American Savages by J. J. McAvoy
“Fine,” I said, as I held out my hand to him, but he ran between Liam and me, and grabbed both of our hands.
“Daddy, can we get burgers from Sal’s?” he pleaded.
“Grandma is having a picnic this afternoon, you don’t want to be too full, do you?” Liam asked.
Wyatt gave him a look. “Daddy, I’m seven now, my stomach is bigger. I can eat just like Uncle Neal.”
God, I hope not! I thought as we stepped outside.
Our car, along with two others, one in the front, and the other in the back, pulled up. Kain stepped out and opened the door for us, and Wyatt hopped in, took off his backpack and threw it aside.
“Take us to Sal’s please,” he demanded before buckling himself in.
“Wyatt, I said no,” Liam told him sternly as we entered the car to sit beside him.
“Can’t we negotiate? I promise to get one for Ethan and Dona this time.” He smiled, and I laughed outright.
“Do you want to negotiate or compromise?” I asked, as I ran my hand through his hair.
He shrugged. “Whichever one gets me a burger.”
“Rule seven,” Liam reminded him.
Wyatt pouted as he crossed his arms. “Never argue with the boss.”
“That’s right, so why are we still talking about this?” he asked him.
“Fine, let me starve. Dona will never speak to you again,” he sighed, as he reached into his navy blue jacket pocket to pull out his mp4 player. Turning his music on, he shut us out and I fought with all my might to keep from laughing.
Liam groaned, as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can hear my father laughing at me. But honestly, I don’t remember being this frustrating,” Liam whispered.
I squeezed his thigh. “I’m sure you don’t. Relax, he’s just taking after Ethan,” I said.
“You just had to get pregnant again so soon after Ethan. As if handling him wasn’t more than enough.”
“Excuse me? Whose idea was it to take a second honeymoon—?”
“We never had a first, so how could there be a second? Besides, you loved London, Governor. ”
I wanted to kick him. Instead, I copied Wyatt and turned my back to him. I still couldn’t believe that it had been eight years since we’d gotten rid of Avian. Eight years since I’d gotten pregnant again, with twins this time; Wyatt Sedric Callahan and Donatella Aviela Callahan. I loved them both, but sometimes I felt the same way when dealing with Donatella as Liam did with Wyatt. It must be due to the fact they were so much like us. Donatella had Liam wrapped around her fingers so tightly, it wasn’t even funny.
It had been eight long years of controlled chaos, and because Liam and I never wanted the events that took place to ever repeat, changes needed to be made. We were now more removed from the drug trade. The trade was still overseen by us, but we no longer got our hands as dirty. Weed had taken off big time, and we had the largest hold on the market. There was still a demand for the usual though—cocaine, meth, and heroin, but they were no longer made in Illinois. After all, Liam’s plan for the first female governor of Illinois was to clean up the streets and actually do it.
We’d taken a page from the Roman playbook—we basically allowed sellers to keep moving a product in exchange for less violence. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the power; the control. Avian taught us that.
Drug dealers were strangely civil when you had a gun to their heads. Lesser gangs and cartels were a different story. They tended to get out of control and we were usually forced to send in a clean-up crew. It took a good dozen group deaths for the rest to get the bloody message. They had no idea who we were and that only served our purpose by scaring the shit out of them. With Chicago shining as it was, I was elected not only once, but for a second term. I had been in office for almost five years now.
At first, I thought that Liam should’ve been the one to run, but he’d pointed out the fact that he needed to keep up the business aspect of our lives…though I knew he secretly enjoyed having his Mad Hatter title. I had given this state almost five years, and now everyone was waiting on edge to see what my next move would be.
“Melody.” Liam pulled me from my thoughts, as he showed me an alert on his phone. “Apparently someone in the FBI has been checking up on us.”
It wasn’t unusual. The FBI checked out every governor…mostly because they were usually corrupt. The only difference between them and us was the fact that we couldn’t be caught. Once the J. Edgar Hoover Building was rebuilt, Liam and I donated one hundred million dollars towards the new technology labs. Unknown to them, Declan, Monte and I had set up an alert program. If anyone ever looked into our names, or our lives, we knew about it instantly and we decide how to handle it.
“What are they looking at?” I asked as he scrolled through.
“Tax returns.” He shook his head before he placed his phone back into his pocket.
“Of course,” I snickered as Wyatt relaxed into my arms.
“This picnic is going to drive me mad though.” He groaned as we pulled up at the park. “Promise me you’ll be nice.”
“I’m always nice.”
“You know, after all these years, I still don’t believe you.” He winked at me.
Ignoring him, I pulled out one of Wyatt’s earbuds. “We’re here and I think I see burgers.”
He sat up and pressed his face against the window. “I can’t see anything, all the cameras are in the way.”
