Children of Ambition by J. J. McAvoy
“Why in the fuck would you—”
“Because I want you,” I told her truthfully. She looked a mixture of confused and scared. Why, I didn’t know. “I want to marry you. I have my reasons. I’ll use you at times. But I’ll be honest about it. Just like you can use me to avoid becoming a prisoner in this mansion, to escape your fate if you remain here forever, single and with only a fraction of the power you crave.”
“You really are insane—”
“Marry me, and you’ll have everything you want. Power, respect, public acknowledgement…and affection. You’ll be the most important person to me, my family, and millions of people.”
She paused. “And how is that?”
“You’d like me to explain how affection works?” I teased, knowing full well she didn’t care about that.
She crossed her arms, waiting.
“Do you really think your parents would marry you off to someone who they didn’t think was worthy—”
“My father would never have thought you were worthy.”
“Like most fathers. However, even he must have known you’d be safer with me.”
She chuckled at that. “Safe with you? You’re chained to a bed at the mercy of my family.”
“Wrong.” I shook my head, taking the chain off my ankle. Her eyebrow rose as I stood on my feet. “The Callahan family is at the mercy of me. Ethan wants to know who I am and he wants me out of his house, yet here I am. Wyatt wishes to kill me, but he can’t. You want me to break the agreement, but I won’t. You all are waiting for me to give you information…waiting to see if killing me will cause unforeseen damage to you all. The same question is going through all of your minds… Why me?”
“We’ll find out who you are—”
“Or you could agree and I could just tell you,” I said, stepping up to her. “I could tell you, and once you know, you’ll regret fighting so hard.”
“Take another step, and you’ll regret not dying.”
I paused and then took another step, and her nose flared. Smiling, I stopped, not pushing my luck any further. “If you won’t agree yet, at least stop fighting long enough for me to show you…”
“You started the fight.”
“All I did was tell you the truth.” Boldly, I stepped forward, and she pulled a gun from some hiding spot, I didn’t know where, and held it in front of me.
This damn family and bullets.
I didn’t say anything; I just stared her down.
“Winning me over will be harder than trying to stop my brothers from killing you.”
She put the gun down and left, slamming the door behind her.
“The sweetest honey is always at the top of the tallest tree,” I whispered to myself before gripping on to my shoulder. “Bloody fucking Jesus…” It burned like fire.
Grumpily, I moved over to the side of my bed, taking out my cell from the drawer and dialing. She answered on the first ring…
“Have you lost your damn mind?”
“I’m the victim here, Evelyn. I was shot.” I pouted.
“I couldn’t care less! And good for them for shooting you! Going around talking about Liam getting shot, you earned yourself a damn bullet,” she snapped and I rolled my eyes, laying on the bed.
“Other than that small hiccup, I’ve finally gotten her to warm up to me.”
“What?” She paused her anger. “How?
“A few truths….and couple lies.”
DONATELLA
“Well?” Ethan asked me as I came into to the study where he and Wyatt were both waiting for me.
I said nothing as I took Wyatt’s glass of whiskey and sat down.
Wyatt sighed and turned to Ethan. “Let’s get rid of him and whatever happens—”
“He’s the devil,” I said, mostly to myself but loud enough for them to hear.
“What?” Ethan asked me.
I snickered and drank, not breathing until I finished. The whiskey burned my throat as it went down. “He’s convinced me to do something crazy…something I might regret.”
“What?”
“Give him chance.” How the hell did that happen?
“How the hell did that happen?” Wyatt questioned, reading my mind.
Handing over the empty glass, I stood up, facing Ethan; “Leave him alone. I’ll handle it from now.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing! Dona, he tried to kill you—”
“No, he didn’t.” He was afraid when I almost died. Looking to Wyatt, I hugged him. I didn’t have a reason; I just did it and let him go. Looking to Ethan, I said, “Let him do what he came here to do and we will see what happens.”
“We will see?” he questioned. “So, you’ll marry him?”
“Worst comes to worse, I’ll marry him, fulfill the contract, and then kill him. At least then I’m a widow and not a spinster,” I joked but neither of them laughed.
“Since when do you care about being a spinster?” Wyatt asked, brows bunched together, completely lost.
I understood why. I’d never thought about it. It had never crossed my mind. Until the Devil whispered into my ear. Now, the more I looked at them, the less I saw my brothers as my brothers and the more I saw them as men. Men who would have their own families. In the back of my mind, I’d known that would come but right now it was all I could see… It was all that was going through my mind.
What happened when they both had their own families?
What would people say of me?
At my age, my mother had already married and had Ethan. I told myself that I shouldn’t care. Screw what other people thought. A much bigger part of me remembered the fact that this whole family was built on what people thought of us. We were perfect on the outside, so why wouldn’t I get married? I tried picturing myself single for the rest of my life, and I remembered my parents together. I tried thinking of a man to stand beside me, and I didn’t have one…with the exception of this stranger. And all I knew about him was that he had balls to not only speak back to me but fight back.
