IVY – AGE TEN
“Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” I yelled from in front of the house. “I do have a friend! He lives here!”
“Does not!” Rory yelled back at me.
“Does too!”
“DOES NOT!” she screamed, pushing me into the fence.
“DOES TOO!” I pushed her back and started to run. “I’ll show you!”
Climbing over the fence, I looked back over at them, but none of them were coming. “Come on!”
“No, we’re going home.” Rory crossed her arms.
“Yea! We don’t want to be seen hanging out with you.” Megan, one of her friends, along with Rachel, laughed at me, crossing their arms too.
Smiling, I put my hands on my hips. “Fine, but you have to tell everybody you were wrong.”
“We aren’t wrong. Look, it’s all dusty!” She pointed out the house behind me. “No one lives there—”
“I bet you’re wrong.”
Rory paused, thinking about it. “Bet what? Your earrings?”
My hands went up to cover my ears. “No! My mom just gave me these!”
“See, knows she’s lying.” She laughed with everyone.
“I am not!” I yelled again, stomping my foot. “Fine! I bet my earrings, but when you lose you have to say sorry in front of everyone.”
“Fine!” she yelled, climbing over the fence with the rest of them.
Smiling, I ran to the corner of the house where the window was, trying to pull it open.
“If anyone is here, why don’t you just knock?” Rachel whispered.
“’Cause she’s lying,” Rory said again, and I wanted to yell, but I pulled harder. It still wouldn’t budge.
“What are you all doing?”
They screamed, but I just turned around. There was an old man holding on to a cane with one hand, his black and brown dark dog barking at us, making them jump.
“She said a boy lives down here.” Rory pointed down at the window. “She told us to come see.”
The old man frowned. “Sorry, ladies, there isn’t any boy—”
“YES, THERE IS!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Why didn’t anyone believe me? “He’s been here—”
“Sweetheart, I think you’re a little confused. I’d know if someone was living in my own house. I just sold it yesterday and had the whole place cleaned the day before that.”
I didn’t know why, but I started to cry.
“A bet’s a bet!” Rory reached for my ears, but I ran. I ran as far away as I could, climbed over the fence, and kept running.
IVY
I don’t know how I ended up on the kitchen floor, but I just sat there with my knees tucked to my chest. Ethan sat quietly beside me and began to confess.
“My brother, sister, and I came to Boston with my uncle Neal when I was eleven. My parents wanted us to be safe while they were handling some issues back in Chicago. However, when we got here, we were attacked. That’s how my uncle lost his leg. We came to this house in the middle of the night. It was pitch-black and they told us to stay in the rooms, stay away from the windows, and don’t talk to anyone. I didn’t listen to any of those rules,” he whispered softly, and I just squeezed my legs tighter. “Your father and another man would often sit in the kitchen or move to the living room, keeping watch. I got bored waiting around day after day, so I snuck into the basement.”
“Where I snuck off during school,” I added. I picked that place one day after seeing this fat cat fall through the window. I laughed so hard at it but went to make sure it was okay. I started to stay because I thought it was close enough to my house that I was safe and that my dad would stay away because he was allergic. “That’s when I met you.”
He nodded. “We hung out down here day after day for a week.”
“Until you just disappeared one day,” I said angrily. “I crawled inside and waited for you to come down, but you never did, so I went up, just as my father was closing the door to the cabinet. He yelled at me for being here. At first I didn’t say anything. I thought you were skipping school too. But when you didn’t come back the next day I thought something had happened and tried to ask my dad, but he said no one lived there.”
“I didn’t know it then, about the growing issues between Boston and my family,” he replied, taking my hand. “I didn’t know your father was putting everything on the line by protecting us.”
“So when I babbled about the boy in the basement—”
“Your uncle figured it out and bombed your father’s car, killing your mother.” He nodded, and I couldn’t breathe…I tried to pull my hand away, but he didn’t allow it. “He begged my parents to set it right. And we helped him kill your uncle. Cillian and Elroy killed your father in revenge and not just for that, they wanted to follow their father’s dreams, making the Finnegan family the new Callahan family. And now they want my head—”
“A…” I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. I hurt. I hurt so badly my whole body began to shake.
“Ivy!” He grabbed me when I began to choke, but I didn’t know what I was choking on, my guilt, my rage, the pain, or was it all burning me alive from the inside out. “IVY!” He grabbed the sides of my face, now kneeling next to me. “Breathe! It’s not your fault.”
It was, though! I shouldn’t have pushed! I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew my father was hiding something back then. But I just didn’t want to be called crazy anymore!
“Come on, breathe, okay? Please.” He kissed my lips quickly. “Breathe, baby.”
Inhaling and exhaling, blinking the tears in my eyes away, I tried to push away, but he held on again. He wouldn’t let me move.
“Breathe in.” I did. “Breathe out.” I did.
We were like that for God only knows how long before I could finally speak again.