Bloody press. We couldn’t leave the goddamn mansion without them following us around.
“We’ll be out soon, and please be nice to your cousins,” I told him.
“I’m always nice, Mommy,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Like mother like son,” Liam muttered behind me causing me to elbow him.
LIAM
“Daddy!” Donatella screamed the moment I stepped out of the car. She ran as fast as she could before she leaped into my arms.
“Now, who are you?” I asked, as I held her out in front of me. She was an almost carbon copy of her mother; dark brown hair, a dazzling smile…but she had my eyes…my green eyes.
“Daddy, you know who I am.” She pouted at me.
“You look familiar? Have you ever stolen one of my ties?”
“I’ve borrowed some.”
“Now, I remember you.” I pulled her to my chest. “You eat all of my favorite cereal, borrow my ties, and play pranks on your brothers.”
“Daddy!” She giggled, and wrapped her arms around my neck as we walked to the grassy park. She hid her face in the crook of my neck, annoyed by all the cameras just as much as I was.
“Mr. Callahan, does your wife have future plans to run for President?”
“Mr. Callahan, what are her plans for the rest of her second term?”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” I turned to them, as I shifted Donatella to my hip. “When my wife makes a decision, you will all know about it. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a family picnic—”
“And burgers!” Wyatt yelled from further up ahead. He wrapped his arms around his mother as if it would save him from me. Mel tried hard to hold in her laughter, I could see it as she patted his head.
Wyatt was her baby.
“We have a picnic and burgers to attend to,” I said to them.
Donatella wiggled out of my arms and I found myself wanting to pout as she ran to Wyatt and grabbed his arm before they both took off towards Neal who stood around the fire pit.
“Food trumps father.” Mel rubbed it in before taking my arm.
“You would think we never fed them,” I muttered, as I scanned the area for any sign of Ethan.
He wasn’t with Mina and Neal’s kids. Neal had adopted Mina’s daughter the year before she had given birth to their son, Sedric. Mina was good for him, and more importantly good for us, since she was now Melody’s campaign manager. For Neal, I knew what attracted him to her the most was her blunt honesty…she was an open book. She had told him on their very first date that
“Where’s Ethan?” I frowned to myself still not seeing him.
He wasn’t with Coraline and Declan, who were busy dancing to music while their two kids danced around them. After Coraline’s recovery, she hadn’t been able to carry any children herself. So instead, they’d adopted a baby girl, Helen, and then, through a surrogate, they were able to have a boy, Darcy. Helen and Donatella had formed an alliance against all the boys in the family. Every water, snow, and dirt fight was their doing.
“There he is.” Mel pointed to Ethan, who had donned his favorite hat while he sat perched on a tree branch with a book. “It looks as if he’s trying to be mature again.”
Since he was the eldest boy, he tried to act as though he was above his siblings and cousins. He wanted to be treated like a grownup.
“You got this, or should I?” Mel asked.
“I got it.”
She nodded as she moved over to my mother who sat behind her easel trying to paint. It was the only thing that made her happy anymore, outside of the family of course. And she’d become really good at it. She’d even done a family portrait and managed to put my father it in, right where he should be.
“Ethan,” I call up the tree.
“Hi, Dad,” he said, not looking up from his book, which wasn’t really a book but an Italian dictionary.
“Are you trying to learn Italian?” This was new.
He shrugged and looked down at me. “I wanted to know what mommy was yelling at you.”
“She was not yelling—”
“She was. She was really mad, and mom only speaks Italian when you do something bad,” he stated.
These kids were going to kill me.
“Well, what have you gotten so far, smarty?”
He grinned as he lifted up his paper. “Are you fucking—”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I cut him off.
“Yeah, that’s all I have anyway. She talks too fast.”
“Well, can you join the family now?”
He looked around the park then shook his head. “They’re all babies and you told me I had to start being a man.”
“I meant that you had to stop ratting out your uncles and me when we have poker nights without your mom.” He needed to stop taking everything so literally.
“Dad, I don’t want mommy to yell at me in Italian. Rule sixteen: Never displease mother.”
Now he was using our rules against us.
“Yes, but rule: Fifty one says always tell your mother the truth unless it goes against the wellbeing of your father.”
His mouth dropped open, and he jumped out of the tree. I caught him, but he rushed out of my arms, making sure that no one saw.
“That is not a rule!” he said as he placed his hat back on his head.
“It is too.” Now.
“It is not.”
“Ethan, you can’t argue with the maker of the rules.”
“I want these rules in writing, like the bible or something.” He huffed as I laughed…he would get them the same way I did.
“Ethan, it’s family time, go have fun and act like a kid, that’s an order.”
He pouted but sighed. “Fine, but only because you told me I have to.”
“Of course.” He nodded and began walking off. Suddenly I remembered what I intended to ask him. “Ethan?”
