by J. J. McAvoy
“I’ve strangled him before. He likes that and a good slap sometimes.” I grinned, sipping on my water as his father’s face brightened.
“Is that so?” He turned his head like a demented doll back to his son.
Meanwhile, Ethan’s eyes narrowed on me dangerously. But I found it sexy in its own way. Yes, Ethan liked a little pain during sex every once in a while, so did I. We both enjoyed last night; and, once all this was over, we’d need to celebrate with a little more fun than that.
“New topic,” Melody’s harsh, motherly voice cut in, apparently not as amused as her husband at the news of her son’s kinks.
“I do not mind this topic,” Liam said, only to have her glare at him. “Fine, let’s be serious before we all go toward a hail of bullets.”
“I do not prefer a hail,” she replied before looking in my direction. “You said you knew a different way into the house.”
“Once we get into the air, I’ll share,” I said, leaning back into my chair cheerfully.
Ethan lifted his phone, dialing the pilots. “We’re ready.”
Soon afterward, the doors to the jet closed, and we were moving down the runway. I found myself watching the lights of the airfield as we moved, tapping my fingers in anticipation. We were only a plane ride away. The last twenty-eight years had brought me to this point, and I just wanted it to be done. I needed to wake up tomorrow or the next day and know that I’d done everything I had ever wanted to do.
“Well?” Ethan asked as the jet pulled into the air. When I faced them, they were all serious? They were all ready for the battle that was to come.
Pulling out the phone, I showed it to Ethan. “This passageway that leads from the house to the seaside. It’s hard to get to. You’d have to climb up, but there is a blind spot in the camera. We go that way, and it takes us right to the main house pool.”
“So—”
“Mommy!”
I heard Gigi call, her voice scared.
“Gigi?” I called out.
When she didn’t answer, Ethan and I both got up, walking toward the backroom, pulling open the door. However, there she was, sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed.
“Gigi?” I moved to her bed side, shaking her. She stirred and turned over but didn’t get up. “What in the hell would make her scream and go back to sleep?”
“She didn’t scream.”
“What?”
The moment I turned back, Ethan was looking down at me, his eyes sad; however, that wasn’t the thing that bothered me most. It was the needle he’d pressed into my neck. He injected whatever it was in me so quickly I didn’t have time to process. All of a sudden, my legs went weak, and I collapsed, but he caught me.
Panic began to fill me as I couldn’t feel anything. “W...what…what…” I gasped out in his arms.
“Shh!” he whispered, holding me tightly. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay!”
I was not okay! I couldn’t feel my legs! “E…Ethan!” I tried to push him away, but he held me tighter and kissed the side of my head as I struggled to get my body to wake back up.
“I really do love you. That’s why I can’t let you come with us.”
What? “N–no.” It took so much energy just to speak, but I forced myself. I tried pushing against him, but my arms were like jelly.
“You want this so badly, Calliope, that you can’t see. You aren’t recovered. I know you are still in pain and just hiding it—”
“No!” I smacked his face as hard as I could, my nails slashing his cheek, but still, he held me, and all the energy in me left with a slap, and my body went limp. He just pulled me into his arms until we were both on the floor.
“What…is…this?”
He cupped my cheek, and I wanted to smack his wrist away, but I couldn’t do anything but stare at his face.
“I noticed you don’t take pain meds often. You struggle through the pain. I realized it was because they make you drowsy, and you go to sleep easily. When you had Gigi, the pain meds knocked you out for hours. After you were shot, so did the morphine. So I created a neuromuscular-blocking shot for you. It will wear off in a few hours. By that time, you will be back home, and we will already be in Italy.”
“T–traitor.” The tear slipped from my eye without my control.
“Gigi is only safe with one of us, with her—”
“Betrayer…”
“That family needs someone there just in case something goes wrong. I have a feeling they are going to attack the house, and my family is too weak right now. If we are both gone, they will all die. You’re the only person I can trust to protect them when I am not there. The only person strong enough in case there is an attack—”
“I…will never…forgive…you.” I had told him everything. I had let down my guard, me of all people. I had let down my guard because I loved him, and he had used that against me.
He had used our daughter against me.
He wiped the tear from my cheek, swallowing hard as if this were painful for him. “I don’t believe that. You will forgive me. I will always forgive you for anything. That’s how it’s always been. We promised each other we’d do whatever we needed to do to win this war. This is what I needed to do. The box in the ottoman at the end of our bed you asked me to bring, the one you keep the poison in? That last vile, you were saving it for Siena, weren’t you? Should I use it?”
He pulled out the vile for me to see. He had planned that far ahead!
I wanted to scream.
Everything, everything I’d worked so hard for, dedicated my life to…he was deciding for me when to stop.
He had tripped me at the finish line.
Everyone was saying I’d betray him, and he had betrayed me.
I should have never fallen in love with him.
Never!
ETHAN
“Take us back down. Then one of you come out,” I ordered before dropping my phone.
