by J. J. McAvoy
“A kid? Do I look like a kid to you? Besides, this kid is also the one that gave you ten thousand dollars, cash.” I tried my best to keep my composure. His eyes went straight to my exposed legs before looking back at me.
“No, I guess not.”
“Then where did you get this?” I hated repeating myself.
“An old friend of mine is stationed in South America. He’s been bringing in small shipments on the side to make extra cash. But he can’t move it all, not without risking his job. For the right price, he would sell only to you…”
“And you’re his spokesperson?”
He nodded, allowing small flakes to fall from his head.
“You shouldn’t be.” I frowned in disgust. “But tell him if he gives up all the product he has with him, we have a deal.”
Pulling out the bag of money, I stared at it for a moment. This was supposed to be my backup plan—my way out—and yet here I was, dropping the brown bag right in front of him. His eyes lit up and just as he reached for it, I grabbed his hand, pulling his body towards me.
“This is enough for a quarter of it. My father’s men will follow you home. Once you’re home you’re going to call your friend and have all of the product delivered within the next two hours to an abandoned factory near the riverbanks. Do you understand me?”
It was only when he nodded that I let him go and gave him the bag before gesturing for one of the men to take him away. When they were gone, I fell back, trying to breathe. This was crazy. I was crazy.
Why couldn’t I just walk away?
“You do know this is why none of them respect or fear you, right?” Fiorello, my father’s right hand walked in with a silver tray of what I could only guess was food.
Fiorello had been with my father forever. His parents were both servants here. He in return, was not only the head butler, but he also saw to all of our food. He was the one who tasted it before we ate. He made sure the villa was a well-oiled machine even though his bones cracked and popped when he walked. He was short for a man, and not as fit as all the rest of the men who came through here, but he always blamed that on old age.
“Maybe I don’t give shit. Maybe I’m tired,” I replied, rising to my feet. I walked over to my father’s brandy cabinet.
“Yes, of course you are. After all, you’re but a woman. Not even a woman, a child playing grown up,” he stated, his gloved hand brushing off the rest of the coke on the table before placing my dinner down.
“You don’t…”
“Oh believe me, I understand, Ma’am,” he said. “You’ve done everything your father has ever asked of you. You trained, you studied, and you agreed to be married. But you were still young. Now you are on the verge of making your own path. You think the world outside this life has much to offer you, but you’re mistaken. You’re willing to throw away your father’s legacy, and when he dies, you will have nothing to remember him by. You will be a useless little girl with no protection, no money, and no future. You are fighting for your life—your right to exist—and you don’t even know it. But who cares, you’re tired.” He lifted the lid to reveal a plate of duck before bowing and turning to leave.
“What if I can’t do this, Fiorello? What if I let him down and he dies knowing I’m a complete failure?”
“From what I know of your father, he would be happily surprised if you tried and failed than if you to gave up without starting. I know what you’re capable of, who you are. I’ve seen it. Which is why I’m baffled as to why you’re trying to hide your nature.”
With that, he was gone and I found myself drinking straight from the bottle, which only made me cough. “Ugh, I hate brandy.” I needed to find a new drink. Leaving the bottle on the table, I covered up the food. I didn’t want to eat. I honestly just wanted to drink myself into tomorrow.
Everything I had ever done was for the good of my father, for his work. It wasn’t my fault he was throwing it all away. He had been able to get through one round of chemo secretly only a few years ago. He had beaten cancer once, and now it was back for round two. The only problem was, he didn’t want to fight anymore; he was too tired. I had to beg him to try again. He agreed, but only if he could be treated in the house.
No one was allowed to see him, but I was done waiting for him to call. Grabbing the keys, I headed down the marble halls to the last door on the right. It looked like a misplaced closet when you opened the door. However, if you found the steel door lock hidden behind the mop and opened it, there was another bedroom and there sat my father, shaving his own head in front of the bedroom vanity.
“I told you not to enter here, Melody,” he hissed at me, not bothering to look up from what he was doing. He was as pale as ever. His left hand would shake every few moments, but he just went on cutting away. The dark curls that once adorned his head drifted to the ground.
“I wanted to make sure you—”
“Leave,” he snapped. “Leave an old man to die.”
I couldn’t move; I just kept watching his hair fall.
“Melody, Leave!” he barked at me.
“No!” I snapped back, shutting the door behind me. “Have you been getting your chemotherapy?”
Slamming the razor down on the dresser, he stood and glared down at me. “You know stubbornness is not attractive. You, Melody Nicci Giovanni, are nothing but a child, an ungrateful one at that. You do not question me, and you do not raise your voice to me! I run this household! I may be dying, but I am still ORLANDO GIOVANNI! Neither you nor anyone else will treat me any differently. Have I made myself clear?”
“You are not dying! You are not as sick as you think! Get the chemotherapy, Orlando! I refuse to put you in a grave. Ever since I was a child you have dictated every part of my life. I let you do it out of loyalty and love for you; I have to do it because you are all I have! So no, you don’t get to die. You don’t get to leave me with this shit and just give up, Oh Great Orlando Giovanni!”
