Children of Redemption (Children of Vice 3)

“I’m always happy.” I continued stretching.

“More like you’re always pretending to be happy,” she replied, stretching out her arms and exposing the small abs on her stomach.

“I knew this was coming.” I said, rising up off the mat and turning to her. “With Dona gone, you definitely need to find a rival for the strongest female in the land.”

“I’m hurt you think I need to fight for that,” she replied.

“I don’t think you do. You’ve lost and will always lose.” I moved over to the punching bag, flexing my hands.

She walked behind the punching bag, holding it steady. Looking at me, she glared. “You’re very good at pretending to be kind. You’re a bad person.”

I winked at her, pulling my fists up to my face and then throwing. I didn’t say anything else…I just punched and kicked and punched and kicked. Each time I did, I remembered everything I was risking, all the pain I was going to cause by being with him. But I couldn’t bring myself to care. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than care. Just like Newton, I was too excited about all the things I could be instead of being angry at myself.

“Why can’t I be the strongest female in the land?” Nari asked me when I paused, caught up in my own thoughts.

I looked to her, staring into her eyes as she held the bag. She almost looked like she was pouting. “Real question is, why would you want to be?”

“What?”

I stepped back and grabbed one of the water bottles on the table to the side of the gym. “When you are the strongest girl, everyone wants to test themselves against you. New people, old people, young people, males, females, everyone. You’d hate that, Nari. Everyone wants to be at the top, forgetting it’s very lonely there.”

“You don’t want to be the best? Isn’t that why you insist on calling yourself ‘Helen Badass Callahan’?”

“I’m a badass who appreciates that there are other badasses around me,” I replied before gulping down some water. Wiping my mouth, I saw her staring back at me, doubtful. “And I also understand nothing will ever change the order of this family.”

“Which is?”

“The wife of the Ceann Na Conairte.” Putting the water bottle down, I walked behind the punching bag, holding it for her. “Not even Donatella could change that, so fighting for that position is useless. I thought you understood that and chose to help Ivy.”

She walked in front of the bag, her fist clenching. “I chose to because I wanted to see what type of woman she was.”

“And?”

She punched the sand bag so hard I felt the vibrations throughout my body. “She was as weak as a newborn kitten…but she was growing.”

“Nevertheless, she was disappointing to you? You wanted to be able to look up to her, compete with her, stand beside with her, just like Dona. Not raise her to be better than

you. But what could you have done or said? She was the one Ethan chose. She was the wife of the Ceann Na Conairte, despite the fact that she wasn’t strong enough.”

This family didn’t give anyone time to be weak. No matter what our issues were, no matter how broken down we felt, we had to pick up the broken pieces of ourselves off the ground and keep moving forward, or else we’d die.

“We’re the black sheep,” she grumbled, punching forward again, not looking away. “The adopted ones. Callahans with an asterisk by our names. Since we were kids, we’ve had to work our asses off to prove that, even though we weren’t blood, we were just as good, just as strong. No one gave us a break for our weakness, but she just got to waltz right in and, weak or not, she was accepted. It wasn’t fair.”

“It is fair.”

“What?”

“She was murdered. So it’s fair. Her weakness got her killed.”

“What could she have done? It wasn’t like she made a mistake. It could have been any of us that day—”

“But it wasn’t,” I reminded her. “Somehow, we grew up with just as many people trying to hurt us, which is why we have always needed to be strong. She couldn’t last even three months. It’s fair. We are stronger, so we are here—and she is not. That seems like divine justice to me.”

“Don’t let Ethan hear you say that,” she warned, but the corner of her lips turned up. “We are both bad people, but I feel better.”

“Don’t. We might not be lucky next time. It’s the mafia. It isn’t supposed to be fair. It’s just supposed to be. And we may be black sheep, but black sheep are still sheep,” I reminded her, and she paused, looking around the bag, her eyebrow raising slightly. “Asterisk or not, our names are still Callahan. That’s better than other people.”

“You’re in a good mood today. What aren’t you telling me?”