She was asleep in my arms, her cheeks had tears on them for the first time. She didn’t cry in front of me—until that moment. I stabbed her in the back.
I’d set Gigi’s voice on a recording and waited for the moment Calliope told me about the entrance before pressing play. I knew that even on the plane, in the middle of the take-off, she’d still be worried and go check. She wouldn’t think twice about my going with her either. I didn’t want to take her down like this in front of my parents. So, it was the only way.
Traitor. Betrayer. That was what she had called me. That was what I was to her now. I didn’t know how long it would take her to forgive me. But I’d work on that the moment I came back. For now, the most important thing was making sure we all lived to get to that point.
I hugged her, waiting in silence as the jet made its way back down to the airfield. I was trying not to think. I was trying to tell myself I’d done the right thing. And yet, the words traitor and betrayer did not sit well with me. But if she knew all of the truth, she’d use harsher words.
Sighing, I lifted her off me after the jet had landed.
Pressing the button for the door, I came back out with her cradled in my arms. My mother and father slowly got out of their chairs, glancing at me, both confused and stunned.
Did they think I killed her?
It honestly might have looked that way to them. But I didn’t focus on them. I looked to Dino as he came out of the cockpit.
“Open the door and get Gigi. They are staying home,” I ordered, waiting for him to do what I said.
It took a few seconds for him to understand but got the doors open only for me to see snow coming down and the black Range Rover waiting at the bottom of the steps, where both Wyatt and Killian stood in the cold. They, too, had the same reactions on their face at seeing her in my arms. But I didn’t bother explaining. Instead, I stepped down the stairs slowly and moved to the back of the car. Wyatt opened it for me to put her in and lay her chair back slightly.
Dino was already behind me with Gigi, so I put he
r beside her mother as well, brushing the hair from her little face. Before backing out of the car, I looked to my brother and then Killian, both of them had a few cuts and healing bruises on them still. I stepped forward.
“If anything happens to either of them, I will skin you both.”
“And if you die on this little mission?” Killian asked me, bored.
“Don’t worry about fighting each other to become the next Ceann Na Conairte. She’ll kill you both before that happens. Because neither of you was ever meant to be in my spot,” I replied and turned to head back up the stairs.
I didn’t look back.
And I wouldn’t look back.
I wouldn’t even feel guilt, not until I finished this and returned home to them both. I wasn’t going to fucking die.
Because I was the Ceann Na Conairte, and no one was going to take my fucking birthright from me.
Not my father.
Not my brother.
Not my uncles or cousins.
I would survive, and they would learn.
MELODY
A chill ran up my spine when he sat back down.
Ethan was quiet.
His whole demeanor cold and merciless, which was why I couldn’t help but wonder, had he used us again?
I thought back to that night. When I had her in view of my scope, my finger on the trigger, it was so cold and so windy, but I was sure I could take her out with one good shot. However, Ethan had been in the way of the shot, purposely making it hard for me to get a hit. Then, I thought it was just bad luck on her part that she’d turned away from him to talk to some woman. But looking back, that no longer felt like the case.
Now it felt like he had guided me to shoot her where he had wanted me to shoot her. No vital organs, not the head, but somewhere that would force her to stay behind and heal.
“No…he wouldn’t? Why in the world would he do that? There is no way he knew. Right?”
“You…you never meant for her to come along, did you?” Liam whispered as the plane began to move. He also must have been having the same thoughts as me. “You were always planning on leaving her behind but knew she wouldn’t agree.”
Ethan didn’t look at us; instead, he watched the runway outside.
“You were mad at us for not trusting you, but you were also mad at me, not just for firing the shot but for the type of bullet I used,” I said, still trying to piece it together.
“I should have known you’d be that ruthless,” Ethan finally spoke.
Liam coughed. “We’re ruthless? Ethan did you set your wife up to take a bullet—”
“I do not know how many times I have to keep telling you all,” he said, slowly turning back to look at us emotionlessly. “I will do any and everything I need to do to get what I want.”
Dear God.
I didn’t even know what to say.
“There is a line, Ethan,” Liam said.
“Where? Says who? That’s not in the family rules,” he said, still watching us. “Rule forty-eight, Love your wife, above all else. I love her. That does not mean I have to give her everything she wants. That doesn’t even mean that I can’t shoot her. I love Calliope, but it does not mean I will not stop her if she is risking herself and our children.”
I paused for a second.
“Children?”
“She doesn’t know she’s pregnant. I found out after she was poisoned,” he replied, looking out the window again.
And I remembered all the puking she’d done. I thought it was just because she was in pain and pushing herself. She must have thought so, too. That was why Ethan was always watching over. That’s why he was studying plants in his office. The cocaine and drugs were to distract from whatever medicine he was making to give her.
