by J. J. McAvoy
“Sir,” Sebastian said, looking over my shoulder in confusion then back at me. “Your Donatella is—”
“We’re going back!” The very woman herself hollered, rushing up the aisle, towards the cockpit and I quickly shut the door behind me.
“Dona—”
“Turn the plane around!” she screamed; she was near manic, her eyes wide, her hands shaking. In her hand manicured hands, she gripped a cellphone with the same fury her father, who stood just beyond the doors, had shown only mere seconds ago. “Are you fucking deaf? MOVE!”
When she reached around me, I grabbed on her and pulled her in the small bathroom stall. She tried to yank away from me, but I held on tighter. “Let go! Let me go!”
“Calm the fuck down!” I hollered.
“MY FAMILY WAS JUST ATTACKED, DON’T TELL ME TO FUCKING CALM DOWN!”
“What?”
She yanked her arm way, trying to open the door but I blocked her once again, “Dona, talk to me. STOP! Just…fuck! DONA!” Holding her still and forcing her to look in my eyes, her nostrils flared. “WHAT happened?”
“Do you need me to paint you a picture?” she snapped at me. “My family was just attacked…”
“I heard that but by who, when—?”
“I don’t know who! And now! Right when we took off! We need to go back, so why are you still standing in my way?”
It was only now, like usual when concerning Melody Callahan, did I understand her words.
“To do what?” I questioned, releasing my grip on her.
She stared at me as if I were insane, “Do I look like I’m in the mood for one of your jokes—”
“Does it seem like I’m joking?” I wasn’t. “You want to go back home…to do what?”
“My family—”
“Was attacked, I heard that. But what can you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“You got on this plane because you don’t have the power to do anything without your brothers. Now you want to do what? Run back to them—”
“I know your family life is so fucked up that you might not give a shit—”
“Did they ask for you?” I cut her off and she froze for a second.
Getting her bearings back, she said, “They could be hurt.”
“No-one called you back home. Whatever is going on in Chicago, it is mafia related; you’re royalty now, that is not your fight.”
“My fight is my family’s fight—”
“I’m your family!” Again, she looked stunned and I pushed further. “When something bad happens to them - and it will, as violence is an occupational hazard of being in the damn mafia - will you go back each time? You still have your last name but when you stepped on this plane, you left the Callahan Family behind. Your family will survive without you. You have your brothers, uncles, cousins, half of Ireland. Whatever happened, your family will come out on top… I’m sure of it… But will you, Donatella, individually, be able to do the same if you go back? Nothing. You’re not their cheerleader, you’re my queen.”
She stood there staring at me with a mixture of horror and shock before blinking and taking a deep breath, glaring at me again, “We aren’t married yet. So I’m not your queen yet. So you can either move or be moved. The choice is yours, Gabriel.”
She was finally calm.
The coldness in her voice would have put Melody to shame. Opening the door, I let her step out first and when she did, she glanced over to the cockpit. Part of me, the part that enjoyed a little chaos, wanted her to walk towards it. But a much greater part of me was grateful when she turned, facing the aisle again. She’d almost returned back to our section when the long-lost daughter of Edward Scissorhands, Jackal, stepped in front of her. She placed her hand over the scarf around throat, swallowing hard before opening her mouth. The words would have been inaudible if not for the absolute silence in the cabin, every last person now facing her…
“Who?” Dona demanded.
SECOND EPILOGUE
“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
WYATT
“Anddddd… She’s gone…” Ivy spoke first, speaking as if she were baseball announcer, most likely to break the tension. However, I just kept watching the plane fade into the distance behind the clouds until I could barely see it in the distance.
“Don’t mope…” Ivy said, coming up beside me and linking arms. “After all, you still have me!”
Smirking, I shook my head, “Careful Ivy, if you hang around me long enough, you’ll realize I’m the better brother.”
Ethan snickered in actual amusement as if the sheer possibility of it was laughable. Before I could comment, he outstretched his hand to her.
She laughed to herself, letting go of my hand. In that spilt second, I saw a glint from the corner of my eye. The type of glint that meant only one thing…
“ETHAN—”
BANG!
Unable to move…unable to speak…the warmth of the blood splattering right across my face…
No!
The doctor me in me knew…just knew…that it was over…no one could have survived. And hearing the only word he screamed erupting through the air, sent chills down my spine to the point that I felt sick.
“IVY!” Dropping to his knees, he held on to her limp body, her blonde hair soaked in crimson blood; he pulled her into his arms like a broken doll looking up to me as he screamed “IVY!” He smacked her face a few times. “IVY! WAKE UP!” Angrily, he looked at me, “WYATT! WYATT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? HELP HER!”
I’d never seen him like this… My older brother didn’t panic, he didn’t lose his cool, and he never asked me to do the impossible.
“I can’t help the dead,” I whispered, my body still unable to move forward or back. I just kept staring into her lifeless blue eyes that were still open, blood pouring down her face. It felt as though the world had slowed down…No, frozen and I was stuck. And yet it hadn’t and I wasn’t. Our men were already all around us, their guns drawn, panning out to find… To find the person who’d just started what was going to be a very bloody war.
