Children of Vice (Children of Vice 1)

“That’s what makes her so…” My aunt Mina drifted off when she looked at me. “Perfect for you.”

“Nice save.” Uncle Neal snickered and shifted forward, placing his elbows on the table, stroking his beard as he eyed me carefully.

“Yes?”

“Out of all the women in the world you found one who’s crazy enough to put up with you, and cold enough to make your mother proud. On top of that a looker. Call me crazy, but it seems like one hell of a coincidence, especially since your father didn’t believe in them.”

“Luckily I’m not my father.” Something I’d been repeating for far too damn long.

“Neal, did you think of all that on your own?” Uncle Declan gasped in mock shock, applauding him.

Uncle Neal reached for the silverware and would have stabbed him had Aunt Mina not grabbed his arm and Aunt Cora already smacked Uncle Declan…I’d seen this clown act almost as many times as people compared me to my father.

“Didn’t you know?” Donatella cut a glass of wine at her lips. Her face was expressionless, her voice almost numb. “She came from prison…I’m sure seven years will mess with a girl. As for being pretty, Nari helped with that.”

“Prison?” Uncle Declan’s voice became serious. However, I ignored him and focused on Dona.

“What mess is she, Dona?” I asked. “I don’t see anything wrong with her. Am I a mess also?”

Aunt Cora grabbed her arm, squeezing it, trying to warn her to drop it, but Dona being Dona could never back down.

“Yes. All of us are a fucking mess!” She snapped.

“Here we go.” Aunt Cora sighed, taking her napkin and putting it on her plate. Dinner was over…it was almost midnight anyway.

“Look at us! We’re having a wedding dinner inside a hospital room, our grandmother’s hospital room, laughing it up as she’s drugged up—”

“You’d rather we laugh while she was in pain?” I pushed back.

“Goddamn it, Ethan!” she hollered right be

fore rising to her feet. “Uggh, forget it! Forget all of it. I’m heading home—”

“SIT DOWN!” I roared at her. I’d only yelled at her one time in all of my life, and so she jumped slightly. “SIT! Or you’ll make everyone question if I really am your brother.”

Fist clenched, she sat back into her seat.

“Listen, and listen well, because if I have to repeat this someone will get hurt,” I said through my teeth. “Ivy is now my wife. You insult her, you insult me. I do not stand for insult from anyone, blood or not. You will respect her; you will not treat her like she’d a goddamn alien for saying every fucking thing you all think. I have far too much shit already on my plate to start getting on your emotional roller coaster, Donatella. If you want to be pissed, be pissed in silence. If you want to judge...” I looked at Wyatt. “Judge in fucking silence. Because if I see it, I’ll answer Grandmother’s last question to me…would I hurt family? Didn’t Father answer that question already? It is wife first, family second, clan third. Remember that order.”

Rising to my feet, I walked over to my aunt Cora, placing my hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you for dinner and everything else,” I said to her before heading toward the door, glancing one last time at my grandmother, who slept silently.

In the morning she’d be gone. Uncle Declan and Aunt Cora would stay with her in Ireland. I hated goodbyes. She knew that. She’d understand.

IVY

Sitting on the bathroom counter, I looked at my hands…thin gold band that sat next to the diamond…I was married just like that. Reaching for the letter in my purse, the one from his mother, I smiled. She had horrible handwriting…just like me.

“Melody wrote God only knows how many letters to her kids before she died,” Nari said softly as she came into the bathroom. “I got one the day I gave birth. It was my only ever letter from her.” She thought back, leaning against the sink next to me. “She really knows how to gut people and empower them at the same time.”

“You really look up to her.”

“Yea,” she said as if it were obvious. “She changed everything. Before, the Callahan women were just pretty accessories on their husbands’ arms. The daughters like prizes to close families. That seems so…it’s all medieval, but that was the tradition.”

“And in the post-Melody era?”

She giggled at that. “We’re still accessories, but we are…like one of those gadgets in a James Bond film. On the outside we look like a lipstick, but really we’re a bomb. We have the ability to do things they can’t and because of that a lot more women are now a part of everything or at least from what I hear.”