The Untouchables (10 page)

Shamus chuckled at her, taking his time to chew. “It’s a shame you aren’t male. I could respect you more.”

“It’s a shame you don’t have manners. Now answer my question, old man, or I will pull it out of you,” was her reply, causing Shamus to just laugh, allowing us to see all the food in his mouth.

“You try so very hard to be something you can never be. A woman will never be a boss. No matter how many people you kill, no matter how much you threaten. You will always be a cunt. All women are cunts, I wish my grandson would have found one with even a drop Irish blood in her veins to make up for it.” I expected Mel to flip out, but instead, she regarded him carefully.

“You’ve lowered your standards. I’ve heard even being half Irish wasn’t good enough for you,” Mel stated, much calmer than I was.

He had come into my home uninvited and insulted us all. He spoke as if we were nothing but gum under his shoe. As if we weren’t even family. Shamus was a pig. Every time he spoke, the pressure from keeping my mouth shut built up behind my eyes.

“I was not unreasonable. After all, if my son had chosen the woman I’d gotten for him, I’m sure he wouldn’t have a dumbass, a mouse, and a cripple as sons. But apparently, my words fall on deaf ears.” The pig snickered.

A dumbass…Neal

A mouse…Declan

A cripple…Me

We all knew our titles, he had made it clear to all of us when we were children, but he always said he’d rather have a dumbass than a mouse or a cripple.

“I would have sooner killed myself than marry Catharine Briar,” my father snapped, and again my mother held him back.

“Maybe you should have and saved me so much trouble!” Shamus yelled. I prayed the man would have a stroke.

“So you’re here due to the Briar’s,” Mel stated, eyeing him carefully. “Let me guess, you wanted Liam to marry her daughter.”

“Look at you, using that pretty little brain of yours. I wish you would have done the same when you locked Natasha Briar away.”

I tried to figure out where the dots connected. As far as I knew, the Briar family didn’t have anything worth taking, and yet he seemed adamant we marry the trash.

“That was your grandson’s idea. I wanted to kill her. I came close one time in church,” Mel confessed.

How she could manage to stay composed was beyond me.

Shamus turned to me as I watched him, biting my tongue once again. He looked me over, held his nose up high, as if
I
were filth.

“How did you two, of all people, become the Boss? You, Liam, will never be great,” he said. “You will always be the crippled boy trying so hard to be a man. I guess that was why you can handle being married to someone with bigger balls.”

I grabbed the table knife just like my father, wanting to ram it into his goddamn throat, but Melody squeezed my leg.

“I do believe I will take that as my queue to leave. These old bones of mine need to be rested,” Shamus said as he rose with the help of his cane. “You all enjoy your evening.”

“
Father
,” Sedric called out to him, stretching out the word to the point where he grimaced just by saying it.

Shamus stopped, turning back to him and looked just as surprised as I was.

“Do not spend the night in our house,” he said.

“That’s where you are wrong, son. It’s
my
house. All of this—everything you have, everything you have accomplished—is because of the deals I made.”

With that, he left.

MELODY

No one said anything. With each passing moment, Shamus disgusted me. I was tempted to kill him the second I saw where he was sitting. But it wasn’t my place. I had enough issues with my family line.

Liam grabbed his plate and threw the damn thing at the door after Shamus left.

“I want him GONE!” he yelled. “I don’t care how, duct tape him to the bottom of a goddamn plane and send him back to Ireland for all I care. He’d better not be back at our fucking house!”

“Liam,” I whispered, but he didn’t say anything, just backed away from the table trying to breathe as he reached for the closet bottle.

“Mr. and Mrs. Callahan, I would like to remind you that this isn’t your home.” Mina snapped. “There are cameras everywhere and not to mention, I don’t know, a political candidate! Can you people stop going Rambo on whoever walks through the door?”

“Can’t we just buy the building?” Coraline asked. Mina took a deep breath before dragging Senator Colemen out of the room. Walking over to Liam, I placed my hand on his shoulder.

“I thought we were quite civilized, didn’t you?” I asked Liam.

He looked around the building. “Honestly, if people would stop testing us, the world would be a better place.”