In the back of my mind I heard my mother’s voice, “Every last person we kill is for family. If we don’t kill them, they kill us. It is the way of the world. It is self-defense…”
Like always, my mother was right.
COMING SOON
Donatella’s role as the princess of the mafia is now over.
Her rise to power as Crown Princess of Monaco has just begun.
The spin-off
of
the spin-off…
SNEAK PEEK AT CHILDREN OF REDEMPTION
PROLOGUE
“I am as my creator made me...”
~Minnie Smith
WYATT
I knew exactly when it happened…
When the monster inside of me woke up.
I was different from my siblings. I’d always known that. I didn’t know how, but I knew I was different from them. Whether they would admit it or not Ethan and Dona, were the real twins in our family. Yes, Dona and I were close, in fact there were times I had a feeling she’d need me or she’d have a feeling I’d need her; twin telepathy, as it’s called. But at the end of the day, no matter how close I was to her, in my mind, Dona was my sister, but she was Ethan’s twin…not mine. The reason why I’d never tell her that was the reason why I knew I was different.
Ethan and Dona were children of Machiavelli, masters of manipulation, champions of cunning thoughts and actions. While I knew how to manipulate and on occasion was cunning…I hated it. They loved deceiving people, loved watching as people fell into their traps. Like the Greek gods, they found amusement in watching people come to tragic ends. They were the eye of the storm…while I was merely a chaos monster. Like my father did for my brother, he gave me The Prince to read as boy. Out of respect for him I read it…once I finish however I chucked it out the window, along with The Art of War, the 4
8 Laws of Power, Crime and Punishment. The pile of books that been tossed to the sky from my window before plummeting back to earth never to enter my room again was enough to fill a small library.
Why?
Too many fucking words.
And I don’t mean that in the Neanderthal ‘I do not like reading’sense…but in the ‘why the hell are there so many goddamn books on power?’ sense. Why? Power has always been simple to me…people want to do whatever the fuck they want to do, but can’t because they fear retaliation. So they seek a position that allows them to do just that…a position that allows them to fuck others and never get fucked over in returned. It was for that reason Ethan and Dona plotted and schemed…I on the other hand did not like it. I don’t see the world like that.
Yes, I like everyone else, whether they admit it or not, like power.
And yes, I, wanted to do whatever the fuck I wanted, and I always did; because unlike other people I did not fear retaliation, I welcomed it.
When I was younger, my parents, my siblings, even I thought there was this softness in me…that the reason I didn’t connect to power or manipulation like Ethan and Dona did, was because I was kind, or merciful…in my family that was akin to being born with a tail. So I worked hard, I pushed myself, all to prove I was just as ruthless as my brother and sister…until one day I realized I wasn’t kind, I wasn’t merciful.
I was fucking bored with it.
Why fight people who can’t fight back?
Why manipulate people who could never do the same to me?
Those thoughts came to me when I was sixteen because that was the first time I’d ever fought a real opponent…a chaos monster just like me.
My father.
WYATT - 16 YEARS OLD
His fist collided with my nose so hard, the blood came down like a broken faucet, and when I stumbled as I reached up to stop the flow, his foot collided with my chest. Down on the ground, he kicked me all the while screaming down at me.
“How much longer are you going to be such a little bitch?!”
I’d never heard such rage in his voice, and in that moment, his words hit me stronger than his boot in my rib. I felt it and it sent chills down my back…it was fear. I heard someone call out to him and he stopped, but not before bending down, grabbing me by the hair, and lifting my head up so he could see my bloody face.
“Your weakness will get your siblings killed one day. If your mother was alive, she’d be ashamed of you.” He stared down at me, his green eyes glaring in frustration and anger.
I smiled, tasting the blood in my mouth, and said, “Are you trying to provoke me?”
Before he could answer, I spit the blood at his face. I broke out of his grasp, rushed him, tackling him to the ground, and pinned him under me. I punched over and over again. His arms were pinned, and he couldn’t block, so he took it. And the more he took, the harder I hit until all of sudden I felt arms around me pulling me off him and throwing me to the ropes.
“Wyatt!”
Blinking, all of a sudden, I saw Ethan standing in front of me staring wide eyed. My legs shook a little, but I managed to stand straighter. Ignoring him, I looked around him to my father, who now stood with his back turned to us, fixing the tape on his arms.
“Mom would be ashamed of me? What about you? Since she died, you walk around like a kicked dog—”
“Wyatt enough!” Ethan hollered at me as I laughed. I wiped the blood from my mouth with a collar shirt.
“Ethan,” my father said as he stood up straighter. He rolled out his arms as he turned to face us, “If you ever interrupt your brother and I again, I’ll break your arms and legs before tossing you out of the ring myself. Am I clear?”
The stunned look on Ethan’s face, how his green eyes widened, while father’s only got calmer, deadlier, just brought me so much joy. I couldn’t help the grin on my face.
“He’s interrupting still, old man, why don’t you break one leg and arm now so he gets the picture?” I asked, not realizing that I was hopping in place, more than ready, until I saw my father lift up his fist.
