HELEN
Be ruthless.
That was his answer when I asked him what he was going to do now. For some reason, even though I knew who he was, knew what this family did and would do…I still couldn’t merge the Wyatt I’d always known—goof-ball Wyatt, smart-ass Wyatt, charming Wyatt—with the one who’d spoken on screen. The man who without hesitation set a trap with children and let them burn. I didn’t know that Wyatt. That part of him…I’d never seen it. Was he the Wyatt I’d always known or this new Wyatt? In my mind, I kept asking myself the same three questions.
Who was he?
When did he get to this point?
Where was the old Wyatt?
“Helen?”
Turning off the tablet, tossing it to the side before rising from my desk, I couldn’t help but feel like a little kid. Breathe, Helen.
“Hi, Mom.” I grinned, meeting her in the middle of my room and hugging her tightly. Feeling her arms around me, the curls of her hair brush against the side of my face, I felt my whole body relax.
“What’s wrong?”
That was short-lived. I tensed back up, pulling back from her. “Nothing!”
Damn it. I didn’t even need to look at her to know that didn’t sound even the least bit truthful.
“Helen?” She called again, lifting my chin so she could look me in the eye. My mother Cora had three ultimate superpowers. “You’re lying to me.”
Yep. The first my dad liked to call her bullshit detector. Which made it even harder for a bad liar, such as myself, to get away with anything. Sighing, I tried to smile again, staring into her dark brown eyes. “Can we let it slide?”
She frowned, causing small wrinkles to form on her brown skin. And she looked back and forth in my eyes, as if she were reading, before putting both her hands on my cheeks. “Normally, since you asked, I would let it slide, but sweetheart, you look terrified. Did something happen to you? Are you alright? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t be upset—”
“No. I’m fine. I swear,” I said quickly before her imagination got the better of her. Reaching up, I pulled her hands down.
“Okay. I won’t push.” She sounded hurt…which was her second superpower, the guilt trip. It didn’t matter if she was the one in the wrong. Somehow, she’d twist it around and make you feel like you were the one in the wrong. “Oh, I missed you!”
“Mom!” I couldn’t brace for it. Her third superpower, super hugs, had me trapped in her arms for dear life.
“Now that am I back, you and I should go to the spa. Have a girls day. You can speak computer geek to me until the sun comes up.”
I laughed, nodding. “I speak computer nerd, not geek.”
“What’s the difference?” she questioned, finally releasing me from her bear grip, but before I could reply, she just waved me off, going off on her own tangent. “You know, forget it. I’m going to book an appointment now.”
“Book…you aren’t going to just rent out the whole spa?” I mocked.
“Nope.” She grinned from ear to ear, pulling her phone out of her skirt pocket. “How can I show off what an awesome daughter I have if no one else is there?”
“Mom, you’re such a dork—”
“Excuse me, I prefer nerd.” She rolled her neck at me as she mocked me. However, it was short lived as she began to frown.
“What is it?”
“This bloody phone keeps acting up. Can you fix—”
“Can I can fix it? Mom, I’m hurt, don’t you know I’m a genius,” I said with a gasp, my hand over my heart, and took the phone from her.
She snorted. “How can I forget? You and your father remind me every day.”
I couldn’t help but beam with pride as I scrolled through the code on her phone. It took only a few seconds. “Yeah, Mom, it’s just because you forgot to update—”
When I looked up, she was looking through my tablet.
“Mom!” I yelled, reaching over and snatching it out of her hands. “Don’t just go through my stuff!”
Her eyebrow raised, and I closed my mouth quickly. Her eyes focused on the tablet and then back to me, and I hung my head. I was a fucking adult, and yet in this moment I didn’t feel like one…and I didn’t know why.
“Helen.”
“Sorry I snapped, but—”
“Is that what’s scared you?” She cut me off, and when I met her gaze, she nodded to the split feed of Wyatt’s press conference and the deleted footage at the O.S., which was now playing on my tablet. I watched for a moment, but the moment the little girl burned, crying out for her mom as he just sat there, I turned back. “Why are you scared?”
“I’m not scared.”
“You look it.”