“You both are so…” Olivia started, but stopped, perhaps remembering she too had blood on her hands and she wanted more. When you are part of this family you then you can’t judge anyone…We all made the choice to be here.

“Well then, my wife and I will be calling it a night,” Liam said, taking my hand.

Neither of us said anything as we left through the back, where all of our cars were now parked and waiting for us. Monte and Fedel had two cars up front while Dylan, Liam’s new right hand since Eric’s death, manned the cars behind ours.

It was only when we took our seats that Liam pulled off his tie and leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I need to kill my grandfather,” he said to himself. “But if I do, it will be all-out war. We have a shit load of product coming in tomorrow, and I can’t take out Ireland’s superman. He knows it. He’s been pumping money into the country for so long I’m surprised they haven’t made him king yet. He’s untouchable.”

“If you can see him, he’s touchable. Being untouchable is just an illusion people like us create to intimidate others. Everyone has a weakness. We will deal with him, he won’t get away with talking to you like that, I swear,” I said, staring out the window.

“When did you become so sweet?” He kissed into the back of my hand.

I hated how much I enjoyed that and how I couldn’t admit it. “I don’t know what you mean. Him calling you a cripple was insult to me. As if I would marry someone with less balls than me.”

He smiled so wide it made me uncomfortable. Like he knew something I didn’t.

“What?”

“Nothing. Anyway do you find it odd that my father, a former rival of your family, came into town around the same time your mother suddenly popped up?” he asked, staring out into the city.

“You don’t think—”

“I don’t know what I think. But if I were my grandfather, after everything that happened last year, maybe he wants to take back the business.”

“Over my dead body,” I muttered, pulling out my phone. “We’re going into lock down until we can talk to father crime himself.”

EIGHT

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

—K Colemend Hosseini

EVELYN

I wasn’t sure what to say to him. No, that was a lie. I knew what I
wanted
to say. I knew
how
I wanted to say it. Sadly, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. I never once flinched at Liam or Melody’s actions. My moral compass was shattered beyond repair, but that didn’t bother me either. When I first married Sedric, knowing what his life was going to be, I thought I could keep my head up above it all. But this life has away of sucking the good out of you…how can it not when you are surrounded by the worst of people. I’ve never physically killed a man, but twice in my life I’ve asked for retribution, and twice Sedric had ensured that it was done it for me.

“What are you going to do?” I whispered as he lay on our bed. He stared up at the ceiling, not bothering to move like a fat cat after a feast. I knew this Sedric. He was about to do something…something evil.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, as I took off my heels.

They were originally Melody’s and the damned girl wanted to burn nine hundred dollar Jimmy Choos, just because they were white.

We were the same size, and like the shoe hoarder I was, I took them with pleasure. However, it seemed like they were molded for her feet alone and were going to kill me.

“You’re a bad liar. Thank God I keep you locked away.” I laughed, crawling on top of him.

“I’m a great liar. We’re just born with a strong pair of bullshit detectors.”

“Raising three boys—four if I count you—it was a required skill.”

He chuckled, but didn’t reply.

“Sedric, what are you about to do?”

“Shh…” he whispered, just holding me.

I stopped struggling, allowing him to just hold me. It was what he did, what he always did. He held onto me as if he were worried I would never forgive him for whatever he was about to do, but I always did. No matter what, I always would.

We sat there, wrapped in each other’s arms, and I felt sixteen again. I felt like that same loud mouth, know it all, rash, love-struck teenager who saw her prince charming and went weak at the knees the moment he looked my way.

“What?” he asked, as I smiled to myself.

“Nothing,” I said, and in one swift motion, he flipped me onto my back and pinned me under him.

He glared into my eyes with a smirk on his lips. “Woman, what is so damn funny?”

“Man,” I lifted my head up to him, “I said nothing.”

“The hard way then…”

“Sedric, don’t…” before I could stop him, he ripped my shirt open. “Damn it all to hell, Sedric, that shirt was a gift.”

“My gift will be so much better.” He kissed my neck and with one hand, he ripped my bra from my chest.

