“Murderers are not monsters,
they’re men.
And that’s the most frightening thing about them.”
~ Alice Sebold
LIAM
“Have I taught you nothing?” my father asked, his voice a pitch above a whisper as I read the files on the desk before me.
“No father, actually, you have taught me quite a lot,” I replied before I took another drink of Orlando’s horrible brandy. “Why do you ask?”
“Do not be coy with me boy. What happened between you and Melody today was unacceptable. You beat your wife—”
“She is not my wife yet,” I said, smashing my hand against the oak desk and rising from the chair. “This woman, this Melody Giovanni, is insane, borderline demented, and she took a swing at me. It escalated, and then she . . . she shot me through the fucking leg!”
Sedric glared, his eyes blazing as he stepped forward. “As she should have. You had no right to interrupt her. If the tables were reversed, what would you have done?”
I would have killed the person slowly.
“You cannot possibly be on her side. You should be on my side.” I almost wanted to laugh at the thought. “Imagine if it had been Mom, or Coraline, or Olivia. What would you have said to them if you saw them act as Melody did?”
“What are you? Four? I am on the side of the family, as you should be. It was not your mother, or Coraline, or Olivia. It was Melody. Melody, who will become your wife in less than seventy-two hours. Make peace with her.”
Seventy-two hours? “Why in the hell are we getting married in three days?”
“So you don’t kill each other before the week is out. The press has been notified, and by morning, the world will know. Every gossip column, every news outlet, and every damn mafia member in the world will know the Giovannis and the Callahans are one. This means you two will have to pretend so fucking well, you fool yourselves that this isn’t just some arranged marriage, or so help me God, I will set you both on fire.” The fact that my father, Sedric Callahan, had just raised his voice and cursed in the same breath was proof enough he was serious. He had set a man on fire before . . . two actually.
Taking a seat once again, I turned and stared at the roaring fire that lit Orlando’s office. This day had not gone how I planned, and while my bones were aching for sleep, my mind could not stop racing.
“Son, do I approve of what Melody does? No. I do not, and that is because of the simple fact that I was raised differently. And by a man much more controlling than myself. The strongest survive, however, and the key to survival is to evolve with your environment. We have made so many strides. No longer are we just uneducated thugs with guns. We have evolved, the mafia has evolved, and now it’s your turn. Melody Giovanni is your evolution, embrace it and make peace.”
It was only when the door shut after him that I allowed myself to relax. I filled my mouth with the horrible brown liquid in my hands, but even that didn’t help my mind drift from the beautiful, dark-eyed woman who was to become my wife.
Our moment in the basement made my blood boil and other parts of me ache. She did not fight like a woman, but like a trained man, and the way she had looked—like a lioness about to rip apart her prey—made me want her even more. I almost had her on that damn wall, and she had wanted it. I had felt her nipples respond to me as they pressed against my chest through the thin material of her dress. Her eyes were begging, and her lips had parted for me as she held back moans of pleasure. Even her olive skin warmed beneath my hands. I would have taken her against that wall many times over and given her the pleasure we both hungered for, but instead, the wench shot me. She fucking shot me.
I’d been so shocked and horny that my mind couldn’t even comprehend what had happened. My thigh was burning like fire when she kissed my cheek and walked away. With that one shot, she had proven that breaking her was not possible. She would never convert to what I needed her to be. She was a ruthless savage, and if you cannot break a ruthless savage, you need to figure out how to tame them.
I needed to make Melody understand that she was not above me. That she did not give the orders. That she did not move mountains or cause tornados to rip through the sky.
I did.
I had worked too long and too hard to let anyone stop me, least of all her. I would have rather died than give up my fucking claim to this family. When I found out what my father did for a living, I saw how people created paths for him as he walked in crowded buildings. I watched as governors, senators, bankers, and fucking judges alike kissed his feet. I knew what I wanted to do. Some people, like Neal and Declan, were simply born into the family, but I knew I was born to rule the mafia. It was beyond my fucking calling, it was in my blood. It was what pushed me daily, and the only person who ever stood in the way of that was my father.
I should have taken over on my twenty-first birthday. I looked forward to that day, but not so I could drink legally—I had been drinking since I was fifteen—but because I had wanted to hear him say it. I had wanted to hear my father tell the world that I was to take over the company, but instead, all he did was give me an island and pat me on the back. His explanation was that it is not the time. He was the damn Ceann na Conairte. He made the fucking time, and the rest of us followed it. Melody was eighteen and legal at that point, so it wasn’t as though he was waiting for her. But each year after that, I waited, killing anyone who dared to get in my way, and now to have to deal with my wife-to-be? It was fucking bullshit, and I never saw it coming.
“Today has been interesting, dear cousin,” Declan stated, walking in and heading straight to the bar. Forget crack, we Callahans were addicted to brandy and drank it like it was water.
“Interesting does not even begin to cover what happened today,” I said. “My fiancée shot me with my own gun.”
Declan grinned, the little fucker, before taking a seat on the couch. “How did she manage to disarm the greatness that is Liam Callahan? I have seen you draw, load, and shoot your gun in three seconds flat.”
I frowned, knowing that he knew and simply wanted to hear me say it. Sometimes I wished he would go fuck himself.
“She looks like a sweet little lamb from afar, but when you get close, you find out she skinned and ate the damn thing just to use it as a coat. She’s a beast.” I glared at the fire, remembering similar flames in her eyes as she shot me. It was like she had figured out how to make hell reflect in her gaze.
“I like lamb,” Declan said.
“Shut up, you dick.” I threw my glass at his head, but he dodged it, allowing it to shatter against the wall.
