Vicious Minds (Children of Vice 4)

“I was trying not to draw attention today,” I told him.

“If you want to be a Callahan, you’ll need to get used to drawing attention.” He opened the door of the sleek black car for me. “The spotlight is sometimes the best place to handle people.”

I wanted to let him know why I didn’t want the attention, but I just let it go. He’d see soon enough.

* * *

ETHAN - AGE 23

Las Americas, Colombia

Monday, July 1st

I watched her give a wad of US hundred-dollar bills to the maid who, without even looking at her, handed her a hotel key. I had no idea why I was following her. It seems I said ‘I don’t know’ often when it came to this damn woman. Not only did I drive a fucking hour to get here, I had to do so as she blasted music and danced in front seat. Not once did she explain why she needed to come to this damn hotel or who she was meeting or why. Part of me really was expecting something related to my work…how fucking wrong I was. Outside of the cocaine on the table in the suite, this had nothing to do with work.

“Oh baby, are you ready to be punished—AH! Get the fuck out!” A Latino woman was dressed in leather dominatrix lingerie with a whip in her hands. Her brown eyes were wide and panicked.

“Baby?” The question came from an Italian man in some type of fetish slave bondage suit that also held on to his package. What the fuck?

“Who the fuck are you?” he hollered at us.

I looked to Calliope wondering what the fuck she was doing. She turned to the man and said, “I’m Calliope, Bellarose’s younger sister.”

She sounded so sweet, as if she were trying to sell him baked goods, however, the look on the guy’s face was pure horror and fear. Calliope turned to the woman.

“Did you know he was engaged, miss?”

The woman stared, opening her mouth and closing it again. She knew. Regaining herself, she crossed over arms over her fake breasts. “Engaged isn’t married, now is it? Tony and I are in love. I feel bad about your sister but—”

“Catalina!” The man, small dick Tony, yelled at her.

“Calliope, please—”

“Shut up, Tony.”

BANG!

I was so distracted by their…outfits that I hadn’t noticed Calliope had pulled a gun until she fired it at the man to the right of her beside the couch. She missed but was so close the man fell over.

“Tony—please,” the woman begged when Calliope pulled the gun on her. Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, please.”

“Prove it,” Calliope flipped the gun for the woman to take. “Kill him.”

“What?” The woman’s mouth dropped open.

“Aren’t you sorry?” Calliope asked, her voice still laced with that fake sweetness. The woman just nodded and Calliope offered her the gun again.

“I can’t,” she shook her head and the moment she did Calliope threw some white powder in her face causing her to scream out and stumble back.

“Catalina!”

“Tony, please don’t make me focus my attention on you,” Calliope warned with her back to him. He glanced towards the phone and then over to me, as if he was trying to figure out if I’d stop him before he could make it, while the woman cried at her feet.

“What did you do—?”

“Lusel,” Calliope answered.

What?