“Really?” I dared him, crossing my arms over my chest, but the moment they covered my breasts, he pried them away.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he whispered, one of his hands wandering down the side of my arm, which were pinned over my head, until he reached my nipples. He played with them as he stared into my eyes.

“Sedric…”

“What better way can I show my wife I care, than to give her pleasure?” he whispered again, kissing my lips before trailing the side of my jaw. “Give us both pleasure.”

“Father, Liam wants…” Neal burst through the door before I could speak. “Jesus, mother fucking Christ of Nazareth, my eyes!”

I grabbed for a pillow, and Sedric reached for his gun in a fit of rage.

“What have I told you about knocking?” he roared, before firing a round at Neal’s head.

Neal ducked but it took off piece of the door. “SORRY…”

“Neal, I swear, if you don’t leave, I will skin you!” Sedric shouted, getting off the bed once I was covered.

Neal’s head dropped, and I tried really hard not to laugh. He looked like he did when he was a child and caught us doing the same thing.

“Liam said…”

“I don’t care what your brother said. I don’t care if the goddamn moon is falling out of the sky. Get out, boy!” he roared.

His throat was going to be sore in the morning.

“Father, I’d rather die at your hands than at Liam’s…or worse, Mel’s. Give me one second to tell you and then I will run faster than Forrest Gump.”

That did it, I couldn’t hold back from laughing, and Sedric glared at me, forcing me to place my hand over my mouth.

He stood in front of Neal, not that he could see since he was forcing his eyelids shut, and put a gun to his skull.

“Sedric…”

“You rather I kill you than Liam or Mel?” he asked, and I wanted to smack him over the head.

Neal smirked. “You would kill me quickly, and then mom will kick your ass. Liam and Mel would take a page out of George Bugs Morgan’s book, and hang me by my testicles with piano wire from a ceiling. Then burn my eyes out with cigarettes. Then maybe go after Olivia too, just for the heck off it. So yes, I fear them much more than I fear you, because they are bat shit crazy.”

Sedric’s jaw clenched.

“Neal, what is it?” I asked, before Sedric really did pull the trigger.

“Aviela DeRosa is in Chicago, and Liam thinks she’s related to gramps somehow. Gramps isn’t home yet, but we’re on lockdown. Which means…”

“I taught you the damn rules, I know what it fucking means, you dumbass!” Sedric snapped, pulling Neal by the ear just as he used to. “Out.” He pushed him out the door.

“Liam wants a family meeting…”

“Tell your brother that your mother and I are having our own meeting. With the grace of God, maybe we can have another child to replace you three knuckleheads!” he said, slamming the door in his face.

Another child? Who were we, Abraham and Sarah?

“Urgh! Really? As if I haven’t been scarred enough for one lifetime!” Neal’s muffled voice rang through the door.

“Pull up a chair at Declan’s therapy lessons and cry to them,” Sedric yelled back before falling onto our bed. “I knew that boy would forever cock-block me. I knew it from the first month he was home.”

Laughing, I kissed his back before lying next to him. He was right. Between all of our children, Neal was the only one who had ever caught us in the act. The others might have heard, but only Neal ever came in and killed our moment. He did it as an infant, he did it as a young boy, and even as a teen. And now, he did it as an adult.

“Remember, he is also the one who makes you laugh harder than the rest. Neal is the laugher. Declan, the quiet observer. Liam is…”

“A smart ass, controlling prick, with a God complex to rival my father’s,” he added, turning to look up at me and pushing the pillow away in order to see me.

I shook my head. “No, Liam is the thinker, the master chess player. It’s why you love him so much. It’s always a back and forth between you. But each one of them is like you. Neal radiates joy, the way you used to before this life; Declan reads like you, studies like you, listens like you. He enjoys the peace…”

“And then Liam, oh wise mother?” He smirked, kissing my hand.

I smacked his arm. “Liam is the tiny part of you that wishes to achieve greatness at all costs. Yes, he is a smart-ass, and yes, he is controlling. He may even have a God complex. But you see him and you see what you could never have become and you respect him for it. You and I both know if Liam were first born and never ill, Shamus would have tried to adopt him.”