Vicious Minds: Part 3 (Children of Vice 6)

He blinked slowly, confused. “Ma’am?”

“It’s always under the bed or the closet? Even in movies? Why? Her room is on the second floor. It has a fucking window. Isn’t it more logical to jump out of the window than to hide under the bed and cry?”

“Umm…I guess she was scared, ma’am.”

I shook my head. Ethan was right; they were fucking idiots. I sighed, trying to…trying to think of what to do with this clusterfuck!

“Where are their bodies?”

“Still in the house. The cops who were dispatched work for the family, and that house has a notice on it. Nothing has gotten leaked—”

“What about the dispatcher?”

“She’s being held in the boss’s office for now.”

My fist clenched. I wanted to scream! Are you fucking kidding me? Really are you fucking kidding me? This shit happened to me twice? Had I lost my kills fucking twice? What in the actual fuck?

“Now, what the fuck was I going to tell them? Sedric and Killian? Huh?” I snapped, glaring at him. “I geared them up for revenge, and now that was stolen from us.”

“Ma’am—”

“It was a rhetorical question. I don’t want an answer,” I muttered, rubbing the side of my head.

I knew it. Roman was weak; he’d always been weak. That was why his own parents couldn’t count on him. Fiorello must have broken him after what he had done with my mother. They brought him to heel, making him still work. Over the years, he must have been the one feeding us information on the Callahans. Fiorello, the paranoid son of bitch, made sure to send out messages or orders at least once a week. It was a reminder that he was still alive and we were still under his control. When he had died—when I’d killed him—the message had stopped. Roman must have realized Fiorello was dead. Then I was shot. But, Ethan assured the public I was doing well and recovering from his made-up Chicago Sniper. That pushed Roman into action—all the moments, pieces of the puzzle that fell from the sky like a surprise.

They pissed me the fuck off.

What kind of ending was this? The Orsini family didn’t die by my hands; they died under the pressure of their own vengeance.

How poetic.

How utterly useless to me.

“The police are probably all over the home, which means the neighbors have already seen them. Since it’s so early in the morning, the gossip has spread,” I muttered, thinking through a whole new plan. “The house is large and spaced out enough that I doubt anyone heard the gunshots. Were there any other 9-1-1 calls?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good, then we’ll say it was carbon monoxide poisoning, and the Neal Callahan was also in the house.”

“We’re doing what?”

I turned to find both Sedric and Killian, now dressed and waiting. Sedric was keenly aware of where we stood, whose blood stained this ground. Monk stepped forward, how cute, but I held up my hand to stop him.

“You stand on my father’s blood and plan on using him? Making up a story about him?” he hollered at me.

“Would you rather me tell the people of this city the truth? How does that help anyone?” I asked calmly.

“My father died as a hero to this family, you bitch!”

“So, did Coraline,” I replied, doing my best to keep from socking him in the face. I was not in the mood, and yet, I had to give him space to vent. Because that was all he would get, apparently. “Coraline died as a hero to this family. Your father and his father. Don’t you get it? There is no glory here. No one gets any medals or honors for dying in this family. They didn’t want any, either. They all died for the same thing—this family. So that this family could go on and survive.”

“Are we family, or are we all just pawns?” Killian asked, coming up beside me. “Why do we all die, so you and Ethan get to live? You don’t ever lose?”

“You don’t think we lost?” I asked him. “In the end, we all lost something. It may not have been mine and Ethan’s blood, but we lost.”

“Oh, please spare us how you are doing so much for the family in secret,” Sedric sneered at me. “We don’t know shit about that. All we know is that you and Ethan seem to get off while the rest of us suffer. Once again, under him, we lost family in this house because—”

“Because you all betrayed him!” I snapped, done playing the nice Mrs. Callahan. They were mourning, but there was a line.