“Well, I’m not.” I snapped again. Standing upright, I looked her in the eye and told her the truth. “I’m not scared. It’s just…it’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
She was going to keep pushing!
“It’s Wyatt! He’s…different, and I don’t know how…I don’t think I’ll be able to talk to him the same way now.”
She stared at me for a long time. Slowly, she crossed her arms, which meant I wasn’t going to like whatever she was going to say, but she was going to say it anyway.
“What? Mom.”
“Why do you think you can’t talk to him?” She asked.
Of all the things, I thought she was going to ask that wasn’t it. “He’s like a completely different person—I was wrong about him all this time.”
“Helen, I know you, that you know what this family sometimes needs to do—”
“I know what this family does, Mom. I’m not an idiot, but Wyatt doesn’t do…do this,” I replied, lifting the tablet for her to see again. “If he is violent, he never hurts people who aren’t related to the issue.”
“This is who he’s always been,” she replied softly, looking at me as if I’d just time-traveled and didn’t understand how the world worked.
“Mom, Wyatt tries to be to be good despite the fact that he’s a—”
“Helen, I’m not sure why you think that.”
“Can you stop making it seem like I’m crazy? Wyatt has a temper, he can be like a little kid time sometimes, and sure, he gets in fights. He’s even killed people, I know that. But he’s never gone off the deep end like this.”
Again, she just stared. I sighed, adding, “Look, obviously he’s not the best of people, but between him and his siblings, he’s the most—”
“Violent,” she interrupted me.
“What?”
“Out of all your cousins, Wyatt is the most violent, Helen. I’m not sure why you have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to him. Or how you missed who he is, but you need come to grips quickly. Whatever he, your father, and uncle are planning, that,” she pointed to the tablet in my hands, “is just phase one.”
“Of all the things Ethan and Dona have done, why would you say that Wyatt is the most—”
“Do you remember when your biological father took you away from us?” she asked it, and it was as if she’d slapped me across the face.
Nodding, I whispered back, “I was eleven.”
“You were gone for two weeks,” she whispered, her hands balling into fists. “But it felt like two years to me. It left like he gutted me. And your father, your aunt and uncle, they kept telling me to wait. Your father swore upon his life that he’d you bring you back, but they just wanted to get you back without causing a scene—”
“I know—”
“No! You don’t know. Because they didn’t get their way. Wyatt, at twelve, brought you back himself.”
“What?”
CORA – AGE 38
“We need to wait?” I asked softly, glancing over each and every one of their faces around the living room until I finally looked to Declan, my dear husband, who sat on the edge of the sofa, by the fireplace, his knuckles white, his face blank.
I didn’t need blank. I needed determined.
“Cora, we need to be careful,” Evelyn said as reached out to me, but I smacked her hand away.
“Careful?” I repeated, feeling ready to wring her neck. “She’s my daughter. Some nobody has TAKEN MY FUCKING DAUGHTER!”
“He’s not a nobody,” Melody said as she tucked her hair behind her ear, and took the glass Liam offered her, rubbing the side of her head. Apparently, her highness had a fucking headache.
Liam leaned over the back of her, adding, “He’s a sitting senator, civil rights attorney, and activist—”
“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” I hollered. “He’s not a Callahan! Therefore, he is a nobody! Or have the rules changed now because it’s my daughter? Because she’s not really Declan’s daughter?”
“Don’t you fucking dare! SHE IS MY DAUGHTER!” Declan finally chose to come back to life.
“PROVE IT…FIGHT FOR HER!” I screamed back.
“What do you think I’m trying to do, Cora!”
“I don’t know, Declan,” I hurled back at him. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re letting someone steal our daughter! The daughter we raised…the daughter we fed, and clothed and loved! The daughter who is…everything to me! You all can destroy cities; you can bring ground men to their knees. Within minutes, you have the FBI, CIA, Chicago PD, and every other goddamn acronym at your fingertips, and yet for some reason, it’s hard for you to figure out a way to bring back our daughter!”
“And what do you think will happen if we used one of those acronyms to get her back? Huh, Cora?” he hollered back.
