Vicious Minds (Children of Vice 4)

“So you ate it?!” I felt anger this time, just like when I had come over from the club, furious at the risks she’d taken.

She nodded, obviously not understanding. “Yeah, if you haven’t noticed I’m very good with poisons. If I could taste what it was, I could make an antidote, but I can’t taste anything here.”

“Yeah, because it not poisoned!” I snapped at her.

“Why are yelling at me?” she yelled back, annoyed.

Taking a deep breath, I sat up straighter; “Calli did you forget you are pregnant? Do you know if our child is good with poisons, too?”

Her eyes widened, and she looked down at her stomach. She tried to speak but couldn’t or wouldn’t. Instead she just lifted her milkshake and sucked on the damn straw, acting innocent.

“Calli!”

“Yes, I forgot!” she hollered gripping the cup. “And even though I can’t see it yet, it’s stopping from drinking, making me puke in the morning, interfering with my work and our plans and making me get yelled at by you! For a split second while I worried over you, I forgot because you were making this pained expression —”

“I was making a pained expression because I realized in that moment that I really am in love with you! Pain which you do not help ease when you go and eat burgers you believe are poisoned in front of me!”

“Well you knew it wasn’t poisoned—”

“You didn’t! Which shows me you would do it if was actually poisoned, hence the pain!” I could not believe how angry I was right now but there was no denying it. I was angry at her for risking herself. I had been angry all night, I just didn’t realize this was the cause of it.

She held her hands up as if to tell me to stop. “You cannot tell me you love me and then get angry at me for a perceived risk I might be taking.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I want to punch you in the face instead of kissing you back and saying I love you too,” she said calmly, though the look in her eyes was not very loving. “The reason why I want to punch you in the face is because your anger is telling me to stop doing what I am doing, it is a risk you don’t like. Everything I do is a risk

. The logical progression to ease your anger is for me to stop doing what I am doing. I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I hadn’t thought that far but we did need to discuss this. She was having my child. She was mine. Our plans needed to change, she needed to come back with me—

“There.” She pointed her finger at my face. “That is the look of you putting a new plan together in your head. Let me guess, because of this baby, no more secret plans to trap your parents, no more wigs and secret identities for me. I come back with you in the morning as Mrs. Callahan.”

That was the next logical step.

“That is what you wanted, isn’t it? To be Mrs. Callahan?” Weeks ago, she was ready to kill me because I didn’t want to take her to Chicago and now she was pissed? What?

“Did you not tell me there was only one way to be with you?”

“Things changed—”

“Bullshit.” She frowned, placing her hands on the table. “I said I love you Ethan…which means I want you, which means I want you to want me too. If I go back with you, you lose what you so badly wanted, to defeat your parents, to stand on your own, to be the leader on your own. And you wouldn’t mean to, you would push it down, you would try to get over it or accept it, but you would resent me. I was supposed to help you with this one thing and I failed you. You would pull away from me.”

“Do not tell me what my actions and feelings will be—”

“Why? Because I’m right and it will put you in difficult position? Your goals and dreams of being your version of a reasonable Callahan man?” She stated the options as questions but they were too real, too true, to be just questions.

This is why I hated getting emotional, it threw off the course of my plans. A simple change in my heart rhythm and I was telling her I loved her and asking her to come back with me. I don’t know what I would have done before, and I couldn’t go back to that unknown space.

“What would you have me do, Calliope?” I asked honestly, and for the first time in my adult life, I was truly at a loss, with no plans. “Leave the woman I love while she is carrying my child, here in a hotel, and go back home as if nothing ever happened? Just keeping moving forward until I reach my goals?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip and clenched her fist. “I told you everything I do…I do for you…for us. That includes this child. Neither it nor I are going to die. We are both young, some would argue too young. However, we are different from them because we will adapt and survive no matter what. Why should I be at your side now? So you can protect me? I feel like your line of work is a little more dangerous than mine, shockingly. And I can protect myself very well.”

“You forget that child only stays in you for a few more months. Then what? It doesn’t have a father?”

“Ethan, look at me. Will this baby come out with red hair? Chances are very slim. You will be in this child’s life, you will be its father. We will both be there. I will let you know everything that happens with me and it. Everything. Use this time, use me, and one by one we can get rid of your enemies. We will make it safe, so we don’t end up having to leave when our child is sixteen.”

Right. I remembered that pain. Losing my mother. Not understanding how someone as strong as her could just die. Just leave me…leave us. It was cold and cruel and in many ways, it broke me so badly I wished I couldn’t remember her. I wished she had gone when I was child, so I wouldn’t have remembered so much of her.