WYATT
“That wasn’t your choice to make, it was mine!”
“You’ve always been selfish… You’ve never once thought about those of us around you.”
Their words echoed in my mind without mercy, and not just them. Dona, my uncles, my aunts, my own father…apparently my selfishness was a well-known bane of this family. They all hated…me…even Helen.
“Wyatt?”
Glancing up from the glass in my hand, the ice long since melted, I looked over to the door as she walked in, a very familiar smile on her lips as she opened her arms out to me. I sat up off the edge of the table, put my glass down, and hugged her gently.
“Welcome home, Nana,” I whispered down to her.
“What do you mean welcome home? You’re the new one to this place.” She laughed and hugged me tighter than the force of God, and I let her for a moment before letting go.
She glared at me. “Why do you look depressed?”
“I’m not depressed, Nana.”
“I know you’re not depressed, Wyatt, that’s why I’m asking why you look depressed,” she said, breaking away from me, taking my glass, and finishing the liquor. Her face twisted together as if she ate a bag of sour candy. Plus, the wrinkles over her ivory skin made her look older than normal. I wish I’d taken a camera. “Never mind, I have my answer. What the hell is this?”
I snickered, trying to remember what I’d poured into the glass. After I left the garage, everything was kind of blank. “In all honesty, I can’t even remember, Nana.”
“Good. Never make it again, or I’ll disown you.” She cringed, putting the glass on the table.
“Nana, when did you become a such a drama queen?”
“I’ve always been one, but your sister kept overshowing me!” she shot back, her mind sharper than ever. She sighed deeply and frowned. “I miss her. I got here and automatically wanted to go to her room before remembering she wasn’t here.”
I felt my shoulders sink down slightly, but didn’t want to see her frown. “I’m sure the royal palace of Monaco can handle one more drama queen.”
At that she paused, looking me dead in the eye and said, “I’ll go visit her when you visit her. My place has always been with you boys. You and Ethan. Sons of my son. I’m very happy you are home, Wyatt…this place needs you.”
I tried to smile, but my thoughts hurt too much. “Are you sure? Because at the moment, I got people abandoning ship.”
“Is that why you look depressed? Your abandonment issues?”
“I do not have—”
“Your parents died when you were young, you have abandonment issues,” she cut me off.
I made a face and changed the subject. “Apparently all of the problems in this family are due to my selfishness.”
She snorted like a hog, and my eyes went wide as I tried not to laugh.
“Nana!”
“Bullshit!” she replied. “Everyone in this damn house is selfish.”
“Exactly!” I nodded to her.
“You’re more selfish,” she added, putting me in my place, and I couldn’t help but pout like a kid. We were all kids to her anyway. She linked arms with me and said, “But your selfishness is nowhere near big enough to be the root cause of this family’s issues. Ethan and Helen needed an emotional punching bag, and because you have a bad habit of choosing the worst times to speak to people—”
“Hey—”
“They took their anger out on you,” she finished.
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
“Take it.” She shrugged. “You’ve done it to them dozens if not hundreds of times, and they forgave you and moved on because that is what family is for. Let them sort themselves out, and you keep focused on what you’re supposed to do.”
“You don’t think I need to be less selfish?”
“Taking their abuse is already being less selfish, so you are. Besides, knowing what you want and doing it…is not always a bad thing. Many times, especially in this family of master planners and strategists, it’s a good thing. It makes you human. It makes other people in this family stand up for what they really want, too. I’d be sad if you changed who you were, Wyatt. You’re just as your mother made you…perfect in your own way.”
I paused for a moment before glancing at my watch. It was after five. I’d called my uncles for a meeting, which was why I was in Ethan’s study anyway. “You came to give me a pep talk before I talk to Uncle Neal and Uncle Declan?”
She grinned. “What else can a grandmother do but give pep talks? Hell, I live for these moments. You all never remember me until you’re hurt.”
“Nana—”
“No. No. It’s fine. I get it. Everyone is grown now,” she said, obviously to further add to my guilt as she walked back to the door.
“Nana…let’s have our own welcome-back-to-Chicago dinner soon, I want to know all about what it takes to live to a ripe old age in this family.” I grinned, knowing she’d want to smack me.
“Call me old again you little shit, and you’ll never make it to thirty,” she replied, and I laughed as she went.
