“Sedric, no!” Killian grabbed me, pulling me back. Holding me as Nari kept crying like tears would undo this. As if tears would fix this!
“Nari, what is happening? What is wrong?” my mother asked, standing beside her.
“What is wrong? Yes, Nari! Tell Mom what is wrong! Tell her why she is a widow! Tell her why the fuck we won’t even have a body to bury! Tell her, Nari! Tell her!” I screamed, fighting against Killian’s body.
“Nari?” my mother questioned. “What does he mean?”
Again, with the tears.
Now sobs as she hung her head.
“Don’t hang your head! What happened to your balls, Nari? Huh? You always have to get the word in? Prove you are smart! Go ahead! Explain why you let that man in here!”
“It was a mistake!” she cried, running her hands through her hair. “Mommy, it was a mistake. He said…he said he just wanted to get Calliope back for what she did to their family. I thought—”
Slap!
The sound of my mother’s hand as it smacked Nari’s face was the only thing that slowed me down.
“You didn’t think?” she whispered, tears falling from her eyes.
“Mommy—”
“You didn’t think at all!” my mother hollered, smacking her over and over again. She grabbed her hair as she beat her as hard as she could.
Killian let go of me as we both ran to her, now holding her back. “Why would you believe him? Why would you believe he would only stop at her! Why! Nari, why?”
“Someone needed to stop her!” Nari, her face cut up now by our mother’s nails, cleaned her nose with her hands. “I thought someone needed to stop her. None of us could do
anything. Ethan kept protecting her. If her own family—”
“Ah! Ahh!” my mother just screamed.
Wrapping my arms around her, I hugged her tightly, muffling her cries into my chest, biting back my tears as she shook in rage.
We were all like that… I don’t know how long the crying and screaming went on until she finally gave in to her exhaustion in my arms. Slowly, I helped her from the floor and onto the bed. And just sat beside her.
Killian had left.
Nari sat on the floor. “Hated her. Calliope, I hate her. I tried not to. I thought I could deal with it, but she kept pushing me out over the last year. Making me feel like an outsider, telling me to go back to Korea and—”
“That’s your excuse?” I whispered back numbly. “She told you to go back and live with your husband, that’s why you forgot all the training, everything Dad thought us? And made such a stupid mistake?”
“I just wanted her gone—”
“Look how that worked out!” I bit my mouth shut, looking up to the ceiling. My chest felt like it was on fire. “Dad died because of your mistake, Nari. He died because of you!”
Did he even know it was her?
Was that why he had asked Calliope for that deal?
I thought back over the last twenty-four hours and remembered Calliope in the garage. She was the second to last to show up. Nana came last. Nari had come late because she was letting a killer into our house. Did he figure it out? Was it just a coincidence? I didn’t know. I’d never know because I couldn’t ask him. After all, he was dead.
My father was dead.
“I didn’t mean—”
“What you meant means nothing, Nari. No shit. Ethan’s daughter could have died. What do you think would have happened? Calliope found the video of you in less than fifteen minutes. Ethan could have found out, too! If their daughter had died, they would have killed you. If we stopped her, Ethan would have killed us all. Whatever you meant was going to kill this family.”