“I don’t—”
“You should care!” he cut me off. “If we go to the FBI, CIA, Chicago PD, or anyone else, people will know they’re in our pockets. If we look bad…if people find out how corrupt we really are, we could lose Helen forever! If we kill him, not only will we kill our daughter’s biological father, and she could hate us, we would be the first suspects. Once again, we could lose Helen forever! I swear on everything that I am, everything that I own, I swear even on you…I will bring our daughter home, but we can’t just snatch her, Cora. Give me time!”
I shook my head and backed away from him, glancing to Liam and Melody, who just stared between us. “If it were Donatella, she’d already be back.”
“It could never be Donatella because her biological father is right here,” Melody replied, her words all but ripping out any shed of…dignity I had left.
“Liam,” Declan sneered. “Shut your wife up before I have to. I will not allow her to speak to my wife like that.”
“Let her say whatever the fuck she wants because until my daughter come back, you don’t have a fucking wife!” I muttered, fighting back the pain in my throat.
“Cora.” Declan’s eyes focused on mine. He stepped closer, but I backed away.
Running my hand through my hair, I blinked the tears out of my eyes. “Why is it whenever I need you, Declan, you’re fucking useless?”
I didn’t wait for his answer. Turning from them all, I walked out the room. Holding the door closed tightly, trying to fight back sobs that broke out anyway. I couldn’t even run away. It hurt. It hurt so much.
“Here.”
I saw the small box of tissues before I saw the hand attached to it. Blinking the tears from my eyes, I saw him clearly. The shoulder-length brown hair tucked behind his ears. His brown eyes with a speck of green weren’t the usual carefree ones. At fourteen, he already stood at a mighty height. He wasn’t as strong as Ethan, but both of them were still growing. He pulled out a few tissues and reached, pulling my hand from the door, handing the tissues to me.
“Thank you, Wyatt, but—”
“You’re right,” he said softly.
“What?”
“The man that took Helen. He’s not a Callahan. So he’s nobody,” he repeated my earlier words.
“Explain that to your parents,” I muttered. Reaching over, I put my hand on his head. “Thanks for the tissues.”
Without another word to him, I began walking toward the front doors, not the back toward my rooms.
“Helen will be back sooner than you think,” he said.
I just nodded. “Until then, I think I’m going to drink.”
TWO DAYS LATER
I’m going to be sick. I groaned, running my hands through my hair.
“Drink this,” Declan’s voice sounded above me.
“I thought I was clear. I don’t want to see your face until you bring our daughter back,” I grumbled, closing my eyes again as I tried not to hurl.
“You were very clear.”
“So why are you still here?”
“Because I enjoy watching my children sleep.”
My eyebrows frowned together. Peeking open one eye, I glanced up to him as he glared down at me, a glass of water in one hand, pills in the other. “Are you making fun of me right now?”
Stone-faced…borderline enraged, he glared down at me. “No. I’m trying to prevent you from puking on our children as they sleep because, like I said, I enjoy watching them like this.”
I heard his words.
I understood them.
And yet it still took much longer than it should have for me to…hope….my heart began to race as I sat up. Feeling a strange weight on the bed, I turned to my left slowly, and there were…there she was…
“Helen?” I gasped, reaching out to touch her face, but she sneezed, rubbing her nose before rolling over and hugging her brother…on Darcy as he snuggled on the pillow. As if I were dreaming, I reached out, running my hands through her curly hair.
“She got here last night after you passed out, and they both wanted to stay with you. Drink,” he said, offering me the water and pills.
I stared at them before looking back to him, and I couldn’t help it. I jumped, ye, jumped out of bed, hugging him, feeling the water in his hand slip a little bit. “You did it! You brought her home—”
“No, I didn’t.” He peeled me off, handing me the glass and putting the medicine on the bedside table. “Wyatt is the reason she’s back.”
“Wyatt?” I asked.
He just nodded, and I followed as he moved out of our bedroom and into the den, heading to his desk chair and grabbing his suit jacket.
“You’re not going to—”
“Yes, Wyatt. He skipped class and flew down to D.C. yesterday, where he broke into Senator Rook’s office, you know the senator Melody handpicked for the Senate. I guess that was the only other senator he knew.”