“Yeah?” He stopped and looked back to me.
“Why doesn’t your brother talk in class?”
He grinned. “It’s a secret.”
“Ethan.”
He sighed. “He likes a girl and he made her cry before, so now he’s scared to say anything when she’s around. Don’t tell him I told you, okay? And don’t tell Mom!”
“Okay.” I couldn’t help but smile.
So Wyatt had a crush. I knew why he didn’t want their mother to know.
“Mr. Callahan,” Avery Barrow, my former cellmate from what seemed like a lifetime ago, walked up to me, escorted by Monte. He had grown into a highly revered political correspondent and reporter over the years.
“Avery, thank you for making it.”
“Of course, Mr. Callahan, I’m assuming it’s time for me to pay off my debt?” He smiled and I nodded before I turned away from the family.
“I’m going to need you to take care of something for me,” I said to him as Monte handed him a photo.
His mouth dropped open.
“Is there a problem?” I asked him.
He shook his head, but opened his mouth anyway, a small smile lingered on his lips. “I always thought the bad guys lost in the end. That world had to balance itself out.”
My eyebrow raised at him as I snickered. “You know why they invented superheroes? Why billions cling to fictional characters in movies and books?”
He shook his head.
“Because they know that here in real life, the villains run the world. Why else do the good die young?”
“I look forward to living a long life,” he replied, reminding just how much he’d changed.
“Make her look good, Avery,” I replied as I left him, and headed back to my wife.
She sat on a white blanket while Donatella ran back and forth every few seconds, and left a dandelion in her mother’s hand with every trip.
“What’s going on?” I asked, as I took off my shoes and sat down.
“She wants to make a crown of dandelions, but the wind keeps blowing them away,” Mel answered as Donatella came back with a single dandelion and placed it in her hands.
“Sweetheart, you know you can pull more than one at a time, right?” I asked.
“I know,” she said before she went back to get another one.
I look at Mel who just shrugged. Things were either done Donatella’s way or no way at all.
“So Avery—”
“He’s going to take care of it,” I told her.
“Aren’t you going to miss Chicago?” she whispered as she looked at the skyscrapers that stood in the distance of the park. She was already getting her ahead of herself…but then again we always got what we wanted.
“It’s only for eight years.”
I leaned in to kiss her when a dandelion was shoved into my face. I glanced at Donatella who grinned as I accepted it. Then without another word, she ran off again.
I tucked it behind Mel’s hair before I said, “Melody Callahan, future President of the United States of America, I love you.”
“Liam Callahan, future First Husband, I love you more.” She kissed me.
This is my life. Our life. And I wouldn’t have traded it for the goddamn world.
***
THE END
THE CALLAHAN FAMILY RULES
1. You kill for family. You die for family because you can’t trust anyone else.
2. Take no prisoners and have no regrets about it.
3. Just because you sell drugs for a living isn’t an excuse to not dress well.
4. No bloody divorce.
5. One family. One roof.
6. Sometimes in order to win you have to lose.
7. Never argue with the boss.
8. Money is money. If you can’t make it, then take it.
9. A secret is only a secret if one person knows it.
10. You must marry before thirty. Choose wisely.
11. Don’t shit where you eat, both figuratively and literally.
12. Never sell shit products. It’s a disgrace to me and the family.
13. Make them remember you at any cost.
14. Be ruthless people to outsiders who know who we truly are. Be generous to those who don’t. And be the heart, soul and mind to the family.
15. If family ever betrays family, show no mercy, no forgiveness, and put them in the earth.
16. Never displease your mother.
17. Heed your mother’s warnings.
18. Your mother is the only one who
19. Never keep mother waiting.
20. Your father is never old and it would be unwise to claim that he is.
21. You father will one day die. Honor him and move on.
22. Surpass your father.
23. Just because one is old does not make them wise.
24. Just because one is young does not make them foolish.
25. Listen to all the voices on the streets.
26. Never forget where we came from and how much we sacrificed to get here.
27. Never forget our people. The clan must be cared for both here and aboard.
28. Remember that it is the clan that gives us our power.
29. Remember to give to them and we will get in return.
30. Never forget our native tongue. Pass it on to your children so that they may pass it down to theirs.
31. Never forget our history, both personal and public.
32. Indulge in what you have so you may never wish to lose it.
33. Never indulge to the point of stupidity or blindness.
34. You need people in order to rule.
35. Respect the help; they know more than they let on.
36. Make sure the help has just as much, or more, at stake than you do.
37. Be the thing men and women fear.
38. Always be ahead of the police.
39. Have at least one man on the inside.
40. Then have another man you trust more on the inside with him that he knows nothing thing about.
41. Weak links are never acceptable. We are a machine. If someone fails, make sure they never fail ever again.