“Wyatt’s right. It never ends—”
“WYATT IS WRONG!” he hollered into my face. “The problem is not us! The problem is never us! The problem is those who want to be us! Your mother’s death is not your fault. Your father’s death is not your fault. It’s Keegan’s! There is always a beginning and it started with him. But the ending comes from us. Don’t put your rage anywhere else. Don’t let your need for vengeance burn out. We came here to kill them all, remember?”
I nodded, still crying but nodding, holding on to his wrist as he held on to my face. “You were my first friend, you know? That is why I wanted everyone to know.”
“You were the first and only girl I ever loved and the first and only girl to break my heart,” he whispered back, putting his forehead on mine.
“I thought you didn’t want to love anyone.”
“I said I didn’t want to be obsessed, not love.”
“And yet after all these years I’m still the first and only girl you ever loved. Isn’t that obsession?”
He frowned and this time when he tried to pull away I held on tighter. “Till I was seventeen I wasn’t with anyone. Then you started to date Pierce Donoghue. When I found out I was so pissed, so jealous…I slept with six out of seven girls on the cheerleading team during homecoming week.”
My hands and my mouth opened as I sat in shock, and he stood back up. The smirk on his face pissed me off so damn much, I kicked his shin. “You little shit!”
“Ahh!” He bounced away from me, grabbing his shin before yelling, “What? If you weren’t going to wait for me, why the hell was I going to wait for you?”
“I didn’t think you existed! I thought you were a figment of my imagination. I was a kid! You knew I was here?”
He rolled his eyes. “You should have stood firm and remembered me!”
“Oh, you are—”
“You forgot me twice!” He shot back, and I froze.
Twice? “What?”
“You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met in my life and you’ve met the women in my family, so that truly is an accomplishment.” He shook his head at me, brushing me aside to take the wine off the counter next to the money.
“When else did we meet?”
He glared at me, using a knife to uncork the wine, and poured it into the owl mug. I outstretched my hand to take it, but he drank instead.
“Now you’re just being petty.”
“Takes one to know one.” He…oh my God, he was pouting. He poured the wine into the cat mug, giving it to me. “I can’t believe you still don’t remember. When I met you in the basement back then, I thought you’d figure it out, but you never did.”
“WHAT?” He was just messing with me now.
“You came to Chicago weeks before I came to Boston! We were volunteering once at the shelter, and you came up, unable to choose between the—”
“Chocolate and lemon cakes.” I remembered, clapping my hands, then pointed to him. “That was you!”
He snickered. “I called you picky.”
“And I said maybe you weren’t picky enough.”
“And you called me short.”
“I was leaving that part out on purpose.” I grinned, finally gripping my cat wine. “You grew, though, so I guess it didn’t matter.”
“It did matter.” He leered at me. “I’d never been so upset with a girl in my whole life. When you told me ‘so what?’ after I called you fat I was livid. My father…he laughed. Everyone laughed because I’d never lost a fight before.”
“Aww, poor Ethan,” I teased, and he rolled his eyes. “If it makes you feel better, I never felt like I won a fight.” Most times, even if I used my fist, I ended up punished in some way or shape.
“It doesn’t,” he said honestly.
We sat in silence for a while, just holding our mugs.
He felt so far standing only a few feet from me, so I put the cup back down and walked around to where he stood. His eyes dropped down to mine. Reaching over, I took his cup and put it down too, then just hugged him, nothing more. Just a hug. He wrapped his arms around me, his chin on my head, my cheek on his chest.
“You’re making me soft,” he whispered.
I smiled, squeezing tight. “Only for me, though.”
He didn’t reply, so I kept talking.
“You’re never allowed to say you aren’t romantic again.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Well, duh, they weren’t me.”
He snickered, and I felt his chest shake. “You’re really going to let this go to your head, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
He cared. He remembered. He came back for me. He loved me. I wasn’t letting go. I’d follow him this time, no matter where he went.
“Now that I know everything, will you tell me what you’re planning? Why we’re here?”
“I thought the revenge was obvious.”
He thought this was obvious?
“Ethan, we’re in a house across the street from the people we want to kill and they want to kill us. You have no one else but me here—”
“I have everyone here,” he said, pulling back slightly to look at me. “When they realize they need me, they need this family, we will stand here and watch as they crawl on their bellies from his house to this one, begging for mercy. Humility forced on the prideful is the very best kind of revenge for them. Everyone else who resists will find the people standing beside them will be the very same that will slit their throats.”
Before I could speak something smashed against the window behind him. I tried to go see what it was, but he held me still.
“Let them throw or shout what they want. No one can get into the house,” he replied. “For now let’s forget about them…I do believe I made you a promise this afternoon.”
I grinned when he zipped down my jacket, but I stepped back.
“Go play with your cheerleaders.”
His mouth dropped open slightly, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“You’re right. I am petty.”
“Ivy...” He took a step toward me, and I bolted, causing him to chase me up the stairs.
How was it possible for one man to make me feel a hundred different emotions in one single day?