“The fact that she’s been able to hold on to our child this long after everything she’d done was pushing fate already. I didn’t even have time to tell her before. She came to the ball, and when I realized what was happening, when I saw that look on face after she had killed her father, I knew then that I couldn’t tell her about our child,” he muttered, frowning. “She was at the finish line; nothing would stop her. Nothing…or one. When I spoke to you and realized that you were both out there, waiting to take the shot, the plan just popped into my mind. I’d watched you shoot a thousand times, Melody, like all good snipers, you hate the wind, and you have a habit of leaning to counterbalance before you shoot. In a split second, as I walked down those stairs, I knew if I just moved slightly, there was a chance you’d take that shot.”
Once again, he had used me—used us.
“What would you have done had I not taken the shot?” I gasped.
“Exactly as I did now,” he replied coldly. “Because, of course, she would still be stubborn. I didn’t just do it because I wanted to save her and our child. Though I cannot lie, it was a very big part of what made me change our plan. All these attacks on our family so far made me wonder more about her stepmother and father. There was no way they didn’t have a final attack planned for our family. Are they staying in Italy? Why? Killing just a few of us isn’t the goal—they want the whole family. So, what else do they have planned in Chicago? We can’t be in two places at once. The only way to end this is to cut them off at both ends. I need Calliope there. She is the only person who can gather both the Irish and the Italians and the family to fight if need be.”
I had no words.
He loved her, but just like Ethan loved all things, it was in a twisted sort of way. Everything he had simply boiled down to the fact that he didn’t want Calliope to die or abort their child to win, and knowing her personality, she very well could have done both. She had an obsession with winning over Siena. Ethan used that obsession to his advantage. In the end, Ethan wanted the people he cared about under his thumb, in his house, following his rules.
Like puppets on strings.
“Ethan. She may never forgive you for this,” Liam replied, shaking his head. “In her mind, you both were equals, and now you have stomped on her head. You’ve destroyed the trust between you both.”
That was the first time since he’d come in that I’d seen any emotion flash on his face. Fear, concern, pain, regret, it flashed through his eyes as he too must have thought about it. Ethan may have gotten what he wanted, but he may have lost something else in return.
He stared at us for a long while before he spoke again. “I can’t break her. She will forgive me.”
“And if she doesn’t—”
“She will,” he snapped, glaring. “Calliope and I have been through more than either of you. She will forgive me for this. Whether it takes a year or ten years, I do not care. As you both know, I can be very patient. She is mine. She knows that.”
And with that, it was completely shattered—the image of the little boy who was my son. He was a lion, all grown up with a face covered in blood. There was no space for us beside him. We’d only get in his way. And if that happened, there may come a day when he “let” a bullet find us as well.
“Once this over, you will never see us ever again,” I told him. “And we will never interfere. Don’t even worry if we are buried or not. Just keep doing whatever you have to do…keep going as you are because you are more than I ever dreamed of.”
For better or for worse, Ethan was the monster I had made, and I would have to take pride in that.
“Thank you, Mother.”
17
“The shattering of a heart when
being broken is the loudest quiet ever.”
~Carroll Bryant
CALLIOPE
I remembered exactly what had happened when I woke up again, which was why the moment I saw the wedding photo of us hanging in the corner of the room, I reached over, grabbing whatever happened to be on my nightstand and threw it as hard as I could at the photo. Rising out of bed, the rage rose inside of me as well.
My body was fine, though I felt a bit nauseous. However, nothing else could eclipse my rage. Reaching for the la
mp, I held it like a baseball bat. I used it like one, too. Slamming it over and over against everything until it shattered before going to his closet and ripping out everything, smashing what I could smash. It wasn’t enough—nothing broke or ripped enough, not the vanity mirror, stupid fucking watches, or the overpriced fucking suits.
It was like a Band-Aid on a freshly severed leg.
It did shit.
And I needed something to happen.
I went to my closet and picked out the biggest guns.
It was stupid.
It was childish.
It would fix nothing.
But inside, I was screaming.
My mind was raging.
Everything seemed to go in and out. One minute I was in my gun closet, and the next, I was in the precious garage, opening fire on his stupid cars. I couldn’t hear the bullets; I couldn’t feel the gun go off in my hands. I screamed, but I couldn’t hear that, either, so I just kept firing.
My heart ached.
So, I wanted it to burn.
Because I wanted it to burn, I dumped out the storage canteens of fuel on the broken cars.
Fuck him.
Fuck him to hell.
I wanted to burn down this stupid house with the stupid family inside of it.
“Calliope!”
“Calliope, stop!”
I held the flame in my hand. All I had to do was drop it and poof. The end. Let him come back to see how reckless and foolish and cruel it was to leave me behind to play like this.
“Calliope, stop! Gigi is scared!”
I had worked so hard for so long, and he just…he just sat me in the corner like a child. Why didn’t Ethan understand? Why didn’t he hear me? Why did no one ever hear me? They just did as they liked and disregarded how I felt.
Because how I felt never mattered.
