Ruthless People by J. J. McAvoy
~ J.J. McAvoy
SEDRIC
It was déjà vu. No father ever wanted to watch his son suffer as he had. Our sons and daughters were supposed to move forward. Make new mistakes. Forge new paths and conquer new mountains. Yet Liam was fighting my battle. I should have killed off Vance years ago. I should have prevented all this, but I failed.
Allowing the smoke to fill my lungs, I stared up at the sky.
“Sedric.” Jumping at the sound of my wife’s voice, I looked back to find her glaring at the joint in my hands.
“Sorry,” I whispered, preparing to throw it out, when she simply took it from my hands and took a long drag.
Smirking, she handed it back to me. “Only tonight. After today, it should be allowed.”
“This reminds me of college.” Smoking on the roof after a long, hard day of sex. There was some studying every once in a while also, but still.
“I was pregnant, remember? I couldn’t smoke.”
“Oh, right.” I laughed as she hit me, but I just held on to her.
“Will they be okay? Can they get through this?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. It’s only the first day.”
CORALINE
I really didn’t know how I got to the maternity ward. I was simply walking and next thing I knew, there were babies as far as the eye could see. They were all enchanting and peaceful. Looking at them almost made me forget that the world sometimes sucked.
“They are cute, aren’t they?” Declan whispered next to me.
“Shouldn’t you be guarding Mel?”
He smiled. “Neal, Fedel, and Monte are all standing watch.”
I said nothing, and he looked at the babies.
“I keep trying to wonder what ours will look like. Liam was so happy. He was kind of high all time.”
Again, I said nothing.
“Cora—”
“What Declan?” I snapped. “You want me to give you the time of day because you sat outside my door and played music? But you wouldn’t give me the time of day even after I let you fuck me any way you pleased.”
He took my hand and kissed it before taking a step back, not speaking any longer. When I looked through the glass, a few of the babies were crying.
“See what you did?”
DECLAN
I couldn’t help but smile at her. Even now as she cursed me out, as she should have, I smiled. She had killed someone. She was in the east wing when the bombs went off, and she fought her way to the safe room. A knife right in the motherfucker’s throat. If I didn’t know better, I would say I was falling in love with her all over again. But the truth was, I had never stopped loving her. I never could. I could wait her out. I could take every jab as long as I got her in the end.
OLIVIA
Staring at my phone, I read Neal’s text message over again. It was all that was keeping me together right now.
I love you and the moment I can, I will be at your side. I’m so sorry I wasn’t before.
I tried to breathe. I tried to think. But all I could feel were the hands of those men. I almost fell out of my seat when Adriana took a seat beside me.
“You were raped once weren’t you?” she asked me, and I did, in fact, stop breathing.
“What? Why would you say—”
“Don’t insult me by lying.” She smiled sadly. “I know what a rape victim looks like, and I also know what it feels like when Melody saves you from it. She takes you and she makes you unstoppable. She gives you your power back. She brings you back to life. So the next time a guy thinks he can ever lay a hand on you, you can show him what it feels like to piss off God himself.”
With that, she left me wondering who her Harvey was and what had she done to him.
THIRTY
“I want to see your face when I kill you!
I want to see the light leave your eyes!”
~ Voldemort
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film,
J.K. Rowling
MELODY
Day 5
“Liam can be such an ass sometimes,” Coraline said as she fluffed my pillow. “You should be resting in the summer house drinking a Sex on the Beach and watching the Young and the Restless. But instead, he has us all on lockdown. Can you believe that? We’re on house arrest!”
I said nothing.
Sighing, Coraline fell onto the bed next to me. “I killed someone.”
I said nothing.
“Right, that’s probably not a big deal to you,” she whispered. “But for me it’s a huge deal. He came out of nowhere and I just reacted. Adriana told me to always carry at least two knives on me at all times, so I did. I still do. And that day I just pulled them out . . . and killed. But you know the most fucked up part?”
Again, I said nothing.
“I didn’t care,” she said. “The prick came into my home and tried to hurt me. And when I threw the blade right into his jugular, blood went everywhere. But all I could think was, ‘fuck this asshole better not have AIDS.’ That’s fucked up right? I’m a good person. I was a good person. Before, I would be freaking out, praying over him or something, and yet all I wanted to do was kick his ass because he might have just given me AIDS.”
Nothing. I said nothing.
“Mel, please speak to us. It’s been five days. At least say something. Anything,” Coraline begged me, but I couldn’t.
Shifting onto my side, I tried to go back to sleep. I just wanted the darkness. I just wanted to sleep. It was the only time I felt anything.
“We love you, Mel.” It was the last thing I heard before the darkness returned . . . thankfully.
LIAM
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal yelled. The prisoner he was speaking to dangled from the ceiling in front of us as I cut into my steak.
“Go fuck yourselves,” the fool choked out.
Neal looked to me, and I simply nodded while taking a bite of the bloody beef in front of me.
Taking the drill from Declan, Neal held the point to the man’s collarbone.
“Last chance. Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked again.
Before the fool could get out his insult, Neal drilled, ripping through skin, muscle, tissue, and bone. He screamed like a pig on its way to the slaughterhouse . . . mostly because he was. Neal stopped only when we could see the drill head on the other end of the man’s body, then he pulled it out and moved to the other shoulder.
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal shouted into his face. “I swear to God I will drill through your penis next if you don’t start speaking.”
The fool spit up all over himself as he gasped out for air. “They’re in hiding.”
“No fucking duh!” I snapped, wiping the corners of my mouth. “I want to know where they’re hiding. I have people burning your crops, bombing your labs, and killing your brothers. There will be more blood. There will be retribution. It can end with your bosses, or it can end with your whole family. Choose carefully, there are many more of you, and we have a lot of drills.”
