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.
“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 flicked 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.
“HEY!”
“Go to your own room!” Geez. The only person who could ever get away with this was Helen. My certificated genius, fast-talking, nauseatingly beautiful, computer nerd, comic, manga, anime, all things Netflix loving cousin, Helen. If your last name was Callahan, you were not normal. However, the least normal among us all was Helen. Because we were so close in age, and grew up surrounded by boys, we grew up as close as sisters. She was weird not because she was both a beauty and the geek but because she was like sunshine. Nothing really darkened her mood…and she had plenty to be depressed about. But nope, she went on as if she hardly noticed any of the negativity; it was fucking weird.
“Your bed is more comfortable,” she yawned as she lifted my sheets up and hopped right in next to me.
“We have the same type of bed! Ah! You’re cold, Helen!” I yelled, trying to kick her away.
But she curled up right beside me. “It’s your fault!”
“How? How in the hell is me trying to sleep in my own damn bed the reason you are—”
“You killed Tobias,” she whispered, and I went still… It was like I’d forgotten and then remembered all over again. I stared up at the wooden canopy of my bed. “I’ve been gone for only a month… I was supposed to just pop back into the city to say hi, yes I’m still alive if anyone was wondering before leaving again. I’d even gotten all dressed up, when I got word from Wyatt about what happened… I gave up Fall Con for you, Dona, you should feel honored.”
Trying not to smile, I rolled to my side to face her, her big brown eyes staring directly into mine as she smiled back.
“Helen, I’m…”
“You killed Tobias.”
I sighed; “Yes, I did.”
“You liked Tobias.”
“I like myself more.”
“So, you feel nothing?” she asked me gently.
I thought for a moment and I even tried to feel something but the truth was, “No. It’s—Tobias, was …”
“Accessible,” she tried to speak for me.
“Not what I needed,” I corrected.
“Because he was going to betray Ethan?”
“No…” I yawned, not wanting to go on. “I actually enjoyed that he had the balls to do it.”
“Ugh… Dona,” she groaned, rolling on to her back. “Are we chastising him or defending him, I’m confused!”
“Certificated genius, right here,” I joked.
“Shut up!”
“Ah!” She elbowed me right in my healing tattoo which her eyes immediately focused on.
“Oh shit, sorry! You got a tattoo? Without me? I want one!”
“You’d love it for about a week before complaining forever,” I reminded her and she thought about it for a moment before nodding.
“That’s true.”
I laughed and so did she. We laughed until our sides hurt even though nothing was funny.
“We are chastising him,” I finally answered her question, speaking much softer now. “Not for being calculating, or power hungry, not even for betraying Ethan…the family, but claiming to love me without knowing me…thinking I was simply okay with being his prize.”
She yawned covering her mouth before saying; “But didn’t you want to be Ethan? You know, the Ceann na Conairte… If so, you kinda missed your chance there.”
“Be Ethan, no. Never.” I snorted at that. “Be the Ceann na Conairte… I should be.”
“There’s never been a female Ceann na Conairte…not even your mother took that title.”
“Never does not mean impossible; it means not yet.”
Now she snorted, a habit we both got from our Uncle Neal, “The line of succession is Ethan, Wyatt, Uncle Neal, cousin Sedric, then my dad, and my brother; you’d have to wipe out all the men in our family, and even then you would go from hell fucking never to maybe in your dreams… That is if Nari and I don’t kill you for killing our dads and brothers, or you don’t kill yourself for the same reason.”
I froze, not moving as she spoke the reality I’d kept myself from facing, the reason I had to walk back the edge. The reason why I couldn’t betray family even if I wanted to, because the only way I could be the Ceann na Conairte was if I killed them all. She figured it out. I figured it out. Ethan knew from the beginning…again. Which was why he’d felt so comfortable leaving me in charge.
“Dona?”
Focusing on her again, I could see the concern in her brown eyes… I didn’t need or want her worry. So, a manufactured smile came on my face as I teased her back, “I wouldn’t have to kill Sedric or your brother Darcy, because the Irish would gladly make me Ceann na Conairte over an Asian or black kid any day.”
“HEY!” she sat up like Dracula from the grave, “First! I’ll have you know the Irish are way more tolerant people today and there is a huge growing population of black people in Ireland! Secondly, Irish guys love me. Third, Darcy and Sedric are biracial and I take offense on their behalf.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I was shocked they didn’t come out of my head. “We aren’t talking about the Irish people; we are talking about the Irish mob - there is a difference. We aren’t talking about the very best of us, now are we?”
“Says the sister of the head of the Irish mob,” she muttered, falling back down on the pillows. “I’m just saying that…You love your family.”
She said that as if she were silently begging me never to forget it. As if she still wasn’t sure where the line between teasing and reality ended.
“Which is why I didn’t betray anyone… Now shut up and sleep, goddamn it! And move your foot before I chop it off!”
She pretended to snore even though I knew she wasn’t asleep. I left her alone and stared up at the ceiling of my room. I had arranged for a wakeup call to be sent at four, but it seemed like I wasn’t going to get any sleep now anyway. When Helen’s snoring become softer and deeper, I sat up, rubbing the back of my neck as I rose to my feet. I grabbed my cellphone as I walked into my bathroom, the lights turning on automatically.
Turning the faucet on, I splashed the water on my face, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly before looking at my reflection the mirror. I vaguely took note that my dark hair was getting frizzy, that my ivory white skin looked a little dry. Yet my eyes, my green eyes, were the only thing that really captured my attention…maybe because they reminded me of my father’s.