“Love you!” I yelled back toward her.
SLAM!
She’d slammed the door so hard it didn’t even close fully, slightly swinging back open, allowing my uncles to walk into the study. Neal grinned. “You called her old, didn’t you?”
“All I said is I wanted her to teach me how to live as long as she has in this family,” I said.
“Must you fight with everyone?” Declan asked, walking over to the bar.
“Yes,” I nodded. “It’s part of my charm.”
He laughed, walking over to me with a new drink. “You know I never thanked you for what you did.”
I took the glass, not sure what he was talking about. It must have been clear on my face because he added, “Helen. Back then…I was stuck. I wasn’t sure what to do. Your parents wanted things to be done quietly, your aunt was on the verge of a breakdown, and I missed my daughter. You took all the blame, and we got what we wanted. I got what I wanted. Don’t worry about Helen, I’ll talk to her later.”
I nodded, not wanting to rehash this. Luckily, my uncle Neal didn’t want to be out of the loop, either. He pointed to the 1937 Map of the United States Showing Routes of Principal Explorers and Early Roads on the side of the wall between the bookshelves.
“Sayalero is now in control of Miami. Rocha has Houston. Villalobos has from New Mexico to southern California,” Uncle Neal said, reading the lines on the map. Every year Ethan sent us information for the new code. Cartels and other mafia families that were trying to rise up against us, to steal our network for trade. The code matched the lines of the old map in our family study.
“They’re trying to cut us off in the south,” Uncle Declan added, staring at the map. “To do that and not fight each other…”
“Means they’re working together,” I finally spoke. “They’ve been ambushing our routes from South America, something they found out through Tobias, and the Italians backing Savino have been helping them. Dona had the ones she found out taken care of. But it still doesn’t change the fact that…”
“We’ve lost at least half the Italians,” Uncle Declan muttered.
“And the ones we have are now terrified because of your actions at the OC,” Uncle Neal responded, glancing over to me.
“I did what I had to do to stop the bleeding,” I replied, looking at the lines throughout the south. “Fear will at least stop anyone else from turning coat until Ethan gets back and figures out how to unite them again. The ones who did betray us and didn’t get caught, it’s only a matter of time until people begin to turn them over.”
“Fucking grunts…after everything we’ve done for them,” Uncle Neal grumbled as he brought his glass up to his lips, stating before he drank, “At least we always have the Irish.”
“That isn’t enough, Uncle,” I snapped, moving to sit on the couch, leaning back into the seat. “There is rebellion rising against us on every front. Don’t praise the Irish, they were just put in their place because of Ethan…they won’t try anything for the time being. But if it looks like we are losing, they’ll abandon us, too. I don’t trust them and neither should you. Things have changed from back in your day.”
“Back in our day, look at him as if we’re from the stone age,” Uncle Neal snickered, moving to sit on the couch across from me. “The drug wars never change, Wyatt. It’s always about who has the power, the money, and the drugs…and just like in our day, we have them. We just need to defend them.”
I grinned at that. “We do. But we need people, Uncle. The more people, the more power. A rich man isn’t powerful if he has no people. He isn’t a king if he controls no one.”
“So what is it you’re thinking?” Uncle Declan questioned, turning away from the map to face us. “We can’t trust the Irish. We can’t trust the Italians. Then what?”
“Family,” I answered back. “We trust family. You know I’m not the thinker. That’s Ethan.”
Taking the remote, I held it up to the map and clicked it once, watching as the glass over the map highlighted our state of Illinois before zooming into Chicago, breaking up the city by zones. “Before leaving, Ethan apparently was thinking about this plan.”
They both looked but didn’t seem to get it.
“He wants to spend almost five billion dollars redoing these neighborhoods?” Uncle Declan asked, glancing at the costs that were calculated in all of the zones. The amount of money he was willing to spend was insane.
“Is he trying to run for governor in a few years?” Uncle Neal snickered, shaking his head. “He really doesn’t need to do all of this.”
“You all really don’t get it.” I chuckled, enjoying the fact that, for once, they were the idiots in the room.
“Do explain, oh wise one, why your bother wants to spend a few billion redoing the ghettos,” Uncle Declan snarked.
“With pleasure,” I replied in the same tone, finishing off my drink.
