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“Mr. Doers, I thought you would have been on a plane by now.” I extended my hand towards him, but he did not take it. Instead, he looked around the Oval Office as if he were picking out something he wanted to take with him.
He ran his hand over the blue vase and then checked for dust. “How are you liking your office, Mr. President?” he asked as he moved to the couches and took a seat. Undoing his jacket button, he crossed his legs and faced me.
“It’s growing on me.”
He nodded before he got back up. “Well, it was nice speaking with you.”
“Wait, you came all this way to ask me how I’m liking the Oval Office?” Of all the things we should have been discussing right about now, that had to have been the lowest on the list.
He paused. “No. I simply wanted to see the monkey dressed in a suit who thought he could give me orders.”
“Excuse me?” He had crossed the line. “It’s time you fell in line—”
“Or what? You’ll call your sugar-daddies on me?” he snickered. “This house, hell this damn country, may be under the impression that you run things, but we both know that you are not even capable of thinking for yourself. You aren’t going to fire me, and not because you do not want to give into terrorists but because you’ve been ordered not to. You are a monkey in suit who does not deserve this office and the trust of the people who serve you. I have dedicated my life to ensuring that the filth remains on the street and out of this house, out of this government, yet here you are, swimming in it and stinking up the place. I’m going to destroy your people, and then you’re going to fade away as the worst president in history. I only came here today to get the mental before-picture.”
Enough. I’d had enough of these goddamn people talking to me as though I were a fucking child.
“I am the President of the goddamn country and you work for me, Director Doers. Whatever war you started with the Callahans needs to end. Kiss the damn ring and move on. People are dying—”
“I do not give a damn about the people,” he said emotionlessly. “I care about order, about balance, about the damn republic. Melody and Liam Callahan are not gods. They are men, men who should not be able to have the world turning at their feet. Somehow these young, reckless, hubris children have gone from selling crack off the streets to having the President of the United States in their back pocket. You think I started a war? A war was going to come no matter what. The Callahans won’t stop; they do not understand their place in the world, and the stronger they become, the more they forget that they too can bleed. A lesson I have just now started to impart on you.”
It clicked in my mind so quickly that my face dropped in shock.
“You killed Sedric Callahan.”
Again, he looked unfazed. It was as though the man had no emotion within him at all. I was staring at a shell of a man…at a dark figure…at death.
“I’m restoring order, and I shall not stop until they are gone…down to that little half-cast child of theirs.” Moving over to the vase again, he picked it up and allowed it shatter against the floor.
“By the way, you might want to ask them about what happened to your daughter,” he said as he wiped his hands and turned to leave. He opened the door and there stood Mina. She glanced up at him and immediately backed up out of his way.
“Get me in touch with Olivia, now,” I snapped at her.
She nodded already dialing.
It rang.
And rang.
And fucking rang.
It was all I could hear in the background of my mind as I tried to remember the last time I had spoken to her.
THIRTY
“I'm a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I'm no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won't hit back.
You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.”
—Muhammad Ali
MELODY
“BREAKING NEWS: It is with great sadness that we report to you that the kidnapped FBI Agent, Rebecca Pierce, has been killed. Her dismembered head was discovered at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial statue by two passersby who immediately alerted the authorities. The rest of her body has yet been to be found. The FBI is now attempting to go through surveillance footage for any possible leads, however it seems that all cameras in and around the area had been disabled at the time of the event. How could this possibly happen? Now with our senior analysis…”
I stared at the television not really listening to the gibberish and fake sympathy that poured from the reporter’s lips. Turning away from it, I watched as Liam walked into my closet and flipped over the rack of my clothes to get to my secret stash of guns. He placed two of them at his back and slipped a knife into his shoe. I wasn't one hundred percent on board with his plan. However, I was going to have to give him this.
We’d arrived back in D.C. this morning, with Neal and Declan. Fedel and Kain had stayed behind in Chicago with Coraline, Evelyn, and Ethan.
Evelyn had spent most of her days in bed, or organizing things. She had been the hardest one to convince to move into the safe house. I had them all underground, and none of them were coming out until this was over. Liam had Fedel replicate Evelyn’s room in the safe house.
Our house in Washington had become a command center. All the furniture had been pushed aside to make room for computers and guns. Declan, Neal, and Liam were all itching for blood. And ironically, I was the only one reining them in from basically setting the East Coast on fire.
Placing the brass knuckles in his pocket, Liam put his hat on his head as he stepped forward.
Pulling me to him, he kissed me hard with his hands on my waist and cheek. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back before I pulled away. He did this now, every time we were splitting up for a few hours; he would kiss me as though it were the last time we would ever see each other. I hated it and loved it, all at the same time.
“Have fun at lunch,” I said to him as he moved around me and out the door.
“I plan on it,” he replied.
Shaking my head, I grabbed a pair of pearls and black pumps. Stepping out into the living room where Declan had set up four computers, I looked over the screens. All of them contained lines and lines of coding. He had been there for the last five hours, and though he was dressed well, the bags under his eyes proved how he was dealing with things.
I understood how they felt, but I was starting to grow tired of mothering them. Heading to the kitchen, I grabbed an apple, a pre-made sandwich, and a bottle of water before I walked over and handed it to Declan. As he looked up at me, my phone beeped, notifying me that my car was here.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m not burying another one of you, nor do I want you to fuck up my plan. Let’s go.”
Rolling his eyes, he grabbed the sandwich and followed me out the front door. “I have the list and the photos. When do you want to release this?”
“Let’s wait until Liam and Neal return,” I replied.
I glared at the driver as Declan sat up front beside him. I disliked switching people even though they were in-house.
Note to self: visit Monte.
The streets passed by in a blur of colors, and as I leaned back, I thought about how I had spent the last few days hacking and rerouting IP address across three different continents, just so I could go through FBI files and find every undercover cop and informant across the country. All of their photos, old and new, had been compiled into a three part video that Rsamas would be releasing tonight. And by tomorrow morning, there would be blood flowing through the streets.