The moment I finished, his right hand grabbed my neck and pulled me closer. “Your loyalty should be to yourself. Your love should be only for yourself! No one will ever protect you but yourself. I have spent years trying to drill that into your pretty little head, but you refuse to get it. You are alone. You never had me. It’s time you grow up and find your own damn path instead of clinging onto mine!”
The shaving cream still on his half-shaven head fell onto my hand as I tried to pull away. He let me go, dropping me like a wet rag. I slid onto the cool floor. Holding my neck, I tried to breathe. I tried to control myself, but I was done.
“Grow up, Orlando? GROW UP?” I screamed, picking myself up from the ground. “I’ve been grown up since I was six! It’s a miracle I’m not a serial killer with the shit I’ve been through and the things I’ve seen! You may have thrown money, and trainers, and tutors my way, but you did not raise me, and you sure as hell were never there for me to cling onto. But hey, if you want to die, go ahead, knock yourself out you big coward! In the meantime, I will run this…this fucking empire all by my fucking self and I won’t lower myself to steal the top spot, I’ll earn it.”
“You think you can sit in my chair?” He laughed, staggering a little as I reached for the door handle. “I’ve seen you try, and it’s too big for you. You’ve tried, sweetheart. But don’t worry, I’ve set away a small fortune along with a few contacts that the Callahans will be interested in. That should be enough for them to still want to marry you. I wouldn’t want my daughter to end up on the streets.”
I watched him stumble over to his new bottles, he grabbed one and drank deeply. He was already drunk. He gulped it all down before reaching for the next one.
“To cancer, the bitch that never dies!” he toasted to himself before drinking again. Sadly, that bottle only lasted a few seconds before he threw it against the wall. It shattered on impact, staining the wallpaper a beautiful blood red.
As though someone had taken out his batteries, he fell onto the chair in front of the mirror. He tried t
o pick up the razor, but between his shaking hand and his undoubtedly blurry vision, he couldn’t.
Sighing, I found myself walking over and taking the blade from him. “I’ll do it, you look like you lost a fight with a pair of scissors,” was all I could say, as I took the old-school blade to his hair.
Snickering, he nodded but I held onto his neck. “I’m on the poison,” he said. “I stopped for a while but I started again this morning. I shouldn’t have stopped, but it’s just as painful as the last time.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look into the mirror to see his face. I knew it hurt him. I’d talked to all of his doctors and pain was just a side effect; they could do nothing but give him more meds. But the meds made him angry, and sometimes violent. It was one of the reasons he tried to lock himself away.
“How much was this small fortune anyway?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Small fortune?”
“The one you have locked away from the Irish pig and his rat family.”
“Mel…”
“Don’t ‘Mel’ me with a razor at your skull, Orlando. I have another use for it and it’s not going to be wasted on those people.”
“What could you possibly want to do with that money that you can’t do now?”
I met his eyes in the mirror and just smiled.
I was going to do what he didn’t think I could. I was going to make us a force to be reckoned with again. I was going make sure we had the monopoly on cocaine and heroin. I was going to make sure we didn’t need any Callahan and damn well no Valero.
“I don’t trust that look in your eyes.” He frowned, watching me carefully. Even drunk, he was still trying to read me.
“Why, because it reminds you of the look in your eye?”
“No, because it reminds me of your mother. I always knew a storm was coming when I saw that look.” He pointed into the mirror at my brown eyes and I just smiled.
Grabbing the towel he had left on the desk, I wiped the leftover cream from his head and kissed it. “I have to go, Orlando. Get some rest.”
Taking the razor with me, I left him sitting there, with the rest of his hair lying on the cold marble. Walking back out into the closet, I locked the door behind me before leaving. It wasn’t the only entrance to his room. There was a back door into the gardens where the doctors came and went, but he wanted this door locked, so I obliged him.
“Fiorello, just the man I needed to see.” I smiled, stepping out into the hall.
“Is there a reason why you’re in the closet, ma’am?” he asked, but he already knew why. The walls had ears and the maids would talk. They always talked.
“Never mind that. My father has money in holding for me.”
“Ma’am…”
“Don’t lie to me, Fiorello. I need to know how much and where it is. After all, I’m fighting for my life here.”
He fought the wrinkled grin trying to creep onto his face. “And how will seven million dollars do that?”
Seven million dollars was not a small fortune; it was a large one and just enough to pay off debts along with procuring a few dozen kilos of cocaine.
“You two.” I pointed to the men just standing in the hall.
Walking up to me, they stood straighter. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Names.”
“Fedel Morris, Gino Morris’s son, you were the one who—”
“Stop talking,” I snapped at him before facing the other one. “You?”
“Monte…”
“A Beau Brooks. Get me everything you can on him, stalk him if you have to. Find out who his dealer is and then make him mine with whatever force necessary. Are we clear?”
“Yes—”
“Then why are you still standing here?”
They looked at each other for a moment before turning to leave.
“Look at you,” Fiorello said.
“There’s nothing to look at because you have a bank to call. So why aren’t you doing that?” His eyebrow raised before he bowed and left.
