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Vicious Minds: Part 3 (Children of Vice 6)

Page 39

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“How could I use you as bait?” he asked, sitting farther from us, wavering between blazing rage and calm anger. “I can see it in your eyes, that’s what you want to ask. I don’t know how many times I have to say it to be clear. I will use anyone or anything to make sure this family thrives. I used myself as bait, my wife as bait, anyone. Why? Because you taught me that nothing else matters but surviving.”

“And you thought the best way to do that was to throw assassins at us?” I nearly screamed. Was my child insane?

“Who can survive without sacrifice? Was I supposed to fight them myself? Who was going to run the business? Who was going to keep up appearances and give recycled, shitty speeches to money-hungry, dimwitted, arrogant pigs in fancy museums? Who was going to make sure the rest of this family didn’t shoot themselves in the face, or poison one another over things they barely understood?” he shouted that last part over at Wyatt. For some reason, he wasn’t as pissed with us as he was his brother even though he refused to let us off, either. “How do you expect me to do all of that and go fight off killers every day? Maybe I could figure it out if you all weren’t on my back. If you had just sat at a beach somewhere quietly. But you didn’t, so Calliope and I needed a plan.”

I thought back on how we had gotten here. How I knew what she was doing. “She let us see the files and text messages she was sending,” I whispered.

“We let you see everything.”

“And you used Aunt Cora—”

“Say Aunt Cora one more time, Wyatt, and I will stab you, too,” Ethan snapped again at his brother, and each time he did, each time they both went after each other, I just remembered how they use to be as kids, sitting together at their desk. Ethan showing Wyatt how to write…what happened? “I did not know about Aunt Cora at the time. I merely trusted my wife. And guess what? I was right to. Because the next morning, she showed me why. She did not tell me first because Aunt Cora wanted no one to know. No one. She did not want treatment again. Her cancer had spread into her lungs and even her brain. She wasn’t going to make it until Christmas. Don’t you think it

was weird when we later told the world she died of cancer, not one of her doctors in this hospital, where she spent so much time, came to you ask why she didn’t get treatment?”

Wyatt looked away, blinking slowly. His mouth opened and closed a few times. “I spoke to them.”

“Did any of them tell you she didn’t have cancer?”

He didn’t reply; he shook his head. Ethan was on a roll it seemed…and clearly in pain.

“And you, Melody, what do you know of Calliope? What else made you hate her so much that you couldn’t trust me?” he asked me. “What has she done that you haven’t done? You sacrifice for me, right?”

“Are you saying I didn’t?”

“I will never doubt that you did,” he replied gently, his face dropping. “Let me tell you about Calliope since you think you know her, but you don’t. It took me years to piece it all together. I had to be patient; I couldn’t just shoot.”

“Will you get on with it?” Liam grumbled, sitting up from the floor, holding his side. I looked at him, and he frowned. “What? My ass is getting numb. And why am I always the one getting injured nowadays?”

I looked away from him to Ethan, whose eyes were now closed. “Ethan, go on.”

“Are you sure? Because if Liam has any other remarks, I think he should get it in now, for the sake of his ass.”

Liam’s eyebrow raised, and he turned back to me. When I didn’t say anything, he looked back at his son. “Hey, little asshole, just because I’ve been quiet does not mean I agree with you. Or your methods.”

“For the tenth millionth fucking time, I do not give damn if you agree with them because you are technically dead. It is me who leads, not you! Once upon a time, you were the great Liam, the Mad Hatter, now you are an old man in a morgue with a soft ass.”

“I’m going to hurt him,” Liam whispered to me.

“Careful, I do not think Wyatt does hip replacements,” he shot back.

I snickered.

“You think this is funny.”

He is the one who started it.

“What don’t you—”

I was cut off by the ringing of his phone. The moment he saw it, he got up, his bloody hand shaking once more.

“If you all had just fucking trusted me. Trusted that I wasn’t a fool. Trusted that I did not need you to protect me, my wife was doing that already; maybe I could have done this differently,” he muttered, moving to the door.

“Ethan, wait—”

“No, I can’t wait, my daughter needs me. Why? She is in tears because she woke up and heard the news that someone tried to murder her mother. Now she is having a breakdown. What a beautiful gift from her grandparents. Oh right, the other thing you didn’t figure out,” he snapped at me and pointed to the dead body of Fiorello. “That man—no pig—wasn’t Calliope’s grandfather.”

“I know she isn’t blood-related to him because her mother was—”



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