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My eyes snapped open as I realized what had happened.
No one had slipped anything in her food or drink.
She didn’t drink.
The poison was inside the cherries.
The antidote was in the mimosas or the pineapple. When she cursed my mother, I thought my mother had somehow disguised herself and come this morning. But that would be too risky, not with all of our men and a few of our family around. Not after what Calliope had done the last time they had come too close. No, she’d said, “Fucking Melody,” because the poison was from her Hawaiian mimosas.
Somehow, someone knew Calliope disliked pineapples and was sure she would not change the menu.
Glancing down at her trembling body, I exhaled deeply. Yes, we had miscalculated…we kept the rest of the family in the dark to keep them out of this. And now they were against us.
Fucking traitors.
WYATT
“How is she?” was the first thing Helen asked when I entered the room.
“She somehow figured it out and gave herself some antidote.”
“How?” she sneered, angrily throwing the washcloth in her hands into the water basin beside the bed before her head whipped back to me. Her brown eyes were furious, tired, and still full of grief.
Walking over, I put down my bag, kneeling in front of her. “Helen, sweetheart, I know you’re upset, but you can’t keep going like this.”
She pushed me away. “How am I supposed to keep going, Wyatt? How? Look at my father!”
I didn’t want to.
The man who now lay in bed beside her was not the uncle I knew. The uncle I knew was alert, always ready to give advice, to bust my balls—he was strong and lively. Not this broken man who lay in bed. He’d lost weight, refusing to eat most days. He’d nearly killed himself the first week after Aunt Cora had died. If not for Helen’s hovering over him, rushing into the bathroom when he didn’t reply, he wouldn’t have lived. Ever since then—for a year—she’d spent all her free time watching over him…and planning the downfall of Calliope Callahan.
“You can’t even look at him anymore,” she whispered, reaching over to grab the washcloth from the basin, using it to finish cleaning her father’s hands. “He’s here, suffering, and you went to check on that bitch.”
“What would you have me do, Helen?” It felt as though I were falling deeper and deeper into hell each and every day. “If I didn’t go to help, Ethan would figure it out. Then you would be the next one I lost. I can’t have that. If I have to keep her alive to save you, then I will for as long as it takes, but I need you to take a step back. Please, baby. Please.”
Her lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears again. “She killed my mother. My mom was kind to her, accepted her, and she trampled all over her like a doormat. She is evil, and I will kill her if it is the last thing I ever do.”
I swallowed hard. Rising up, I kissed Helen’s forehead. “I’ll be back. Okay? Don’t be stupid while I am gone.”
Helen didn’t say anything, and it only caused the fear inside of me to grow.
“Helen, for my sake, please, promise me.”
“For now. I won’t do anything. For now,” Helen muttered. “I need to think anyway.”
That was the best I was going to get, so I said nothing else, grabbing my work bag from the corner and stepping to the door. This…this was the shit I was talking about. Our great family had fallen to this—lies, backstabbing, betrayal, poison. I thought of all the lessons my parents had taught me as I walked out of the room and toward the garage. The way a family fell was when it was divided from the inside. And that was what Calliope had done to us. She had taken Ethan away from us with love, and then Aunt Coraline with hate, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces.
What in the hell could any of us do?
Fight back.
That was my instinct.
When someone attacks family, you fight them to the death.
But what was I supposed to do when I was fighting against my brother? My mother had done everything she could to make sure Ethan and I never ended up on opposite sides. And yet here we were, grabbing each other by the throat.
Was this truly how it was supposed to be?
