He passed out either from the pain or fear…maybe both.
When I rose back onto my feet I looked around at the neighborhood, and of course there were more than a few people, all of them staring at me.
“GRANDPAPA!”
Rotating back toward the shattered store, looking through the broken glass door, I watched as Gabby, just as Ivy had done for Ethan, crouched down beside her grandfather crying, holding on to him. Rushing back to him, he grinned up at me.
“G...ood…thing…I drank…the wine…huh?” He laughed and coughed up blood.
“GRANDPAPA! GRANDPAPA!” Gabby screamed, shaking his arm, looking up at me. “HELP HIM!”
I couldn’t. There was nothing that could be done.
He knew that and just kept smiling at me, hugging her with one hand while he reached up for me with the other. Kneeling down, I took it.
“Your brother…Il bur…attinaio…” He laughed, and then he was gone.
Your brother, the puppet master… His words seeped into my mind like poison and I stared down at his blood…as it crept over the black and white checkered floor.
No.
Slowly rising from the ground, I just watched the blood as it rolled over the ground toward my feet. Gabby’s sobbing was fading into the background as I tried to deny this feeling coming over me.
He didn’t plan this.
Not with Gabby.
Not with Ivy…no.
But then I thought about how I had everything I needed to save his life.
How everything was so tightly cleaned up. How he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Boston was on its knees.
The Finnegan brothers…were dead or dying.
And me… I glanced up into the fractured mirror, staring at myself, dressed in a blood-covered suit, looking just like…Father.
And the longer I stared, the longer I started to see those strings, over me, and those strings turned into a web. I thought I’d escaped. I thought I’d become a better person. I thought it was Chicago that brought out the worst in me…But this time…I chose to let people die. I chose to wear the suit. I chose the go after Elroy. I chose family.
I chose family because I could never not choose family.
Ringggg.
Pulling out my phone, I saw his name on the screen. Hesitating for a moment before answering, I put the phone to my ear but couldn’t speak.
“Ask me,” his deep voice said on the other line.
“Is this all a game to you?”
“That isn’t the question you want to ask.”
“Fine. Did you plan this?” I asked him in Irish so Gabby wouldn’t hear.
“Yes. Do you really think I left my city, my home, to chase after a pair of senseless, undisciplined, wannabe Whiteys? If I wanted them dead, they could have been dead in a second. I could have had them all packed, shipped, and delivered to Chicago to let Ivy have her revenge there. If I wanted Boston to be torn to pieces, it could be done overnight with or without me here. This is a fucking game, Wyatt. It’s called the survival game and there are no rules. There are no take backs or time-outs. You do whatever you need to do to win by the widest margin.”
“All of it? Ivy—”
“Between my wife and me…the only one with a secret was Ivy.” Her pregnancy…he didn’t plan for that. Which meant Ivy still went along because she wanted him to win.
“I told her the truth.” He went on. “I told her everything and because she understood the importance of having all of us united, she took the bullets for the both of us. She hid the truth for the both of us. Family united cannot die. We survive because we all understand the game, and now you do too. Bring Elroy. We leave in the morning.”
With that he hung up.
And so there was the truth. His truth and mine. We were both monsters. He was the Ceann na Conairte because he was much more monstrous than me but that didn’t absolve me of anything.
I was born Wyatt Sedric Callahan.
Medical school didn’t change that.
Boston didn’t change that.
Nothing could change that.
EPILOGUE
“I'm asking, what's your vice and what brand of trouble does it lead to?”
~ Neal Stephenson
IVY
“A new dawn has risen over Boston, but sadly the dark cloud that hung over the city still lingers as many residents in Southie awoke to find the head of Cillian Finnegan, the dealer behind the infamous drug commonly known as the Cocktail, hanging over Old Northern Avenue Bridge. The BPD currently have no leads as to who committed this heinous act nor how the perpetrator was able to get into the coroner’s office undetected. We reached out to the mayor for comments only to be told that the mayor Toma Takahashi has resigned and can no longer be reached for comments. Leaving many of us wondering what now? Are we safe or not?”
“Safe…for now,” I whispered to myself as I lay on the bed inside the jet. My slinged arm was resting on my stomach as I looked up at the ceiling.
I heard the door open but didn’t move.
“You still asleep?”
“Nope,” I whispered, feeling the shift on the bed.
He lay down next to me, groaning. “Walking was a bad idea.”
I giggled, titling my head to the side to look at him, but he just kept his eyes closed. “Did he get on the plane?”
I’d fallen asleep and next thing I knew I was here. I heard his voice talking outside, so I knew where I was, just not what was going on.
“He’s quiet. I think he’s in shock, but he’s here,” he muttered, inhaling deeply, his chest rising as he exhaled.
“What did you tell him?”
He turned his head to me, his eyelids lifting, allowing me to see those striking green eyes of his. “The truth, some half-truths, and a few lies. He’ll be warier of you now…everyone will.”
“I’m on my way to being legendary.”
“Only if you swear never to hide anything from me again,” he whispered, and I knew he’d bring it up at least once.
I nodded. “I swear.”
“Good.” He leaned over, taking my hand and bringing it up to his lips, kissing the back of it. “No one will ever forget the day we came to town.”
No. They wouldn’t.
I tried to think over everything that had happened in the last thirty-five days. But it only left my head spinning. The fact that he could think so far ahead was scary. Everything seemed to line up perfectly except…
“There was no medical kit in Wyatt’s ambulance. Who was the doctor who gave me…” My voice trailed off when I looked at him again, watching his chest rise and fall gently as he slept. He really did look so innocent when he did that…
No one would guess he, a man so prideful he walked like a king, would be willing to take a bullet for no other reasons than to let his wife get closure, teach his baby brother a lesson, and let his little sister taste the little bit of power he believed she needed in order to move forward. What he meant by that? I wasn’t sure. But to say everything went smoothly would be a lie. It wasn’t easy. Seeing him so hurt scared me.
Ethan put everyone in his family first.
Which was why I put his plan first.
A big part of me regretted that choice.
However, the other part of me…wanted him to know I put him first. That I was his and I wouldn’t back down from anything. It was the two of us, Ethan and Ivy’s world. People needed to get used to that. I’d never be useless to him. For as long as we both lived I’d protect him too.
ETHAN
I never thought I’d miss wind as much as I did when I stepped out of the jet.
“Welcome back, big brother.” Donatella stood in front of the Ranger dressed in a white pantsuit, with no shirt inside, sunglasses over her face, though there was no sun. The day was overcast. Beside her, Toby, his face hard, void of any emotion, and beside him, Savino Moretti and a few more Italians.
“This doesn’t feel like a welcome, little sis
ter.”
“You’re right, big brother.” She smirked, taking off her glasses, staring at me with the same green eyes. “I believe the correct word for it would be a coup d’etat.”
“The correct word for it would be a betrayal,” I said to her.
Tobias handed her a gun, which she pointed right at me. “Let’s call it betrayal then.”
It was in that moment I remembered the story she’d written all those years ago.
“Et tu, Dona?” Melody asked her daughter.
“Caesar must fall, Mother,” her daughter said.
Backmatter Placeholders
J. J. McAvoy, Children of Vice
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