Ruthless People (8 page)

“Okay, you’re serious.” He frowned. “But you can’t leave her there all night. If this
was how she was with a good night’s sleep, imagine how irritated she is going to be
in the morning. Do you want her to be like that for your mother?”

He had a point, but I was fucking pissed.

“I’m not going to do it.” If I released her, it would be as though I was saying she
was right. That she was Boss. I wasn’t going to bow down to her.

“You hard headed son of a—”

“Mr. Callahan.” Adriana, the ugly duckling, came in, already dressed in an ancient
nightgown as though she had come out of the fucking middle ages.

Declan held back his laugh by filling his mouth with brandy, while I just turned to
the poor, time-confused girl in front me.

“Yes, ugl . . . Adriana?” I asked.

She glared at me as though she knew what I almost said. “The Boss wanted me to ask
you what time you will be departing in the morning?”

Declan spit out the drink in his mouth, coughing like a dying man before laughing
hysterically.

I stared at her for a moment before stomping out of the room without answering. I
had made sure all her men had been far away. There was no way she should have fucking
been able to get out of those cuffs. They were designed by me and made with reinforced
steel. Bursting into the indoor pool house, I froze.

“Oh, my dear cousin, you have met your equal, and it is funny as shit to watch,” Declan
muttered, standing right beside me as I stared at the broken chair, now resting in
its watery grave.

It looked as though a monster had ripped its legs and arms off. Seeing as how I only
handcuffed her to one of each, it baffled me. The food was still uneaten and the towels
all rested at the bottom of the pool as well.

“I’m going to bed,” I told the grinning fool who was my cousin.

“Sleep with one eye open, cousin, and your hand on your gun. She may just kill you
tonight,” Declan said as I walked back to the room I was given for the night.

When I entered, there sat my reinforced steel cuffs in tiny pieces all over my now
shot up bed. On top of that, a fucking note by hers truly, in her precise handwriting,
with a bullet taped to it.

I came to visit you honey, so we could finish what we started in the basement, but
you and your cousin were busy giggling like schoolgirls. Oh well, I hope you have
a good night. About the bed, well . . . you can understand right, sweetheart?

Checkmate.

Melody Giovanni

I could hear her laughter ringing in my fucking ears.
Checkmate?
She thought this was checkmate?

We hadn’t even started playing yet. Beaming, I jumped on the bullet-infested bed,
kicking up feathers, before pulling out my phone and dialing quickly.

“Hello, mother? I’m sorry it’s late.”

“I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me. I miss you all. The house is
to quiet I can’t think. Oh how is Melody? Is she beautiful? I met Orlando once and
he was looker. I’m sure—”

“Yes, I have missed you as well. Yes, Melody is . . . she is one of a kind Mom, one
of a kind. I was calling to see if you wouldn’t mind having a welcoming party for
her. Just to show her how happy I am to have her in my life.”

“Really? Someone sounds smitten. The whole family?”

I wanted to roll my eyes. “Yes, the whole family. Can you do it? She is almost as
maniacal as Olivia.”

“Are you sure she isn’t tired. I thought she just came into town today.”

“She won’t be tired at all.”

“Sure! I’m so excited. I’ll get right on it.”

When she hung up, I grinned. My mother would do what she always did for celebrations.
She would go over the top. I knew now that Melody could lie down with the lowest and
roll in the dirt like a motherfucking pro. But she wouldn’t be able to contain herself
with the family. They shit rainbows and unicorns, and while she was distracted, it
would give me time to work on a new lead I had on the Valero.

I was planning something huge for those motherfuckers, and I was going to use information
I had acquired from Orlando’s files to do it. The Giovannis’ contacts were now my
contacts. I almost wanted to say checkmate fucking now. But I wondered how she would
feel when I used her work and multiplied the destruction by twenty. She was playing
childish games, and I was no child. This wasn’t about who could outdo whom, this was
me proving a point. I would kill two birds with one stone. The Valero would never
see it coming, and I would make my mark as the new
Ceann na Conairte
and Boss.

Sleep tight, my little Giovanni, for tomorrow, you will dance like my very own puppet
on strings
, I
thought, lifting my hand behind my head and grinning.

SEVEN

“We kill everybody, my dear.
Some with bullets, some with words,
and everybody with our deeds.
We drive people into their graves,
and neither see it nor feel it.”

~ Maxim Gorky

MELODY

“Which one, ma’am?” Adriana held up two teal dresses for me to wear for my first day
with the bloody Irish clan, but I really didn’t care what I wore as long as I got
through the damn day.

“Dr. Anderson, what do you think?” I asked the older man bandaging my wrist. Dr. Anderson
was the only doctor I trusted enough to touch me. After all, he was the one who had
delivered me, and he had seen more than enough of my injuries to not even bother asking.

He looked up, pushing his thick glasses up his nose before finishing his work on my
wrist. “The long-sleeved one would be best to hide your wound. It won’t hide the one
on your ankle but that one is not as bad as your wrist.”

He was right. I had used so much force to pull the plastic arm off the chair that
it had cut deeply into my wrist. The idiot had made his cuffs with reinforced steel,
which made it easy to break the chair, but it still hurt like a bitch and would scar.

Adriana looked at me waiting. “White heels, ma’am?”

I nodded, rubbing my wrist once the doctor let go. I had to fight the urge to throw
this damn ugly ring down the drain every time I looked at my hand.

Fedel held the door open for Dr. Anderson, but not before handing him an envelope
with more than enough money to make sure he wouldn’t have to work for a while.

“Ma’am, after the announcement of your and Mr. Callahan’s wedding this morning, I
have a few magazines, charities, and interviewers looking to have a moment with you,”
Fedel told me with a phone in his hands.

