Ruthless People (5 page)

“Good morning, sir. The Boss is in a meeting in the basement,” she said, making us
all freeze. Everyone in our world knew that fucking word.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

“Who do you think has been running things while I die, gentlemen?” He snickered, before
turning away from us. “If you don’t believe me, you are free to go to the basement.
But be forewarned, you won’t meet a woman who needs to be taught anything.
Benvenuti nella famiglia
,
⁴
Callahans.”

Flaming, I turned back to my father who was still staring at the sick man in the chair.

“Did you know this?” I glared at him, only to have him glare right back. Most days,
I knew my place under my father, but the tides were shifting. I was rising, and I
needed to know if he had held information from me.

“No, Liam, I was not aware. It seems to have been a well-kept secret, but does explain
the recent growth of the Giovanni Empire,” he replied, seeming somewhat baffled by
the thought of it as well.

“No fucking way a girl has been behind all this,” Neal said like a child.

“Take us to her then,” I commanded the girl, and she nodded. I would see this Melody
and find out if she was truly the
Boss
they had dared to call her.

“Sedric, may I share words with you for a moment?”

My father nodded, no longer caring what I chose to do.

One last time I turned to Orlando, who didn’t even bother looking back as we left.
It must have been a grim day for him. He would lose a company and a daughter. I didn’t
pity him, though—he’d be dead soon enough.

The ugly duckling didn’t speak, or even bother breathing, until we reached the end
of the hall that was guarded by two of Giovanni’s men. From the corner of my eye,
I saw both Declan and Neal slowly reach for their guns. In Declan’s left hand, his
cellphone was ready to call in more guns if this was a trick. But my instincts and
common sense told me that Orlando really was dying and he wanted to marry off his
daughter first. What I didn’t know was what to believe about said daughter.

“Sir.” The men glanced at me before opening the door, only to reveal an elevator with
Fedel Morris inside. He was the bastard son of Gino Morris, one of the fucking mutts
who had the balls to break into our safe house and kill fifteen of our men sixteen
years ago. It was the reason my father pushed for this goddamn contract.

“This is as far as I can go, sir. It was a pleasure to be of service,” Adriana said
to us, giving me a short bow again before stepping back.

“Mr. Callahan,” the mutt said with forced respect, making space for us in the elevator.

The moment we were all inside, Neal took a step next to him, clearly itching for an
excuse to pull the trigger. He knew Neal was there but did not say a word or even
flinch when Declan reloaded loudly.

All any of us could hear when we stepped out of the elevator was a man gasping for
air as water splashed around him. We were a level up from where they were waterboarding
the man. The basement was just one giant gym with a boxing ring in the corner. They
had cleared everything on the ground floor to make room for their prisoner. As I stepped
up to the rail, a few eyes fell on me. The men gave me a short nod as if they understood
the shift happening within their company. Each one of them looked just as deadly as
our men, and they all stood silently, allowing the man’s underwater screams to echo
around the space.

“Enough,” a gentle voice called out, and each man stood straighter when the most beautiful
woman I had ever seen stepped forward. Even from where I stood, I could tell she was
perfection. From her wavy, black hair, flawless olive skin, and deep brown eyes, to
her perfect hourglass figure. The knee-length white dress she wore hugged each one
of her toned curves and, God, her tight ass—fuck. Her lips demanded to be kissed,
and my cock demanded I have my way with her right then and there.

“Melody Nicci Giovanni, head of the Giovanni family and the Boss,” Fedel informed
us.

Neal stepped up to see the goddess below.

“Holy shitcock, motherfucking damn,” he said, his mouth dropping open.

“Neal,” I said, without emotion. The last thing I wanted the Italians to believe was
that we were impressed.

Nodding, Neal returned to the same cold monster I needed at my side. Declan met my
gaze, telling me he was on the same wavelength as Neal.

