You didn’t speak to mom for a whole week after that,” he reminded me, frowning, and I did too, mostly because she didn’t try to speak to me either. “She was hurt.”
So was I.
“Do you know what she told me before she killed him?”
He didn’t answer… He just waited patiently as the clean-up crew took care of the bodies around us.
“Donatella,” I said my name, just as gently and tenderly as she had said it, only this time in English, “you know no moderation, you hunger for everything, you are like chaos in a bottle, your love is like a Golden Fleece, and your rage Pandora’s Box. You are like I was. I do not want you to change that. I want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath and think first. Have high expectations, do not doubt yourself and do not compromise. Be smarter and have more patience than everyone else. See the big picture and you will thrive.”
“If anyone had a way with words…” Wyatt said, his eyebrows furrowed together and he still avoided looking at me.
“It was our mother,” I finished for him. “I was so upset about Doval, I lashed out. I convinced myself that everyone was against me. That mom was always trying to break me. Teach me some stupid lesson. That she didn’t want me to be happy because she wasn’t happy when she was a kid. Doval was my breaking point. I had it all planned out. How I’d make her pay. Really pay. I think that’s why dad finally me took me to the veterinarian,”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, clenching my jaw, “Did you know that some wolf-dogs become deranged in their final moments? The dog part of them goes away and the wolf takes over, fight-or-flight kicks in, and even if you’d taken care of them for years, even if you were the only person who’d ever loved them, out of fear and pain, they attack.”
“He took you to see another wolf-dog?” Wyatt looked as if he’d figured out some great mystery.
“Usually the vets put down the sick wolf-dogs, but good old dad had arranged for them to hold off. He had them bring in a bench and sit it in front of the metal cage. He gave me half of his double sausages, double bacon, butter, white pudding, and brown sauce breakfast roll,” I shook my head. My father, Liam, had a flare for the dramatic…and a good lunch. “He made a big show of it. He wanted the moment I realized how stupid I was to be forever etched into my mind. And so, I watched; this animal that looked so much like Doval, who had whined and whimpered in pain one moment and then bared its teeth to attack the next, and I realized my stupidity. The wolf-dog lunged at the cage, biting at the at the fence so hard that it was cutting its own gums. It didn’t care; it just wanted to break through. It barked and howled, trying to claw at us. Dad made me sit there and watch it unravel for an hour; he’d eaten his sandwich and mine, before he got up and killed it.”
He didn’t need to tell me that my mother had killed Doval not because she was monster, but because she was a mother. She wasn’t going to let my feelings for a dog stop her from doing what she needed to do to protect her family…me, her daughter. That was the big picture.
“I’ve been called a lot of things, spoiled little rich girl, high-maintenance Barbie doll, shrill drama queen, immature, cynical bitch, over-the-top psychopath—”
“By who?!” Wyatt snapped, his eyes directly on me.
Ignoring his question, I bent down to Toby’s body, now in a black plastic body bag, the zipper stopping right at his Adam’s apple.
“I am all of those things and much more, but what I am not is an idiot and nor am I blind. I couldn’t betray my family,” I said, speaking directly to Toby as I zipped it over his face and closed the bag.
“I didn’t doubt you for a second,” Wyatt said quickly.
Standing up back up straight and turning back to look at him earnestly, I told him the truth, “Wyatt, if I could do it, I would.”
“Careful, Dona,” Wyatt said, the corner of his lip turned up. “The longer you wear the mask, the more it merges with your face.”
He thought I was joking. No. He knew me better than that. He just didn’t want to take me seriously. He didn’t want to think there could ever be a time where I would betray them. I could see it in his eyes, he was pleading with me to stop here. To walk back from the edge of the cliff.
So I swallowed, hoping that would stop the ache in my chest; I forced myself to smile, tilting my heading, and teased him instead. “Careful little brother, the monster isn’t the mask; it’s just you.”
“For the hundredth millionth time, I am only one minute and ten seconds younger than you, Dona.” He grinned, trying to reach over and lock my head in his arms. I gracefully ducked and walked forward, replying, “And for the hundredth millionth time, younger is still younger, Wyatt.”
“Dona—”
I sighed loudly, whipping my head around to look back at him, “Can’t you see I’m trying to make a dramatic exit here?”
“Then let me cue it up perfectly,” Wyatt said in a brief moment of seriousness. “What happens now?”
“You say that as if I’ve done something. This part is just prologue.”
The door shut once I sat inside of the car. And as Greyson, Ethan’s former and my present bodyguard and chauffeur, drove away from them all, I wondered… What was going to happen to that part of me, that chaos in a bottle, that hunger in me, now that I have everything…
“You can’t be everything you want to be!” Toby’s voice came to mind once more.
I drowned him out with the memory of my mother.
“Have high expectations, do not doubt yourself and do not compromise,” she said…and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t compromise my family for power.
“Greyson.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Do you know of any good tattoo parlors?”
***
SMASH.
I sat up from my bed, pointing the gun directly in the face of… “Goddamn it, Helen! I could have killed you!”
“Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” she said, standing at the edge of my bed wearing a skin-tight leather Amazonian Wonder Woman costume, complete with gladiator sandals, armbands, gloves, and even the damn crown tucked under dark-brown curls. “I know! I look amazing! I would have killed it at Fall Con this year!”
Without a word to her as she sat down next to me, I flic
ked my fingers, glancing over to the digits that hovered over my beside table. I stared and stared before turning looking back to her.
“Helen… It’s two in morning,” I whispered.
“And it’s seven in the morning in London,” she went on as if she did not see the problem here, taking her time to unzip her sandals and one by one take of her costume accessories. “Fall Con, starts at ten. All week I’ve been stuck in business meetings listening to old farts try to explain to me, to me, of all people, Helen B. Callahan,”
“B?” I paused as my brain slowly began to wake up. “You don’t have a middle name…”
“Rub it in, why don’t you,” she pulled off her armbands and tossing them on the floor. “The B stands for badass. Helen Badass Callahan.”
“If you have to tell people you’re a badass, the chances are you aren’t as badass as you might think.”
“Man, you’re cranky.” She pouted, tossing her shin guards next.
“I should be! It’s two in the morning!”
“Was it the same dream you were having? You looked sad.”
“Get out.”
“Where was I?” she went on. “Right, me, the genius computer scientist and programmer not genius in the ‘oh, I’m being facetious type genius,’ but real ‘I have certification genius,’ with cyber security of public-key cryptosystems. One of them had the nerve to bring up the RSA algorithm! RSA? That came out in 1977, our parents weren’t even alive! Grandma was probably just learning how to use a fork then!”
“You do realize I still have a gun in my hand, Helen, right?” I said it as if I were begging her, pleading for her to go to London or the moon, or anywhere else that was not my damn bedroom at two in the fucking morning.
“Yeah about that…” She grabbed the gun and quickly took it apart, putting it on my bedside table before getting up… Naked with the exception of her black short spandex shorts which were more like underwear. She looked amazing; every part of her was toned, her brown skin was flawless, not a single freckle or mismatched tone in sight. She walked…no, skipped into my closet. Grabbing my phone, I turned off all the lights she’d turned on.