After rising from my chair, Adriana handed me the dress as I walked behind the screen.

“Fedel, do I look like Martha fucking Stewart?”

“No, ma’am. I would never think you would be foolish enough to end up in jail.” He
cleared his throat, and I laughed. Stepping out from behind the screen, I let Adriana
drop the white heels at my feet.

“Then tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“That would not be wise,
mio bambino dolce
.” My father coughed as he was wheeled in by his nurse.

Walking over to him, I kissed him on the cheek.

“Why can’t I tell them to fuck themselves?” I asked him as Adriana handed me my bracelets.

“Because, to the rest of the world, you are the fiancée to one of the most powerful
men in this country—the prince of Chicago. You aren’t the Boss to them. They want
a Kate Middleton or a first lady, someone to kiss babies and write big checks on behalf
of your fiancé,” my father snapped at me, causing me to stop and just stare into his
dying eyes.

“Fedel. Adriana. Leave.” In seconds they, along with my father’s nurse, were gone.
“You’re still mad that I shot him.”

He frowned at me. “I do not have time to hold on to anger. And yet, here you are,
forcing me to waste time to discipline you.”

Shaking my head, I smiled. “You should be proud I didn’t kill him. He is a spoiled
brat who thinks he was born in the nineteen-twenties when women served their husbands
and bowed down to their will. I’m not now, nor shall I ever be, any man’s arm candy.”

“Melody.” He sighed, using my full name like when he was annoyed or pissed. “You are
as hard-headed as your mother.”

“Thank you. I will take that as a complement.” I turned away from him.

“It was not one,” he hissed. “Have you forgotten why you wear the white shoes?” My
whole body froze for a moment, and a chill ran up my spine.

“That was a low blow, Orlando.” I sneered at him and took off the damn white shoes
before walking into my closet. Most of my things had already been taken out and were
en route to Callahan Manor. I had left some of the things I would need in my closet
here. One never knows when I would need a personal moment away from the leprechaun.

My father wheeled in behind me. “I will not go to my grave knowing that this marriage
is condemned and that, yet again, two people who are made for each other will not
swallow their pride, lower their swords, and act as fucking equals! You, Melody Nicci
Giovanni, will not walk the same path your mother and I did. You will support your
husband, guide him when needed, and stand by his side and his side alone. You will
be a damn Callahan, and you will make sure both families, past and present, rise!”
he yelled, not once coughing or even so much as blinking for that matter. Had I closed
my eyes, he would have sounded like the Orlando I used to know.

“What happened with you and Mom is not the same,” I replied, slipping on the tan shoes,
while in the back of my mind a voice told me to change back.

“But the outcome will be if you do not take my advice. Make peace with him Melody.
Remember how long it took me to adjust to you as Boss? Prove it to him. Prove it to
them all, and do it without making your husband the fool so I can rest in peace.”
The tenseness in his voice dropped before he coughed again, returning to the sick
man that he was now.

I hated the thought of having to prove myself. I had done that for years—proving to
every man we interrogated, every boss I took down, every crackhead with a big mouth,
and even with my men. I thought I was done with that phase of my rule, and yet here
I was again.

“Don’t think too long about it, we’re not all still in our twenties.” Orlando smiled
at me, and even though he was only a shadow of the man I used to know, that smile
always made me smile.

Walking behind him, I pulled his wheelchair back before exiting my closet for the
last time.

“Fine, I will try, but if he treats me like a doormat or worse, Martha Stewart, I
am shooting him in the other thigh.” I was only half-joking.

“That is all I ask,” he said as he was wheeled out of my bedroom. Adriana and Fedel’s
backs straightened as they followed us down the hall.

“Fedel, are the houses finished?” I asked him, walking slower than needed, but I was
in no rush to get to my destination.

“Yes, ma’am, they are. Most of our equipment and technology has been moved into the
basement, and the men were moved last night. However, they want to stay away from
the Irish for as long as possible.”

“So would I.” I muttered.

When I had found out whom I was to marry years ago, I had slowly but surely bought,
bribed, and taken “government-protected” lands just far enough away from the Callahan
Manor to give my men a place for their families that was nearer to where I would be
staying. The houses were not anything close to Callahan Manor or my home here, but
they were nice, common family homes that would typically be found in the suburbs of
Chicago. We had started building three years ago, a task I left to Antonio and Fedel
to complete.

“Are you ready?” Orlando asked me.

My father’s right-hand man since he was a teen, Fiorello, stood at the door waiting
for us to answer before opening. He was the only one, with the exception of a cook
and a nurse, who my father wanted to stay with him here. Fiorello had been tortured
by the Valero once upon a time, for dirt on my father, which left him with the scar
that now graced his face. He fought his way out and came back, asking only for a doctor
and a large glass of red wine. I knew my father was going to be fine. I just wasn’t
sure if I was.

Nodding, I signaled for Fiorello to open the door. Beside me, Orlando’s nurse took
her place at his wheelchair. The moment the door opened, I was met with four pairs
of eyes staring at me, each more beautiful than the last until they fell on Liam,
whose green eyes were glued to my legs. His gaze lingered a little on the bruise at
my ankle before wandering up the rest of my body meeting mine. His lips were turned
in a frown, but in his eyes were filled with lust.

“Ma’am.” Monte walked over to me, handing me an iPad. He must have put all the information
on Ryan Ross here. I took it from him before walking toward my new
famiglia
, or
teaghlach
as it was called in Irish.

“Good morning, am I late?” I asked as kindly and brightly as possible.

“No, ma’am, just thinking you’re beautiful this morning,” Declan replied trying to
take my hand to kiss it but I pulled back.