My mind was a mess. I felt myself being pulled in ten different directions and the more I thought, the less I wanted to.
“Dona?”
“Huh?”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Ethan asked me seriously.
I laughed. “Why? Because I said I’d give him a chance?”
“Yes,” Wyatt said, as if it were the obvious answer.
“You’re free to give him a hard time; I’m not going to go crawl into his arms. I’m going to find out why out of all the men in the world they picked him…”
At least he’s sexy… Whoa, where did that come from?
“Okay.” Ethan nodded at me but I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
“Okay, then.” I nodded back… I was going to date the devil.
Date?
Urgh, oh Lord help me, I thought as I left the room for the second time today. This time I went straight to my room, wishing I hadn’t when I saw Helen on my bed.
“Please go; my head is mess and I have no idea what is going on,” I whined, walking over to my bed and falling on top of it. I grabbed my pillow and put it over my head.
“Gabriel?”
“Don’t say his name!” I held up my hand to stop her. “Just hearing about him right now gives me a migraine. He’s just…ugh! What is his problem? A rational person would be running yet there he is, saying he could give me everything! How? Where? When? He pops out of nowhere and says he wants to marry me? Me! Does he not know I’m not the marrying type? I’ll fight him every day of his life and he’ll go bald from pulling out his hair. We might go bald from pulling out each other’s hair. On top of that, he has no boundaries. He’s just in my face pretending to be Casanova… What if he tries to be romantic now? I don’t do well with romantic. I’d tell him to ask Toby but… You know he’s dead. Which should be his clue to run away! Why is he not running away!”
“Donatella, look at me.”
“Why?” I lif
“You were rambling.”
“What?”
“You were rambling!”
“I don’t ramble!”
“You just did. Since we were little, this is the most normal you’ve been…ever. You’re like a regular girl.”
“Fuckin’ shite.” I stared at her in horror and not even jokingly, I blessed myself with the sign of the cross. Because of him, Gabriel, the book nerd devil… I had Shakespeare on my mind. Specifically, The Tempest: Act 1, Scene 2, Line 215: Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
FOURTEEN
“Here’s all you have to know about men and women:
Women are crazy,
men are stupid.
And the main reason women are crazy
is that men are stupid.”
~ George Carlin
HELEN
Was I supposed to be annoyed or happy that he never changed? I wasn’t sure, and the more I stared at the text message on my phone, the more confused I became.
Dona was usually a light sleeper; however, her mind must have overworked itself, explaining the almost comatose state she was in. Rising from the bed, I changed into jeans and one of her shirts, before leaving her room. Part of me felt like I was sneaking around, afraid my father would catch me and wonder what the heck I was doing out bed so early in the morning… But the much more rational part of me knew I was old enough, and free enough, to move about the house however I chose. It still felt weird though. It must have been the goody-two-shoes in me.
Stepping into the elevator, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, nearly drifting back to sleep. Had it not been for the chime as the elevator doors opened, I would have crashed. Walking forward into the kitchen, there he was, making damn waffles.
“How many do you want?” he asked as he carefully took his seventh waffle out of the iron and reached for more batter.
“Wyatt, can’t you think of healthier foods to make when you’re annoyed?” I asked, moving to sit at the kitchen island in front of him.
“Nope,” he answered, setting a plate of three waffles topped with bananas and chocolate chips in front me.
“Where’s the chocolate syrup?”
“I was making it healthier,” he mocked me as he poured syrup over his own stack of waffles.
“If you’re determined to make me fat, you should commit to it.”
“No one’s forcing you to eat.”
“Fine, I’ll go—”
“Here,” he snapped, drowning my waffles in brown, sugary, artery-clogging syrup. “Happy?”
“Over the moon!” I grinned, cutting into the waffles and stuffing my face. “So, what are you upset about?”
“I’m not upset,” he said as he rammed a forkful of waffles into his mouth.
“Okay,” I nodded, knowing he’d spill soon enough. Since we were young, whenever he’d felt bad or annoyed, he’d come to the kitchen for chocolate and banana waffles.
“Who do you think this Gabriel guy is?”
“An arranged fiancé for Dona,” I answered. He exhaled through his nose, chewing angrily. “Not the guy you wanted?”
“I don’t like him. I don’t trust him. He’s a stranger who knows too much about us—”
“Us or Dona.”
“Dona is us and he knows too much. He acts as if he’s already family!”
“I mean, seeing as how your parents gave him their word, it looks like—”
“Why are you being difficult?”
I coughed, almost choking on a piece of banana. “I’m being difficult? Me?!”
“Yes, you!” He pointed his fork at me. “You should be saying let’s hack into whatever mumbo-jumbo zeros and ones computer system to find out the truth!”
“First, mumbo-jumbo is a phrase used to describe a meaningless language; hacking into multiple agencies, departments, and/or personal databases is simply called a background search.”
“There you are, being difficult!” He groaned, waving his fork at me.
