Vicious Minds (Children of Vice 4)

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that.

“What?”

“My sister can always be upset with someone else. It’s her gift.”

She chuckled too. “Well, she won’t be angry enough to want to go off the edge and that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I conceded, now sure of what I was going to have to do. “I’m going to have to let my enemies grow. They will think they’ve somehow gotten the slip on me, over and over again. Meanwhile, as they grow they crush the small idiots below them and make themselves my singular targets, which can be chopped down at a single command.”

“That will make you look weak.”

“Good, the weaker I look, the more concern my parents will have. The more they will want to right my ship. My father had this saying…even when I am losing, I am winning. So I will lose. I will lose over and over again. I will take the hits, and then all those losses will put me at such a high risk, such a danger, they will need to step in.”

“And then il Triste Mietitore will drag their souls back to the underworld so they will kneel before Hades and beg forgiveness,” she said with a raspy voice as if she were trying to cast a spell.

I couldn’t hold back my laugh. “You do know that il Triste Mietitore is Italian and the gods in the myth you are using are Greek and not Roman, right?”

“Don’t go there.”

“It kills you to admit the Greek gods are better.” Italians were such prideful people.

“You just had to go there. I never said that.” She opened her mouth to make an excuse but couldn’t. I laughed again. “The Roman myths are very…complicated. They are too serious for this conversation.”

“Yes, this conversation of family, drama, plots, murder, and betrayals?” I asked.

“Damn it, Ethan…whose side are you on?”

“Thor’s.”

She laughed so hard she snorted and then tried to be serious again. “That’s Viking!”

“We Irish have Viking in us, where do you think the love of drinking in pubs and clashing cups comes from?”

“You’re so fucking annoying,” she grumbled, using my hand as pillow, and I kissed her cheek, making her blush.

I loved her. This was the most fun I’d had in months…since the last time I was with her. She was, just as her name claimed, my muse. My dark and deadly muse.

“La mia anima, why is your name Greek?”

“Don’t make me hurt you.” She took off her shirt, and then her bra turning over to look at me. “Unless you’re asking to be hurt right now.”

Now I was the one speechless.

Chapter 11

“Naked I came from my mother's womb,

And naked I shall return there.

The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.”

* * *

~Job 1:21

ETHAN - AGE 24

Chicago, Illinois