LIAM
She left the hospital so quickly, I swear she left a trail of smoke behind her. I knew Declan’s announcement would affect her, but I wasn’t sure how. What was going through her mind right now? She couldn’t have been thinking clearly; if she was, she wouldn’t have left without telling anyone. She’d grabbed the keys to the Range and drove off and I couldn’t call her because I still had her damn phone.
She was going to drive me insane, I could feel it. I was just going to lose it and murder her one day. If it weren’t for the damn GPS in the car, I would have been fucking ready to call in the National Guard.
It didn’t take long for me to notice her when I pulled up to the remains of what used to be the Giovanni Villa; her old home here in Chicago, the place where I first met, and was shot by, her. She sat on a pile of old rusted pipes, just staring, completely oblivious to the world around her. Parking right next to her car, I grabbed the water bottle. The moment I stepped out, a gunshot went off and I dropped to the ground. She just broke out in laughter.
“Have you lost your damn mind?” I yelled at her, looking at the hole in the car door.
“Stop stalking me. I wanted to be alone!”
“Then use your fucking words! You could have killed me!”
“Stop being melodramatic,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t going to hit you. I’m a better shot than you are.” She sighed, looking up at the stars.
Fuck that, she can get dehydrated for all I care, I thought, throwing the water bottle back into the car.
“Hey, wasn’t that for me?” she asked, watching as I came over to her.
“No, that water was for the wife who doesn’t shoot at me,” I replied, glaring at the glock in her hand.
She frowned. “How many wives do you have, Mr. Callahan?”
“As much as I love this banter of ours, what are you doing here, Mrs. Callahan?” I didn’t understand why she didn’t just rebuild it. After the home was burned down, she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch it. It was nothing but rusted scrap metal, broken china, and a few walls fighting to stay erect.
“Did you know it was here I decided to fully join—run the family business?”
“No, I wasn’t aware you spent much time in Chicago.” I wasn’t sure how I would know.
“I usually came for two reasons: my father had business to attend to, or he had a doctor’s appointment.”
“There were no doctors out in California?”
“There were, you ass,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “However, Dr. Anderson was here. I never knew why they had such a bond. But he was the one who helped deliver me, so I’m guessing he never told the police that Orlando made sure Aviela didn’t leave. Loyalty was a big thing to him, yet he held none. He told me once, with his hands around my throat, only ever be loyal to myself. To only love myself.”
“He put his hands around your neck?” Now I was more than glad I put the needle in his arm.
“Calm down, macho man. My father didn’t abuse me, it was the cancer talking. While he was on chemo, he would get so violent, so cold. He was dying, and because of that he didn’t want to take it. We would have weekly fights about it. He locked himself away so he wouldn’t flip out on me. And when I was seventeen, I was ready to walk away. I was done. I was tired. I had gotten into UCLA, my father was almost near bankruptcy and people were jumping ship faster than we could blink.”
“And you turned it around.” Everyone in our “world” believed that it had been her father who had breathed life back into the Giovanni name once more. She was amazing.
As she smiled up at me, her eyes glazed over with a look I knew brought only trouble. “You want to know how?”
I wasn’t sure.
“Ok?” I replied, taking a seat next to her.
“My father had money stashed away for you.” She laughed, running her hands through her dark hair. “He was worried that you wouldn’t marry me if I had no money, and worse yet, no power. He k
ept a black book of every judge, police officer, and politician that were indebted to the family. Not to mention a few stretches of weed fields down south. I was so pissed when I saw it. First off, I am worth way more than seven mil.”
“Yeah, now,” I joked, to which she just lifted her gun at me.
“Seriously?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “So you took my seven million and…?”
“I took my seven million and bought product through one of Beau’s associates.”
“Beau? As in Officer Brooks?”
“Yep, he was just a poor beggar when I met him. I still don’t know if he was a junkie or not.”
“What is with you and bums? First Jinx, now Brooks?” She sure liked strays. Hopefully that was out of her system.
“I’m not going to ask how you knew about Jinx, because I may shoot you.” Her brown eyes narrowed in on mine. It made me want her more when she looked at me like that.
“Anyway, Beau knew a soldier in South America smuggling it in. I offered him a job, he offered me everything he had: connections, workers, smugglers. In return, I gave him a way out. Apparently, he had two kids to feed and he didn’t want to be a drug dealer all his life. Seven million was enough; I owned it all, and the moment I did…”
“The Gold Rush,” I whispered, grinning. “You were behind the gold rushes. It damn well pissed the shit out of Dad. Every junkie and dealer in the goddamn country wanted only gold rush. You sold it cheaper and stronger than we ever could. We were bleeding money and we had no idea who was behind it.”
My father had damn near went mad searching for the source of her shit.
“Seven million became twenty eight million in the first month. By the end of that summer, I had stopped the bleeding, and all those rats who left us came running back.”
“I’m sure you had a field day with them.” Rats had no loyalty after all.
“Fiorello took care of them.” She laughed and shivered, not because of the cold air, but at something I clearly didn’t understand.
“Fiorello?” I asked her, placing my jacket over her shoulders.