“He’s recruiting,” I didn’t have a chance to say, because in walked Darcy, dressed in an all-black dress shirt and black trousers. Behind him was Sedric, dressed in grey trousers and a navy dress shirt.
“You’re both late,” I said, more annoyed that they killed my moment than anything else.
“Apparently, I needed a haircut,” Sedric muttered, running his hand through his shorter and styled black hair. “I feel like I’ve aged.”
“That’s the point,” Darcy replied. He shook his head as he walked in, moving to the bar just as his father did. “No self-respecting man should be walking around with in his hair in a ponytail.”
“Someone is just jealous of my God-given good looks,” Sedric grinned as he threw himself on the couch next to me.
Darcy snorted, kind of the same way Nana had. “Yeah, that was the real reason… deep down I’m dying to be a twenty-five-year-old half-Korean man with a ponytail and no rhythm.”
“What is going on, and don’t you have workouts today?” Uncle Declan cut Darcy off as he sat on the arm of the couch beside me.
Darcy looked at his father for a minute and then back down at me. “Are you going to tell them or not?”
“Seeing you came late and cut me off before I could, have at it, Cuz,” I replied.
He drank first before saying, “I’m retiring from the NBA.”
“You’re what?” Uncle Declan repeated slowly.
“Dad, I’m retiring—”
“I heard you the first time,” Uncle Declan shouted at him. “I’m trying to figure out why a healthy twenty-four-year-old retires from something he loves.”
His eyes shifted to me. “Would you care to explain, Wyatt?”
“I can speak for myself, Father,” Darcy snapped back at him. “But I’m not able to answer your question because I don’t know why a healthy twenty-four-year-old retires from something he loves. After all, I don’t love basketball. I played because Ethan told me to do something outside of the family. I’m stopping because Ethan asked if I could come work with the family. It is my family, too, isn’t it? I have a right to choose whether I want to be in the family business or not, don’t I?”
Uncle Neal sighed, trying to cut in. “Darcy, this isn’t a game—”
“When has it ever been a game?” Sedric questioned, his tone much more serious as he sat up, looking to his father. “Father, you’ve been training us since we were children. How to fight, how to shoot, what it meant to be a Callahan…what it means to the family of the Ceann Na Conairte. You taught us to be loyal. So here we are. Why are you confused? You made us this way.”
Silence.
It was so thick and heavy that it was suffocating.
“Uncle Neal, Uncle Declan,” I spoke up, leaning forward. “You married outside of the Irish. Just like my father. Except the only difference was that my father worked to bring the Italians up, too. They spent millions to make sure no Irish or Italians found themselves living in the ghettos. They uplifted their people. Uncle Neal, you said things never changed in the mafia, that isn’t true. You changed them. Both of you did. The Irish and Italians keep thinking we need them. But the truth is, they forgot why they need us. Ethan’s plan is our parents. The Blacks and the Asians are our people now, too. Our family is mixed. Our people will be mixed. Sedric and Darcy already have the star power, people love them. No one will think twice if they find out they are retiring to dedicate themselves and their ‘inheritances’ to fixing ‘their communities.’ In fact, people will love them. While that is happening…”
I looked to Darcy to let him explain, but also to make sure he understood as well.
“While you all are taking care of the southern cartels, Sedric and I will be building our own…when you build up the community, gangs break up. A lot of them are lost, and society isn’t going to take them back…they’re going to need a new leader.”
“You’re going to have them follow you,” Uncle Declan replied, his voice emotionless. “You’re going to be the head of former Black gangs, and Ethan is going to be the head of you, making him control the Blacks, the Asians, the Irish, and the Italian. Is he going to have you marry a Spanish woman, too, so we can have the whole diversity spectrum?”
“No one is making me do anything—”
“Okay,” snickered Uncle Declan, clearly not believing him.
I got up from my couch and placed my glass on the coffee table. “I’m guessing you all are going to want to talk. Fine. Take the day and have your father-son time. But remember this isn’t negotiable. This is happening. So get over whatever it is all of you need to get over because every moment we waste is the moment our enemies grow bolder…seeing as one of them already put a bullet through my sister-in-law’s skull, I doubt any of us want to see what bolder is.”
“Wyatt—”
“See you all at dinner,” I cut off Uncle Declan. I didn’t want to hear it right now.
This was the new order.
The mafia evolved to survive, and this was our next evolution.