“If not for those eyes, I’d think your mother created you all by herself,” he used to say to tease me. And when I’d say whatever smartass reply back, he’d laugh and say, “You’re my kid alright.”
I wish he knew how much strength his jokes gave me.
I wish he knew that each time I looked at myself in the mirror, I remembered… I am the daughter of Liam Alec Callahan, which meant one thing:
“I am a victim of nothing and no one,” I said, standing up straighter. Taking the perfectly folded white towel from the basket beside me and drying my face, I pressed the green key on the touchscreen mounted on my bathroom wall.
“Good morning, ma’am.” O’Phelan appeared on the screen, already dressed for the morning.
I smirked at him. “I’m now convinced you are a vampire, O’Phelan.”
“I assure you, ma’am, I have enough gray hairs to prove I am not.”
I smiled at that, placing the towel back on the counter. “The welcome home brunch in honor of Wyatt today; I do not need to remind you how important it is, do I?”
“No, ma’am.” He lifted a notepad beside him. “I’ve already arranged for the yard to be prepared as per your direction by 7am this morning. The food will be out by 9:30. Guests arrive at ten.”
“The clothes?”
“Arrived last night; they’ve been steamed and arranged. The maids will send them out by eight, along with further assistance for Mrs. Callahan, should she want it.”
“Do not disappoint me today, O’Phelan.” I was already dialing on my phone. “I’m every bit as meticulous as my grandmother.”
“Which is why I sleep in this suit.”
I paused, looking back at the small screen to see the corners of his lips turned up into a smile; “Two jokes before the sun is up, O’Phelan; you must be very sure everything today will proceed flawlessly. I guess time will tell.”
“Would you like some assistance getting ready this morning?” He switched the subject seamlessly.
“No. Just take care of the others,” I said, ending the feed and dialing my next victim as I pulled out the bath oils from the drawer under my sink.
“Who in the fuck—”
“Good morning, Greyson,” I cut in before he dug himself into a very deep hole. There was ruffling and soft sigh on the other end…a female sigh. “I wasn’t interrupting anything, was I?”
“No, ma’am—”
“Good. I’m hosting brunch this morning; I want all the most important family members, both Irish and Italian, to be here by ten am.”
“Ahh…” He paused for moment before his voice became more serious…much more him. “Is the boss aware—”
“I. AM. AWARE,” I cut him off before he could finish the thought. I walked over to my Le Grand Queen tub, made of exotic Caijou; it stood on four legs made from pure 24 karats and had features which made it worth over a million dollars. I turned on the faucet before continuing, “Ethan may be back in the city however, he hasn’t officially told you or anyone else that I’ve stepped down. Which means when I tell you to do something, you do it without making me waste my breath.”
“Of course—”
“Greyson,” I said calmly, watching the tub fill. “Over the last few weeks I’ve come to think highly of you. However, you of all people should know that what I think of you means nothing if you cross the line with me. After all, I thought very highly of Tobias as well… Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said quickly.
“So you’re going to…”
“Bring the Irish and the Italians by ten.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, “And see, this is why you are the new go-between for the clan and the family. Congrats on your promotion.”
Hanging up on him, I poured the oils into the water, watching for a moment as the steam rose before stripping down. I stepped in, not caring how hot the water was and rested back. In the water I lifted my arm and, sure enough, the water rolled over the clear breathable seal they’d put on my tattoo.
Lifting my phone again to let the rest of the family know… It rang over and over again before she finally answered.
“Donatella.”
“Nari,” I said back in the same tone.
“It’s two in the morning.”
“It’s apparently seven in London.” I smiled at that, leaning back more, sinking into the water until only my head was above it.
“Are you in London?” she yawned.
“No.”
“Then why should I care what time it is in London?”
“Good question; ask Helen. She’s the one who woke me up, which means I can’t sleep, and since I can’t sleep, I thought I might as well wake everyone up early to get ready.”
It took a moment of silence as she processed what I said. “Get ready for…?”
“Wyatt’s welcome home brunch, of course,” I said it bubbly and peppy, like a high school cheerleader during spirit week. “I’ve arranged everything; your clothes will be delivered to you as well as your daughters and Jason’s. You’re also going to call Darcy and Sedric and let them know they must be here, dressed, hungry, and with a smile on their faces by 9:45am.”
“Sedric is out of town—”
“That’s why I’m calling you now. You’re his sister. You’re both Callahans, I’m sure between the two of you, you can find a way to get him here by 9:45 right?”
She sighed, “Does this have something to do with Tobias?”
I forced myself to smile, even though I could feel myself getting annoyed every time someone brought up his name. As if Tobias was so important he’d affect what I would or would not do.
“Nari.”
“Dona.”
“Sedric and Darcy will be here at 9:45, correct?”
“Yes,” she paused, “but why am I in charge of getting Darcy there as well, when Helen—”
“Thank you, Nari, see you all then.” I hung up, dropping my phone to the side…sinking into the water and closing my eyes.
I didn’t even bother calling Ethan or Wyatt; they should know by now not to fight me on these things and if they didn’t… Well, that was too fucking bad.
We were doing this my way… There was no second option.
“What?” I said, answering my phone after the first ring only to hear Greyson’s voice.
“Tobias gave a list to someone, we got him.”
“Tell no one else yet. I’ll be down in a moment,” I replied, hanging up again.
It’s true what they said about the wicked… There really wasn’t any rest for us.
However, I started this and I was going to see it through to the end.