“You worry about yourself.”
“I have nothing to worry about,” I replied.
He tried to hide it, he tried to be cold, but I saw it, the small grin on his face, and I didn’t care if Ethan was in the ring or not. I charged him…ready to kill him…and he charged me, ready to do the same damn thing.
I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I wasn’t even his son anymore.
I was just another motherfucker in his ring.
We fought till the sun began to set, blood, sweat and saliva on each other’s fists. The more I hit, the he stronger he seemed to get, and the harder he punched back. Grabbing my head, locking it into his arm, he squeezed, choking the air out of me…
“So this is where your monster lives huh?” He snickered right into my ear as I tried to elbow into him. But he just held on to me tighter.
“I’m going to kill you!” I sneered at him through the pain.
“You can try…but you’ll need to get in line, son. When I’m done killing those in front of you, we can try again!” he replied. My vision started to blur. My legs went numb and all of a sudden, I was on my back, gasping for air. Crouching down beside me, blocking the light from my eyes, I saw two of him as he spoke. “You think because you are my son that I will not kill you…you are wrong.”
“Rule 1…” I managed to sit up, trying to grab my breath.
“You kill for family. You die for family…because you can’t trust anyone else,” he recited back to me. “What about it?”
“We don’t kill family…you’re bluffing…”
He huffed as if he were going to laugh. “None of the rules say you can’t kill family. Rule 15 makes it clear—”
“If you betray the—”
“Being weak is a betrayal,” he snapped at me. “Being stupid is a betrayal. If it comes down to you over your siblings…my business…I won’t choose you.” He stood up straighter and walked to the edge of the ring. Pietro lifted the ropes for him to step out.
“Would you have chosen Mom?” I asked, placing my hand over my stomach, slowly sitting up from the mat. I watched as he paused a few feet from the door. “I call bullshit. Either bullshit on you killing me for family’s sake…or bullshit on you loving Mom so damn much.”
“One day, Wyatt…you will learn…chaos for chaos’s sake is just brokenness.”
What?“Which dead philosopher did you steal that from?”
He didn’t bother saying any more than that. I wish I could have seen his face. He just kept walking forward until he got on the elevator, leaving only Ethan and I around the ring.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Ethan said as he got into the ring. I tried to get up from the ground. All of me hurt, worst of all my legs. Stumbling forward, Ethan caught me, lifting my arm over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though I didn’t have any strength left to move away from him.
“You’re a fucking idiot is what you are,” he muttered again moving to set me in the corner of the ring.
“I heard you the first time!—Ugh!” Gritting my teeth, I held on to my side trying to fight back the pain.
“Biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever met,” Ethan said one more time as he handed me a water bottle.
“I think you might be malfunctioning…run back to Dad so he can reprogram you to kiss his ass like a good little solider,” I snapped and snatched the water from his hand.
Just like my father, he didn’t react, just shook his head. “What good comes out of going against him? Of provoking him with Mom?”
For a smartass, he was often a total dumbass.
“Why don’t you provoke him? Why don’t you push back?” I asked.
He frowned. “I would if he was wrong! Don’t you see—”
“No I don’t see! I’m told. This or that. Now I want to see…I want to see if he’ll keep to his word…if he’ll really kill me.” I gri
nned up at Ethan before taking the rest of the water and splashing it on my face.
“Wyatt,” he said in his warning voice…the one he used on the fucking guards.
Rising back up to my feet…without him…I placed my hands on his shoulder. “Big brother…it’s no fun working inside the rules. Dad might be right…or maybe…just maybe even he doesn’t know what he’d do.”
“So your plan is what? Cause chaos until he kills you?”
“Want to take bets?” I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt.
Ethan shook my hand off of his shoulder and moved away from me, but not before saying, “Dead men don’t pay.”
“Fuck you are annoying.”
But I wasn’t going to ruin this. If our father couldn’t kill me…that meant no one could…this was going fun.
Let the games begin…
***
Click here to preorder CHILDREN OF REDEMPTION!
DISCOVER MORE BY JJ MCAVOY
Ruthless People Series
RUTHLESS PEOPLE
THE UNTOUCHABLES
AMERICAN SAVAGES
A BLOODY KINGDOM
DECLAN + CORALINE
Children of Vice Series
CHILDREN OF VICE
CHILDREN OF AMBITION
CHILDREN OF REDEMPTION
Single Title Romance
MALACHI AND I
BLACK RAINBOW
RAINBOWS EVER AFTER
THAT THING BETWEEN ELI AND GWEN
SUGAR BABY BEAUTIFUL
CHILD STAR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.J. McAvoy was born in Montreal, Canada and graduated from Carleton University in 2016 with an honour’s degree in Humanities. She is the oldest of three and has loved writing for years. Her works are inspired by everything from Shakespearean tragedies to modern pop culture. Her first novel, Ruthless People, was a runaway bestseller. Currently she’s traveling all across the world, writing, looking for inspiration, and meeting fans. To get in touch, please stay in contact via her social media pages, which she updates regularly.