ETHAN
Her head rested on my lap, her naked body in between my legs, the sheets barely covering her as I leaned against the headboard. For some reason she preferred sleeping on me rather than the bed…but at least she could sleep. I, on the other hand, sat in wait, staring at the security feed on the screen mounted on the wallpapered wall before the bed. My plan would look insane to most people because for most people it would mean putting themselves in potential danger at all times. However, I was not most people, and I already lived in constant state of potential danger…so why not do it in front of them all. They thought I was just the boy who inherited the reign from his father…that I lived surrounded by bodyguards, in a mansion in some far away city so they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, they could disrespect me because they did not know me, they did not fear me. But when the devil moved into the neighborhood they’d know what true fear would be like.
Ringgg.
Ringgg.
Glancing at my watch, I smirked before reaching over and answering my cell phone. “Brother.”
“What have you done?”
“The first time you call me in five years, Brother, and that is what you ask me?” I tried to get up, to leave her to rest, but she just held on tighter, so I gave in and stayed put.
“I saw you this morning, so spare me the bullshit. I’ve gotten five ODs this evening. Two of them had GHB in their systems, the third had PCP, and the last two had ketamine mixed in with heroin.”
“Did you say five? That can’t be right—”
“I know how to do my fucking job. When did you start slacking on yours? You’re mixing shit now?”
“I trust you can do your job, Brother.” I tried not to let him kill my mood. “I just figured the death toll would be much higher by now…apparently, I need to lower my expectations.”
He was silent, but I merely laughed. GHB? PCP? They mixed date rape drugs with smack? Were they just excited or stupid?
“You’re doing this on purpose—”
“Being a doctor in this city is going to get a lot more stressful for a while, so good luck, little brother,” I replied, hanging up, and when I did she shifted under me.
“I think that is the most civil conversation I’ve heard you and your brother have,” she muttered.
“You’re right,” I said. She rolled over and I missed the feel of her on me immediately. Grabbing her arm, I pulled her back on my lap. “Where are you going?”
“It’s a little hard to have a conversation with you when your cock is inches from my face,” she said, shifting until her ass was right on top of me. “Better.”
“Not for me. I liked where your face was.” I grinned as she made a face at me. Pulling her closer to me, she put her arms around my neck. “Let me guess...my wife wants to know what my brother and I were being civil over.”
She nodded.
“Drugs.”
“What?” she asked, surprised by the answer.
Nodding, I repeated it again. “Apparently the doctor didn’t like that his drug dealer brother had a bad batch of drugs on the street causing people to OD before reaching his hospital.”
“He can’t blame you for every drug dealer on the street,” she said as if that was obvious, and it proved how innocent she was to this.
“Yesterday he could,” I told her honestly. “Because yesterday I supplied every drug dealer on the street. But not anymore. I told Cillian the Callahans pulled out of Boston, which means he’s now the supplier. However, over the years more and more people in the Northeast have become addicted to heroin. The demand is high and because my family also controls 99 percent of the heroin coming into the port here that means the Finnegan brothers don’t have enough and they’re mixing anything they can to sell. The money will rain on them for a little bit and they’re going to think they are kings, but the demand will only worsen as people’s highs are cut short and they come looking for more.”
“And I doubt the Callahan family will give up their 99 percent,” she said, connecting the dots. “Which means they’ll have to mix more and more and people will start to die faster and faster.”
“Also causing the government to have to step in and face that ugly secret no one wants to admit…there is a drug problem in Massachusetts. The druggies don’t give a fuck where their high comes from as long as they get their fix. The government can ignore it if there isn’t a high death toll. People don’t complain if they get rich. It’s a system that has been perfectly regulated by us to give them all what they wanted and now we’re gone.”
Her eyes widened as she realized the logical conclusion. “It’s going to be like the old days! Like in the movies with gangs at war trying to get the best drugs. The cops on a chase. People dying with needles in their arms. It will be chaos.”
“Keep going. Think what happens when most of those inner city hospitals no longer get those mysterious donations?”
The smile that crossed her face gave me chills. “You’re evil, Mr. Callahan.”
“I’m just getting started, Ivy,” I told her, the plan in my head coming together. “Everyone needs to remember their roles. This city. Those who hurt you. The Finnegan brothers. Wyatt—”
“Wyatt?” Her eyes widened. “What do you plan to do to your brother?”
“How much do you want to know?”
“Everything,” she said, staring deep into my eyes. “Tell me everything. You promised not to use me without my permission.”
I placed my hand on her cheek, stroking softly. “Once you get into my mind, Ivy, there is no escaping.”
“I know.”
I smirked…then I told her.
My family revolutionized organized crime. We created a balance. We made them need us, and they became so comfortable they forgot what it was like without us…what a bunch of ungrateful little bastards. I wondered if this was what God thought about the Israelites.
If so they were going to need to repent.
To repent they must be sorry.
To be sorry they must feel pain.
So let there be pain.