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“He’s with me.” I could only repeat because my throat still ached when I spoke.
“When you’re with us, you don't need anyone else,” the woman said and the man glanced down to my hand on his arm, telling me with his eyes to release him. I only held on tighter.
“I didn't say I was with you.”
“That doesn't save him; it just means you die with him,” he countered.
“And here I thought the mafia honored loyalty—”
“Only until it comes against self-preservation,” she said, walking over to us. “He's old; what you need to do is beyond him. He can't protect you anymore—”
“I'll protect him, then! He's family! MY FAMILY. SO PUT DOWN THE FUCKING GUN!”
“Yell at my wife again and I’ll shove this gun down your throat first,” he snapped, the barrel of gun pointed at me.
“Go ahead, then. You’re the ones who have wasted your time. Or does the mafia go around saving bitch-ass princes in towers for free, now?” I snapped back.
There was silence.
They glanced at each other for moment and when the man took his hand off the trigger, I finally let him go.
“Fine, he lives. But if you want to win this fight, you’re going to have to leave him, your morality, and any sort of compassion left in you, behind,” he said, staring me the eye. “You'll never take the throne with how weak you are now. Abandon him and everything else and we'll make sure you’re stronger than even you thought was possible.”
“Why does it sound like I'm selling my soul?”
“What good is a soul when you’re not even free to live in a shitty apartment in West London,” she stated, waving her arms around the hellhole I'd been calling a home. “Do you want this or do you want Monaco? If so, there is a price. That is how your stepmother took it out of your family’s hands to begin with. You can only beat evil with a greater evil. So, I will ask you once and only once: do you want to rule or do you want to die in this shitty apartment?”
I didn't have to think about it which said a lot more about me than I was willing to admit aloud yet. “My humanity never helped me, anyway.”
“Then let us introduce ourselves,” the man said and outstretched his hand. I outstretched mine but instead of taking it, he balled his own hand into a fist, pulled it back, and punched me in the face so hard I felt blood pool in my mouth, and stumbled back. “I'm Liam, the beautiful woman standing behind me is my wife Melody. You can call us Mr. and Mrs. Callahan until you earn the right to call us by our first names. It’s an impossible goal, but you should still put in the effort. Now pack. We have less than a year to break and remake you.”
Callahan. I knew that name. But I wasn’t sure where from… All I knew was I’d asked for help from God and two devils had walked in, instead.
GABRIEL - NOW
“Liam,” Melody’s smooth voice spoke up from behind me but it wasn’t harsh like it normal was; it was softer now, gentle. “He’s already been interrogated by our sons. We don’t want him to secretly hate her, now do we?”
He frowned, showing the lines on his face. “Would it kill you to let me have fun, too?”
“I’m already dead, baby, didn’t you hear?” she replied, causing him to snicker before focusing back on me.
Rising from my chair as he rose from the ground, I didn’t back down from him. “I never want to see or hear from either of you ever again. Your version of events never happened. You hold no power over me and if you think you can use me to do anything, I will tell her that neither of you is rotting away at the Callahan cemetery.”
“You’ll die before you can even open your mouth,” he responded and once again I saw where Ethan got it from.
“Maybe,” I grinned, too… I wasn’t the same man they had met back then. They’d made me into one of them. Now I knew the Callahan family rules. My favorite was Rule #2 take no prisoners and have no regrets about it. I disagreed with it. Prisoner make great leverage. “Maybe you’ll kill me before I can out you… But I’ll make damn sure to take your daughter to the grave with me.”
The smile on his face dropped as he glared at me, “Watch yourself—”
“Better yet, you watch yourself,” I sneered back. “There is a saying… Even the devil loves his kids? Your daughter…your only daughter… Has now invested her whole life and ambitions in me. She’s ripped herself from everything knows and cares about… Kill me, you shatter that.”
“Are you hiding behind my daughter?” His jaw cracked to the side. “She’s isn’t that weak—”
“Not yet…But what happens if I make sure she loves me so deeply, so insanely, that if I die, she’ll want to die too? Luckily, she knows that type of love from watching you two. And we both have something to bond over?
?parents who left scars. So, you go ahead, the best time to pull that trigger is now…Liam…or should call you Dad?”
He huffed then snickered until he just laughed like the madman that he was, leaning back on the chair his wife sat in. The way he smiled, the way he stared, it put all of his children to shame… The real devil of devils, the true Mad Hatter of Chicago.