Smacking his hand away, I held my fork out to him. “I’d rather be difficult than be a sourpuss just because your sister might be engaged.”
“This!” He shook his head in confusion. “Why is everyone so okay with this idea that he’s legitimately engaged to Dona? We don’t know him. He could be a serial killer.”
“If he’s one, you’re are too; so, Dona will be fine,” I answered. He glared at me and I glared right back.
“Dona is my sister.”
“Dona could be his wife.”
“Could…could,” he replied angrily. “As in, not yet. So why the fuck is he on such goddamn high horse?”
“It’s a very strong possibility…” I drifted off when his eyes met mine, this time stuffing more of my waffles into my mouth and telling him to do the same. “Eat or they’ll get soggy.”
He pouted like a child before eating. He only managed two large bites before his head snapped up again. “He tried to kill her.”
“No, he didn’t.”
His Italian side came out as he dropped his fork and started to talk much more passionately, his hands moving with each word. “Are you kidding me? He flung her into the water and held her under. It was only when she lost consciousness that he took her out. It was your body chain she wore that alerted us she was in distress and your cameras that let us zoom in, only to see him trying to kill her!”
“Dona hit him.”
“So, what?” he snapped. “He can’t handle being hit—”
“Donatella is abusive!” I snapped at him and he paused like he wasn’t expecting me to respond and I went on because I wasn’t in the mood to hear him yell at me. “She is physically and verbally abusive…to everyone! It’s not her fault. In fact, everyone in this family is abusive to some degree. But Dona… She’s harsh and she became that way in order to protect herself from all the people constantly trying to worm their way into this family. If she wasn’t harsh, people would walk all over her. It’s how she protects herself. How we all protect ourselves. A man who is cold-hearted is seen as sexy and mysterious, but as a female you’re just seen as bitch. Imagine what would have happened if Dona had warmed up and been forgiving to Tobias? He’d have become even more bold. Men want us to be soft and kind and gentle. But she’s a Callahan; anything soft, kind or gentle in her was buried long ago!”
“What does any of that have to do with the man that almost killed her!” he yelled at me.
Urgh, he was so dumb!
“He’s the first person that fought back!” I hollered back at him. “For once, someone who wasn’t family stood up to her. He’s the first one who said I can take the abuse and I will dish it back. And why? Because he’s not afraid of her or you or Ethan. He acted without giving a damn about who she is, other than female. He wasn’t trying to kill her. He was showing her that she couldn’t bully him like she does everyone else…at least not without getting herself hurt. Tobias betrayed the family because he wanted to be on the same level as Dona. He wanted her respect… and years later, he still couldn’t get it. Gabriel earned it in a day. There is something different about him. He’s not like the others. He can actually stand toe to toe with her. Ethan sees it, I see it, and so does Dona. Dona, for the first time ever, is excited, Wyatt. She doesn’t know she’s excited yet but if you saw her tonight, you’d know she was. Finally, someone is in front of her, ready for anything she might dish out. Everyone needs a rival or balance. A positive to her negative. I’m excited for her… I’m excited to see what’s under those ten layers of rock and ice around her heart; why aren’t you?”
He hung his head, giving up. He kept eating, completely silent as he leaned against the kitchen island. He didn’t say anything, and neither did I as I reached for the orange juice on the counter, quietly waiting for him to process what I had said.
“We know nothing about him. Why didn’t anything come up on Ethan??
I shrugged. “I’m guessing grandmother had my father or someone else to wipe his records…”
“I know you. You could put it together, if you wanted.” His eyes looked like he was begging…and I almost caved.
“I could.” I nodded slowly. “But I don’t want to.”
“Helen…”
“Wyatt… In normal relationships, you don’t know everything about the other person before you start dating them.”
“Which is why normal people end up hurt.”
“And know-it-alls end up alone,” I countered.
“Better to be alone than hurt.”
“Says who?”
He shrugged. “Me.”
“You’re wrong.” He hadn’t been hurt in that way, so he had no right to talk. “When you’re hurt, it means you had reason to smile and laugh before. Being alone is like sitting in darkness; there is nothing to look back on or hope for.”
He flinched and made a face at me. “Stop talking like you speak from experience.”
I did.
“Stop being worrying about Dona. She’ll handle whatever comes her way; just let her be a woman. Let her explore this. Let her, for once, not worry about mafia this or that, and just care about looking pretty and watching a cheesy movie with a man she might be developing feelings for.”
“You have this all set up in your head; maybe you’re the one who hid all his information.” He eyed me carefully until I leaned over and smacked him. “Ouch! Just kidding.”
“Promise me you’ll stay out of it.”
“Nope.” He grinned, getting up and moving to the big fridge.
“Man, I’m glad you aren’t my brother. You’d think Dona was your daughter; not your sister with the way you’re trying to hold on to her.”
“What are you talking about?” He laughed as he pulled out some chocolate ice-cream. “Any guy you bring home will have it just as bad; you’re basically my second sister.”