He only laughed. “Does this pent up frustration I feel radiating off you have anything to do with the fact that you want her so badly? That’s how she got the gun. You were feeling her up and—”
“And she took it from me and shot me like a dog. Yes, cousin, that’s how it happened.” I did not want him thinking about her firm ass in my hand or the bullet hole, which was now in my leg.
“And yet, you still want her, you sick fuck.” He drank. “I don’t blame you, though, she is—”
“Finish that sentence and it will be your last one. Cousin or not.” Already I was reaching for my loaded gun.
Raising his hands, glass still in his left, he nodded with a grin. “You are possessive. I wonder what your future wife thinks about that.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what she thinks about it, and what would Coraline have to say about your words over Melody?” I asked, knowing full well how pussy whipped he was.
“She would be pissed off, so much so that I hope she shoots me in the thigh. We’ve never had that kind of foreplay before.”
I cringed at the thought of it. “And I’m the sick fucker?”
“No more than you,” he replied, stretching. “Where is the queen anyway? She wasn’t at lunch or dinner. I think I’ve seen everyone but her since then.”
Walking over to the bar, I grabbed another glass.
“Oh, sweet Mary, mother of shit, what did you do?” Declan asked, rising from the chair.
“My mother would have your tongue for speaking like that,” I replied, knocking back a glass before pouring another.
“Not before taking yours for what happened today. I should have known you would retaliate.”
Rolling my eyes at him, I walked over to the desk and gathered my files. “I handcuffed her to one of the chairs in the pool house and left her some dinner. I’ll get her in the morning.”
“You can’t be serious, Liam,” he said, causing me to turn to him. He should have known better than to doubt me.
“Okay, you’re serious.” He frowned. “But you can’t leave her there all night. If this was how she was with a good night’s sleep, imagine how irritated she is going to be in the morning. Do you want her to be like that for your mother?”
He had a point, but I was fucking pissed.
“I’m not going to do it.” If I released her, it would be as though I was saying she was right. That she was Boss. I wasn’t going to bow down to her.
“You hard headed son of a—”
“Mr. Callahan.” Adriana, the ugly duckling, came in, already dressed in an ancient nightgown as though she had come out of the fucking middle ages.
Declan held back his laugh by filling his mouth with brandy, while I just turned to the poor, time-confused girl in front me.
“Yes, ugl . . . Adriana?” I asked.
She glared at me as though she knew what I almost said. “The Boss wanted me to ask you what time you will be departing in the morning?”
Declan spit out the drink in his mouth, coughing like a dying man before laughing hysterically.
I stared at her for a moment before stomping out of the room without answering. I had made sure all her men had been far away. There was no way she should have fucking been able to get out of those cuffs. They were designed by me and made with reinforced steel. Bursting into the indoor pool house, I froze.
“Oh, my dear cousin, you have met your equal, and it is funny as shit to watch,” Declan muttered, standing right beside me as I stared at the broken chair, now resting in its watery grave.
It looked as though a monster had ripped its legs and arms off. Seeing as how I only handcuffed her to one of each, it baffled me. The food was still uneaten and the towels all rested at the bottom of the pool as well.
“I’m going to bed,” I told the grinning fool who was my cousin.
“Sleep with one eye open, cousin, and your hand on your gun. She may just kill you tonight,” Declan said as I walked back to the room I was given for the night.
When I entered, there sat my reinforced steel cuffs in tiny pieces all over my now shot up bed. On top of that, a fucking note by hers truly, in her precise handwriting, with a bullet taped to it.
I came to visit you honey, so we could finish what we started in the basement, but you and your cousin were busy giggling like schoolgirls. Oh well, I hope you have a good night. About the bed, well . . . you can understand right, sweetheart?
Checkmate.
Melody Giovanni
I could hear her laughter ringing in my fucking ears. Checkmate? She thought this was checkmate?
We hadn’t even started playing yet. Beaming, I jumped on the bullet-infested bed, kicking up feathers, before pulling out my phone and dialing quickly.
“Hello, mother? I’m sorry it’s late.”
“I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me. I miss you all. The house is to quiet I can’t think. Oh how is Melody? Is she beautiful? I met Orlando once and he was looker. I’m sure—”
“Yes, I have missed you as well. Yes, Melody is . . . she is one of a kind Mom, one of a kind. I was calling to see if you wouldn’t mind having a welcoming party for her. Just to show her how happy I am to have her in my life.”
“Really? Someone sounds smitten. The whole family?”
I wanted to roll my eyes. “Yes, the whole family. Can you do it? She is almost as maniacal as Olivia.”
“Are you sure she isn’t tired. I thought she just came into town today.”
“She won’t be tired at all.”
“Sure! I’m so excited. I’ll get right on it.”
When she hung up, I grinned. My mother would do what she always did for celebrations. She would go over the top. I knew now that Melody could lie down with the lowest and roll in the dirt like a motherfucking pro. But she wouldn’t be able to contain herself with the family. They shit rainbows and unicorns, and while she was distracted, it would give me time to work on a new lead I had on the Valero.
I was planning something huge for those motherfuckers, and I was going to use information I had acquired from Orlando’s files to do it. The Giovannis’ contacts were now my contacts. I almost wanted to say checkmate fucking now. But I wondered how she would feel when I used her work and multiplied the destruction by twenty. She was playing childish games, and I was no child. This wasn’t about who could outdo whom, this was me proving a point. I would kill two birds with one stone. The Valero would never see it coming, and I would make my mark as the new Ceann na Conairte and Boss.
Sleep tight, my little Giovanni, for tomorrow, you will dance like my very own puppet on strings, I thought, lifting my hand behind my head and grinning.