He was right. I hated to admit it, and I’d never in my life say it aloud, but Evelyn was in many ways both a grandmother and mother figure to him.
“Okay. What is more precious to him than his siblings and his grandmother—”
“You.” He said without thinking about it.
I froze.
His green eyes were on mine as he thought about what he just said. He cracked his head to the side. “The most precious thing to Ethan was you.”
“Was?” My eyebrow rose at that.
“His child might have you beat,” he frowned even though his comment was meant to be humorous. “After your death, Ethan closed up. He was cold and hard, and I thought he was doing that to put on a brave face. But what if Ethan knew you were alive?”
“Well after going to Wyatt in the hospital, he knows now. But before then how? We’ve been careful, beyond careful. How could he have known?”
He shook his head. “But what if your previous point was right, what if he was pretending to be weak, allowing his enemies to grow, taking the hard road, what if all of this has just been a plan so he could draw you out.”
I swallowed the grape in my mouth trying to ignore the tightness I felt in my chest. “If that was his plan he’s failed twice now. Once in Boston when he was hurt, and in Chicago when we saw Wyatt...”
“Both times he was distracted. First he was nearly dying, then he thought his brother was gone,” he reminded me, and I still couldn’t wrap around my head it.
“Fine. Let’s say Ethan did all of this to bring his siblings back home, and to bring us, I’m not sure why you are pretending as if he is only attached to me, he’s always wanted to live up to you…nevertheless, let’s say he did this all to catch us. What next? And how does this Calliope come into play?”
Again, he shrugged. “Maybe the simplest answer is he made one mistake, instead of several mistakes, or maybe she trapped him as part of her plan to become Mrs. Callahan?”
“That doesn’t sound like our son,” I said, getting up and standing in front of the screen beside him. “But I can’t make sense of her or see how she fits in yet. All
I know is I do not trust the Orsini family.”
He turned to me, frowning “They were loyal to your family—”
“They were loyal to the Giovanni family. My name is Melody Callahan. My son’s name is Callahan, and you better than anyone else must know how badly they hate the Callahan family. Your father brutally murdered Fiorello’s sons, two of them, and the Giovanni family, the family they were loyal to, ignored their rage and married their enemies. The Giovanni family betrayed them. Why would they be loyal?”
“So, she’s using him?” He questioned seriously now, and I knew the that look in his eyes. We’d been here many times.
“Maybe or they are both using each other.” I looking between the both of them on the screen.
“They have child together,” His voice was gravelly. “You think Ethan would use her to this degree and then just kill the mother of his child? Leave her without her mother?”
“He learned from us, didn’t he?” Didn’t I leave him when he was young? Maybe history isn’t linear, but circular. We are doomed to repeat it.
“There is a line, Melody. If all of this is true, if he’s using anything, even family, to get what he wants then…”
“He’s ruthless and upset and no one is safe.”
Not even us.
And maybe this was why, deep down, I always knew I had to focus on Donatella and Wyatt more, why I just knew I had to protect them. Why I made sure Donatella had her own place to grow and command. Why I made sure Wyatt knew he had my love and wanted him to focus more on having fun, watching out for his brother, then actually ruling…it was all because deep down, I knew out of the seven capital vices, the seven deadly sins, Ethan embodied six of them; pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath. They spun in Ethan like a wheel and were the reason he moved forward. That wheel cannot be stopped unless something of an equal or greater force stops it. Had Donatella or Wyatt tried, they would have been crushed underneath him.
So now his wheel was at wrath and his fury was directed at me…at us for leaving him, and instead of being happy we were alive, he wanted to punish us for living.
“What if we give him what he wants and go see him?” Liam asked, and I had a feeling he was thinking exactly what I was thinking.
“It would only make him even more furious, and he’d kill us in anger.” If he’d gone through this much to see us, he wanted it on his terms.
“So what do we do?” He crossed his arms and studied me.
“We avoid him. Hopefully having a daughter will make him let us go.”