Vicious Minds: Part 2 (Children of Vice 5)

“Mommy said you’d be sad because your church is broken, so we made sure you didn’t look, Daddy,” Gigi informed me instead.

“We were a few seconds late, but I think we got to him in time,” Calliope added, fixing her hat.

I looked between them before focusing my gaze on Calliope. She was the reason my church was in ruins to begin with. Now she was using our daughter to play on my emotions.

“What do you think, Gigi?” she asked. “Should we talk him to death on the way back?”

Gigi looked up to me. “But Daddy doesn’t like talking lots.”

“For you,” I tapped her nose. “I’ll talk until the sun goes down and back up again.”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she moved from her mother and leaned on me, hugged me, and yawned again.

“Oh no you don’t.” Calliope tried to poke her, but I brushed her hand away. “If she sleeps now, Ethan, she won’t sleep at night.”

She was right, but I still didn’t want to disturb her. “Kids need naps anyway.”

“Who naps at 8 a.m.?” she pressed back.

“Her, I guess,” I shrugged, brushing Gigi’s face. “Let her off the hook; after all, you wanted to use her to help cheer me up. Though how or why you would think I’d need it is still in question.”

“You looked a bit…sentimental,” she muttered before glancing out the window as we entered the west side of Chicago, the heart of historic Little Italy.

“You say sentimental like it’s a bad thing,” I shot back, though she was a bit off on her assumptions.

She didn’t reply; instead, she just sat up as the car came to a stop at a much smaller church than St. Peter’s, but I was still familiar with it. The Shrine of Our Lady of Messici. Many of the Italian families who didn’t approve of our family or the Irish went there, and the priest was not particularly friendly, either.

Once more, I looked over at Calliope. “Must it always be the most difficult path we go down?”

A grin spread wide across her face. “You wouldn’t happen to be scared, Mr. Callahan, would you?”

“Terrified actually,” I replied. “One wrong word, one insult, and I’d be responsible for leveling the oldest Italian church in the city. That doesn’t help my cause.”

“I guess we are just going to have to build thicker skin today. Gigi, open your eyes, we are here,” she said.

Stepping out of my car door, I glanced up and down the streets. Sure enough, there were only Italians, all of them walking toward the church; however, upon seeing us, they either froze or blatantly avoided our gaze. I even watched as a few turned around and just started to walk away.

“Well, this is going to be interesting,” my Uncle Declan said, stepping beside me as I held open the door, allowing Calliope and Gigi to slide out behind me.

“We are Catholics going to mass,” Calliope stated. “How could that possibly be interesting?”

“Are you sure about this?” Uncle Declan muttered.

The only answer I had was to take the other hand of my daughter, walking forward, up the stairs into the church with her mother. The sand and peach-colored tones of the interior were the first things I noticed. The second thing was how full the service was, and that the front row, where my family usually sat, was beyond full. Calliope, unbothered, moved third to last row.

“Excuse us,” she whispered to the people who were more focused on me, or better yet our family, who stood, somewhat at a loss of what to do. “Ethan, come. There’s space,” she called over.

Biting my cheek, I moved into the pew with her. She glanced back to the rest of my family and mouthed, “Find seats,” as the choir began. I hadn’t had any idea what she had been planning and didn’t seek to find out, allowing her to surprise us as she wished, but now part of me wished I had.

“Achoo!” And just like that, I felt someone’s spit on my back.

“Sorry about that, man,” the man said before dusting off my shoulder.

The fuck.

Before I could turn and beat the idiot into the grave he was clearly asking for, I felt her squeeze my hand, and I shifted my glare to her. She kept singin

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