“Did they ask for you?” I cut her off and she froze for a second.
Getting her bearings back, she said, “They could be hurt.”
“No-one called you back home. Whatever is going on in Chicago, it is mafia related; you’re royalty now, that is not your fight.”
“My fight is my family’s fight—”
“I’m your family!” Again, she looked stunned and I pushed further. “When something bad happens to them - and it will, as violence is an occupational hazard of being in the damn mafia - will you go back each time? You still have your last name but when you stepped on this plane, you left the Callahan Family behind. Your family will survive without you. You have your brothers, uncles, cousins, half of Ireland. Whatever happened, your family will come out on top… I’m sure of it… But will you, Donatella, individually, be able to do the same if you go back? Nothing. You’re not their cheerleader, you’re my queen.”
She stood there staring at me with a mixture of horror and shock before blinking and taking a deep breath, glaring at me again, “We aren’t married yet. So I’m not your queen yet. So you can either move or be moved. The choice is yours, Gabriel.”
She was finally calm.
The coldness in her voice would have put Melody to shame. Opening the door, I let her step out first and when she did, she glanced over to the cockpit. Part of me, the part that enjoyed a little chaos, wanted her to walk towards it. But a much greater part of me was grateful when she turned, facing the aisle again. She’d almost returned back to our section when the long-lost daughter of Edward Scissorhands, Jackal, stepped in front of her. She placed her hand over the scarf around throat, swallowing hard before opening her mouth. The words would have been inaudible if not for the absolute silence in the cabin, every last person now facing her…
“Who?” Dona demanded.
SECOND EPILOGUE
“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
WYATT
“Anddddd… She’s gone…” Ivy spoke first, speaking as if she were baseball announcer, most likely to break the tension. However, I just kept watching the plane fade into the distance behind the clouds until I could barely see it in the distance.
“Don’t mope…” Ivy said, coming up beside me and linking arms. “After all, you still have me!”
Smirking, I shook my head, “Careful Ivy, if you hang around me long enough, you’ll realize I’m the better brother.”
Ethan snickered in actual amusement as if the sheer possibility of it was laughable. Before I could comment, he outstretched his hand to her.
She laughed to herself, letting go of my hand. In that spilt second, I saw a glint from the corner of my eye. The type of glint that meant only one thing…
“ETHAN—”
BANG!
Unable to move…unable to speak…the warmth of the blood splattering right across my face…
No!
The doctor me in me knew…just knew…that it was over…no one could have survived. And hearing the only word he screamed erupting through the air, sent chills down my spine to the point that I felt sick.
“IVY!” Dropping to his knees, he held on to her limp body, her blonde hair soaked in crimson blood; he pulled her into his arms like a broken doll looking up to me as he screamed “IVY!” He smacked her face a few times. “IVY! WAKE UP!” Angrily, he looked at me, “WYATT! WYATT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? HELP HER!”
I’d never seen him like this… My older brother didn’t panic, he didn’t lose his cool, and he never asked me to do the impossible.
“I can’t help the dead,” I whispered, my body still unable to move forward or back. I just kept staring into her lifeless blue eyes that were still open, blood pouring down her face. It felt as though the world had slowed down…No, frozen and I was stuck. And yet it hadn’t and I wasn’t. Our men were already all around us, their guns drawn, panning out to find… To find the person who’d just started what was going to be a very bloody war.
In the back of my mind I heard my mother’s voice, “Every last person we kill is for family. If we don’t kill them, they kill us. It is the way of the world. It is self-defense…”
Like always, my mother was right.
COMING SOON
Donatella’s role as the princess of the mafia is now over.