A Bloody Kingdom (Ruthless People 4)

Sighing, I got off of her, helped her up and she kissed my lips softly. “I’ll be right back.”

She moved around me and towards Darcy’s nursery. He was only two years old and yet he was an expert at cock-blocking me. Taking out the cotton pajama bottoms she’d brought me, I changed and put my phone and wallet on the nightstand before following her into the nursery. Darcy was wide-awake. The grin on his face and the way his hazel greens were staring at his mother were contagious. Moving to them, I reached out for him and he stared at me before trying to grab my nose, as he always did.

I kissed his light brown fingertips, “You and I are going to have to work on your timing. Daddy was about to—Ahh.” Cora punched my side. “He can’t understand me.”

“You don’t know that.” She crossed her arms. “For all we know, Ethan is so much like Liam because you all kept talking about your work in front of him as a baby.”

“He’s like Liam because he’s like Liam. He could have been born deaf and still been the same way. He went on the job with Liam today—”

“He what? Does Melody know?”

“She does now.”

“That explains the poison,” she muttered, running her hands through Darcy’s thick curly hair. When he was first born, his hair looked almost blonde, even his skin was very light, but with each passing day, he got just a little more color to him. He was just as gorgeous as his mother and had her smile, too. Helen, our daughter, even though she was adopted, took after me. She was always breaking things and tearing them apart just to see how they worked.

“I heard Helen took apart your laptop?” I asked softly, trying not to smile.

She sighed as if she couldn’t even find the words to say.

“Baby, you look exhausted, go lie down. I got him.”

“But—”

“Father-son bonding time. Darcy, say night-night to mommy.” I held him with one arm and pushed her towards the door with the other

“I’m going. I’m going.” She laughed, kissing us both before leaving. When I sat down on the rocking chair with him on my chest, I couldn’t help but shake my head…what had happened to all of us?

The big bad Callahans, all at the mercy of their children. It was madness…

“Excuse you,” I said he when burped

…It was perfection.

However, I was nervous…the longer our peace lasted, the harder it would be if something happened and something was always happening with this family.

NEAL

I was married to the most beautiful wo

rkaholic in the world.

After peeking in on our kids, she all but ran back to our room and plopped down on the couch, her dress puffing up around her. She typed away on her laptop, with three different smartphones beside her. Over the years, I noticed she had a few habits. The first was her pink lips; whenever was excited or nervous, but trying to calm herself down, she would bite down on the corner of them. The second was her black hair, which she always tucked behind her ears when she wasn’t sure what do or say. The third was when she played with her engagement ring. Whenever she rolled the oval shaped diamond around her ring finger, she was trying to make herself confident. Like somehow that ring gave her the power to make it through everything.

Contrary to popular belief, Mina was a lot gentler than she seemed. It was easy to forget sometimes when she stood next to Melody, because of how tall she stood, especially at 5’6”. She directed and pushed Melody all of the time, not at all like…like Olivia. Olivia did it out of jealously. She’d wanted to be Melody. Instead, Mina wanted something as close to perfection out of everyone around her.

I did my best not to compare Mina and Olivia; they were like the sun and the moon. If someone asked me to make a list of their differences, it would take hours for me to explain. The most obvious difference was that Olivia was a blonde-haired blue-eyed Irish girl and Mina was of Korean decent. Even the sides of the beds they slept on were different. But the most important difference, the only one that mattered…was how happy I was now. When I was with Olivia, I thought I was happy. I thought our marriage was fine…it was only after meeting Mina did I realize that being fine was as good as being comatose. You’re alive, but there is no way it can be seen as living.

Liam and Melody.

Declan and Coraline.

Neither of their marriages was ever fine. The loved each other with a passion that was sometimes so intense I had to look away. Nothing else in the world mattered to them more than each other. Declan was ready to give up on our family. He begged my father, just so he could be with her. When she got cancer, I’d never seen a man so ready to be devastated. He stayed at her side and picked her off the ground every time she fell with a smile on his face because he was happy she was alive to at least fall.

Liam….he was so wrapped around Mel’s finger, I was sure he was permanently bent. He was the living, breathing definition of the term crazy in love. He had to be crazy, what other kind of man would allow his wife to make a habit of shooting him and still comfortably hold onto her? He went to and stayed in jail in the hopes that she would come back for him. He went to war for her.

Now I was the one completely taken over.

If she were sick, I too would fight for her.