If it weren’t for the obnoxiously loud gasping coming from the man below us, all three
of us would have forgotten he was there. But when I looked closer, I realized who
it was they were waterboarding.

Ryan Ross.
How the fuck did they get him?

“Ryan, as much as I would like to draw this out, I am late for a meeting with my fiancé,
and I hate being late,” Melody stated, as a blonde man stepped forward, holding her
jewelry on a white fucking pillow.

“To hell with you and your fiancé. You no good Italian cunt bitc—” Before he could
finish, one of the men who had held him down smashed his fist several times into his
face.

“It’s Boss or Ms. Giovanni,” the man said, spitting on him. “Nothing more. Nothing
less.”

Melody frowned and even that made me hard. She had beautiful lips.

“I didn’t want to do this,” she said, putting her earrings in before being handed
a gun.

Spitting the blood from his mouth, Ryan smiled. “Do it. I’d rather die than talk to
you, bitch.”

“Who said this was for you?” Melody smiled back as two men dragged a sobbing female
forward and placed her on a chair in front of the scum. Ryan’s eyes widened as he
looked at her.

“The Valero don’t know about your special friend, do they? They aren’t big on you
fucking women outside the ones they offer you. You tried really hard to keep her a
secret,” she said, walking behind him. It made my blood boil at how close she was
to him.

“Did you know she’s pregnant?” Melody asked, causing the girl to hold on to her flat
stomach and sob even louder. “Two lives saved if you just tell me what I want to know.”
She loaded the gun.

He didn’t say a word, even as the girl begged him.

“So this is your answer then, Ryan?” Melody asked slowly. “I will kill her.”

He still did not speak.

Sighing, she fired not once, not twice, but repeatedly, only stopping when the girl’s
lifeless body fell from the chair. She didn’t even flinch. Instead, she walked toward
the girl and emptied the rest of her clip into the body. When she was done, she turned
back to the now blood-spattered Ryan who sat wide-eyed and shaken. This must have
happened often, because her men went to work, carrying the body and cleaning up the
blood on the ground, which hadn’t touched her. They brought a new blood-free chair
for her to sit on and handed her a pair of heels. All of which happened in a matter
of seconds. They moved like the military.

“Does it make me a hypocrite if I still consider myself pro-life?” She didn’t even
blink as she stepped into her white shoes.

“She’s just as fucking merciless as you are,” Neal uttered in disbelief.

In a single moment, though, she had gone against everything I ever believed. This
was not the role I wanted my future wife to play. She was too beautiful for the blood
and the darkness. She should be upstairs, flipping through catalogs and painting her
pretty little nails, or waiting in our bed for me to have her. This could not stand,
and this would not be her role. I was to become the Boss and the
Ceann na Conairte
. She was to stand at my side so the Italians would fall in line.

Not that I could deny how sexy I found it. My mind hated this . . . saw the danger
in this . . . but my body lusted after it painfully. My cock throbbed for her.

Declan snickered to my right. “Right now, you
wish
the biggest thing you had to deal with was a charity junkie for a wife.”

I couldn’t agree more. I would have to fix this situation and fast.

“Everyone out!” I roared, making every last one of the inhabitants of the room look
at me as though I had lost my mind.

The eyes that shined with the most rage were those of my beautiful, soon-to-be wife.
Oh well, this would be her first lesson. There was one Boss, only one
Ceann na Conairte
, and it was not her.

FOUR

“Every murder turns on a bright hot light,
and a lot of people . . .
have to walk out of the shadows.”

~ Albert Maltz

ORLANDO

“Thank you for lying to him. I know it is not your forte.” I coughed. I was always
bloody coughing. I wanted nothing more than to rip my damn throat from my neck.

“Yes, well,” Sedric said, handing me a glass of brandy. “One day he may thank me for
keeping the identify of your daughter secret.”

With shaky hands, I held on to the glass before tossing the contents down my throat.
It helped the hacking this damn cancer caused, but not by much.