“I don’t know…what does Senator Rook have to do with this? Helen’s biological father is Senator King—”
“Wyatt kidnapped Rook’s seventeen-year-old daughter,” he interrupted, his face emotionless, “and took her to Senator King’s home, where he proceeded to shoot them both up with over five grams of our uncut heroin, and while they were both overdosing, he stripped them down naked, so they could be found naked and high in bed together.”
I felt my mouth drop and closed it, only to drop it again. My mind was spinning as I tried to piece together the madness that spilled out of his mouth. I replied slowly, “You’re telling me that Wyatt framed Senator King with a minor, not just any minor, but another senator’s daughter, and heroin?”
He sighed, rubbing his forehead as even he could not believe it. “No. Wyatt tried to frame him. Instead, he murdered our daughter’s biological father.
“Senator King is dead?” I whispered.
He nodded. “Apparently, he had a deadly allergic reaction to the drugs. So now everyone wants to know how a highly respected member of the black community who spoke out against drug use ended up dying of drug use in his own house. Senator Rook’s daughter has no idea how she got there either. Helen is temporarily back in our custody. But now I have an appointment with Judge Wilkins, who will probably want to investigate how it is we got Helen back so quickly.”
“I’ll come with you—”
“It’s best if you don’t come in your current state,” he muttered as he walked past me, angry. Reaching out to him, I grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop for a moment. He didn’t look back at me.
I didn’t even know where to begin.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to not be so fucking unless,” he snapped, yanking his arm away from me and marching to the door.
“Declan—”
Pausing, he turned back to me and got in my face to scream, “I love them, too! They’re my children, too…I was in pain, too! I wanted her back, too. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this circus for her. Her mother overdosed on our drugs. Our business killed her mother. And now we’re responsible for killing her father, too.”
“I’m her mother,” I reminded him softly, “and you’re her father.”
He inhaled, shaking his head, but at least this time he kissed my forehead and then hugged me. “Keep her away from the news. I’ll be back later.”
Nodding, he said nothing else to me before leaving. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my hangover or not, but it felt like the world had just shifted off its axis.
It didn’t matter. I had my daughter back…my family was together. There was a knock on the door.
“Hold on.” I softly opened the door. Wyatt stood there, his laptop tucked underneath his hand and a monster-sized bag filled with snacks over his shoulder like Santa Claus. He grinned like a harmless goofball.
“My mom’s pissed. Can I hide out in here for a bit?” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder just to make sure she wasn’t there.
I couldn’t help but smile. “How pissed are we talking about?”
He cringed. “My dad couldn’t even get a word in, and I think she invented some new curse words. I escaped while she was on the phone.”
“WYATT, GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!” I heard Melody holler. I dashed into the room so quickly I felt a breeze.
“I don’t know why they are so mad! Everyone is home now,” he muttered once I closed the door.
“Wyatt, you were reckless—”
“Not you, too, Aunt Cora!” He truly looked upset. He grumbled, “I thought you would be on my side.”
“Relax.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m on your side. How could I not be? You’re my hero.”
He grinned, dropping his bag on the ground and lifting his shirt to show me his rib, which was a deep purple and red. “Senator King put up a fight, but I got him good.”
It took me a second to adjust to the coldness, the ruthlessness of his words, which he was somehow able to say with the most innocent smile on his face. He reminded me of a little kid…an infant who laughed while smacking his parents because he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong.
“Wyatt,” I whispered, looking him in his eyes. “I’m grateful, but you shouldn’t brag about this…this was bad and sad. It was—”
“Aunt Cora,” he whispered back, putting his hands on my shoulders like I’d done to him, mocking me. “It’s kinda hard to take you seriously when you say bad and sad in the same sentence. It sounds like you’re reading Dr. Seuss.”
“Wyatt—”
“I know,” he said, a smile no longer on his face. “I know it was a bad plan. I know it wasn’t a good thing to do, and I swear I didn’t mean for him to die. I know my parents had a plan, and Uncle Declan had a plan. I’m sure even Ethan had a plan. All of their plans were going to be better than mine. I know. But Aunt Cora…I don’t think we should plan for family, right? You think that, too, right? That’s what you said before kind of…how we’re Callahans. Helen is a Callahan. She belongs here. Any plan that makes her wait with some strangers…was worse than my plan. It might make everything go smoothly, and Mom wouldn’t be upset with me, and Uncle Declan wouldn’t have to go see the judge. But it would still be worse. I’m not going to say sorry. I’m not going to feel sad. Because we won. We can figure out everything else later, because a win is a win,” he said, determined, and yet I could see it…in his eyes he was begging for me to be on his side.