“She’s your daughter now.” I hated saying it. I couldn’t even meet his gaze. I just
stared at the empty glass. My own hands looked so foreign to me.

When had I become this man? This broken and tired old man who was frustrated at watching
the sun come up in the morning and seeing the moon fill the night sky? When had I
become tired of living? In my youth, all I did was live, some say a little too much,
but I knew this was to be my future.

Even now it wasn’t enough. I wanted to live more. I wanted more. It was the curse
of being a Giovanni. We wanted it all, even if we didn’t know it yet. I rode like
lightning and—

“Orlando?”

Snapping out of my trance, I stared at the gracefully graying man before me with slight
envy. Even now, he did not look a day over thirty-something. The Callahans, I swear,
had found the Fountain of Youth.

“My apologizes. What did you say?” I frowned, trying to sit up, but my body was my
prison and I couldn’t.

Walking over to me, Sedric slowly lifted me up with one hand. “I said, she would forever
be your daughter. I wish to know why you didn’t tell me about the cancer. I wouldn’t
have used it against you.”

“Liar.” He couldn’t help himself, a small grin spread across his face. “I didn’t wish
for anyone to know, Mel included. But that damn girl was too bloody smart for her
own good and blackmailed the doctors into telling her.” Snickering, I grabbed the
bottle off my desk, spilling a few drops on my hands.

Sedric nodded, staring out the window as he drank. “When I first found out about her,
I was shocked and angry that you would allow your daughter to get tied into the life
we have chosen. I had to see it with my own eyes, and watching her chop off two men’s
hands down in Mexico sure did the trick.”

“So you saw her on a good day.”

His eyebrow rose, and all I could do was snort.

“I didn’t
allow
Mel to do anything. She doesn’t ask for permission. She takes what she wants. By
the time you’ve figured out what happened, it’s too late to stop her. I didn’t even
realize it when she started taking over. One moment she was helping me balance cocaine
and clean guns, the next she was telling me not to worry because she already knew
what to do. I tried to fight her, but the damn girl’s plans always worked so well.
I was left speechless.”

“Your empire may have needed us once upon a time, but not now. I must admit, she has
done well, frighteningly well, in fact. You could have terminated the contract,” he
said, and he was right, I could have. Any self-respecting Boss would never have shared
his or her throne with another, and yet here we were.

“If Mel was a man, no one would dare deny she has the capability to be the best there
ever was. But there will always be a fool who thinks she can be run over, and she
would never stop fighting. If someone backed her into a corner, she would either fight
or tear down the wall and attack them from behind.” I chuckled. It was one of the
things I loved about her. That fire in her eyes reminded me so much of her mother.

“My son is not going to just let her rule. In fact, I fear the years of peace we’ve
enjoyed inside my house will be on hiatus.” Sedric grinned and I knew he was looking
forward to it. Behind his polished accent and polite demeanor, he enjoyed chaos. I
had an old bullet wound in my arm to prove it.

“But”—he turned back to me—“that is not your only reason, Orlando. If you minded her
fighting, you would have locked her away from it all the moment she was born. The
fighting does not bother you. What does?”

Damn Irish bastard,
I thought as I glared at him.

“The difference between a female and male Boss is that the female sells not only her
soul, but her heart. Mel hasn’t felt anything but rage in years. She is walled-off
and will stay that way if she does not marry. Even if she were to hate him, at least
I know she will never be alone. She will still have a family.” Everyone she has ever
loved has died, and I was well on my way, too. In return, Mel died a long time ago.

Sedric frowned, shaking his head. “It is odd. You believe that Melody needs Liam to
end the loneliness, and I believe Liam needs Melody to not fear being alone. He has
all the makings of a
Ceann na Conairte
. I knew it the very first day he was born. Neal was . . . not mentally strong enough.
He doesn’t have it. But Liam? He was born for it. It is in his DNA. Even as a child
he loved to leave his mark on everything.”