“You’re right,” I said with a smile, nodding. “A win is a win. Helen’s home, and that’s all that matters.”
“Right! Thank you!” He let out a big sigh of relief before getting himself comfortable on Declan’s armchair, digging into bag of snacks.
“Wyatt?”
Looking to the door of Declan’s and my bedroom, I watched Helen step out, her curls a mess atop her head.
“Finally, you’re awake!” Wyatt grinned so wide I wasn’t sure how his cheeks didn’t hurt. “I was worried I was going to eat your welcome home party snacks before you had any!”
He lifted all the junk food he could hold up for her to see.
“Twizzlers!” She grinned back, about to rush for them, but then saw me. “Good morning, Mommy, can I have those?!”
Two weeks. I’d been without her for two weeks, and yet the way she spoke it was as if she’d never left.
Fighting back tears, I nodded. “I’ll let it slide since you just came back.”
“Thank you!” She dashed over to me and hugged me tightly before making a b-line for the snacks.
“Me too!” Sedric came out of the room, ignoring me completely, but it was okay. Everything was okay because they were right there. Laughing and giggling and stuffing their faces. I had my daughter. My children were with me. That was all that mattered.
However, somewhere in the very back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think to myself - He’s only twelve, Cora. He kidnapped a woman, six years older than him, and he murdered a man, destroyed another family, and he did it without remorse, without hesitation, without even caring what his parents, his mother would say. How?
Watching him laugh and stick Twizzlers under his lip, acting like a walrus, I knew he wasn’t a psychopath…he cared. He cared a lot. God complex? No, he wasn’t narcissistic enough for that to be the case.
What is he? How is he like this so young?
HELEN – NOW
“I couldn’t describe it then. Now I can,” my mother whispered to me. “Wyatt is the most dangerous because, unlike the rest of us, who bend or break the rules of society, he doesn’t acknowledge them…it’s as if they never existed to begin with. You think he’s an angel…I agree. But I agree knowing that Lucifer was the most beautiful angel of them all, too.”
“I need to go,” I said, softly handing her back the phone before leaving my room. The moment I stepped out into the hall, I heard his voice.
“Helen!”
Wyatt walked down the hall, in the middle of my father and uncle. He had that normal goofy grin on his face; he seemed the same and yet…all I could see were tattered black wings behind him.
“Helen? What’s wrong?” my dad asked, stepping forward.
But I stepped back, shaking my head. I tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Without saying a word to them, I turned and left. I could hear them calling for me, but I ignored them. Instead, as I was going into the garage, all of a sudden, I felt a hand grab onto my wrist, pulling me back.
“Helen?!”
Wide-eyed, I turned back to him, only to see him staring at me just as wide-eyed and confused.
“Are you okay? What happened? Did you fight with your mom—”
“You killed my father,” I answered back.
“What?” He laughed like I was the one who was insane. “Uncle Declan—”
“Senator King,” I snapped, and he froze. Everything seemed to freeze. Except the world right outside the entrance to the garage, where the rain fell on the gravel like bullets from the sky. He opened his mouth and closed it and then opened it again, but no words came out. “Let go of me, Wyatt.”
He blinked a few times before glancing down at my wrist like he forgot he had grabbed it before letting go. The moment he did, I turned around and walked over to my dad’s Aston Martin. Wyatt didn’t speak. He didn’t move even as I reversed. Then just before I sped out, he called out and finally said, “You belonged here.”
Glaring at him, gripping onto the steering wheel, I fought the urge to run him over. Instead, all I said was, “That wasn’t your choice to make, it was mine.”
As I drove out, only when the rain began to beat down on me did I realize I’d taken the top down…but I didn’t want to stop. I just kept driving toward the gate to get as far away as possible from the manor.