Handing me a glass of brandy, Antonio walked past me and held up another drill to the man’s belly button.
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked one last time.
All eyes in the room were on him. “I swear to God—”
“God doesn’t come to this part of the house, so swear to me,” I told him, leaning back in my chair.
“I swear . . .”
“Kill him.” He was wasting words and didn’t know anything.
Drowning out his screams, I closed my eyes and took in the hum of the drills. They, for some reason, relaxed me. But sadly, it ended all too soon.
Antonio checked his pulse, then turned to me splattered in the man’s blood. “He’s gone, sir.”
I sighed. “When I said kill him, I meant do it slowly.”
It just went to show if you wanted someone killed right, you had to do it yourself. Declan handed me a file, I looked through it quickly before rising.
&
“He’s the seventh we’ve lost during questioning. Weak-ass bitches,” Declan answered, opening the door for me.
Frowning, I nodded. “Find me more. I want them all dead. I want Vance, Saige, and all the damn Valero to know I’m coming for them.”
As I left, they dragged the fool’s body away. Neal’s forte was not torture, and neither was Declan’s really. That had always been left to my father and me. We were good at it, and in a sick, fucked up way, we enjoyed it. But after what happened, something changed within them both. Neal was fueled by the rage of knowing what could have become of his wife. Declan had lost Coraline in a way. Gone was the shopaholic woman who never seemed to understand the world around her, and in her place was a murderer. She had gone through that and still didn’t want to speak with him. He took her punches, and then unleashed it on whichever poor fuck came against us. But I understood. Walking through the construction site that was now my home, I knew what would await me when I opened the door to my room.
Coraline looked at me shaking her head in sadness before leaving. Taking off my shirt, I threw it next to the clothes Adriana had laid out for Melody. None of them seemed to have been touched since this morning.
Kneeling next to her, I brushed back her hair. “Have you eaten?”
She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. Five days of this and I feared it was just the beginning.
“Adriana, I need food. Anything Mel would like, now.” I snapped the phone shut before sitting on the floor in front of her.
At least she’s breathing. That was the only comfort I had. Flipping through the file in my hand, I just started reading, I didn’t want her to feel like I was cutting her out, or that I didn’t need her. Because I did, I needed her badly.
“Declan and Monte have been trying to get through the Valeros’ firewalls. Their system isn’t as strong as ours, so instead they created a freakin’ hundred different firewalls. They can hack it, but it will take time. Right now they haven’t had any luck. They are working through the eleventh firewall now.” I waited to see if she would say anything but again, there was nothing.
“So far we’ve spoken to seven Valero members, and they have all said the same thing. Vance and his family have gone into hiding like some fecking caffler. The two bit arsewipe took his manky whores . . .” I paused for a moment and groaned. “I’m so pissed off I’m sounding like my grandfather on St. Patrick’s Day.”
MELODY
He made me smile. I didn’t know if he could see it, but he made me smile. I did wonder why he tensed just slightly when mentioning his grandfather.
“Anyway,” he said without less of an accent. “They’re in hiding. We have all their bank accounts being monitored. The moment we break through the firewalls, we will drain them dry. For now, if any of them withdraw even a penny, we’ll know about it. We’ve already burned all their known crops on both hemispheres and bombed twenty-nine meth labs. If there are more, we will find them. They aren’t getting away from us. They have no other choice but to die.”
He stood up when Adriana came in with a bowl of something. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, and I didn’t care. I wanted to go back to sleep, but my body wouldn’t let me.
“Love,” he whispered above me, but I didn’t reply.
Sighing, he lifted me up with ease and placed me on his lap, as if I were some chi . . . child.
“Love, eat. It’s just soup,” he said as he started rubbing his thumb against my bottom lip. “Mel, love, I’m begging you. Open your mouth, or I will force it open.”
I listened and he looked disappointed, like he wanted me to fight him. But I was tired. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. The only way I could do that was to listen and allow him to feed me, one spoonful at a time.
DAY 9
“It’s morning, Melody,” Olivia said as she opened my curtains so wide the sun blinded me. I didn’t want the sun. It was too happy. Too full of joy and life, it didn’t know when not to shine. It should know that it was a dark day. It should know not to come my way. I wanted the moon. I wanted the night. I wanted the darkness.
But I was too tired to yell at her. Instead, I simply rolled away from the sun.
“You know I was jealous of you,” Olivia said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m still kind of jealous. I’m always jealous. I don’t try to be. It comes from having divorced parents I guess. You’re always fighting for attention, and they’re always giving it to you because they feel guilty. But with you it was a different type of jealously.”
Go away Olivia, I thought but didn’t speak.
So she went on. “When I first heard that Liam was getting married, I was kind of hoping she, you, would be like Coraline, the old Coraline, willing to let me have the spotlight and come to me for advice. I think I wanted to be Evelyn in away. I wanted to be the heart of the family. But you weren’t like Coraline, or even Evelyn. You were a mafia boss. You, a female, ruled the Italian mafia. When Neal first told me, I thought he was joking. It should have been impossible. No way would any man, true mafia gangster bow down to a woman, and yet there you were. And the men were bowing so low they were almost kissing your white shoes. Do you know that’s a thing on Twitter?”
Please go away Olivia, I thought to myself once again, and again I failed to say it out loud. So she went on . . . again.
“Hashtag, Melody Callahan,” she whispered. “You’re trending. You’re always trending, and you don’t even know it.
“Anytime we step out in public, you’re on Fashion Police, or some other random magazine, being praised. But you don’t care because you’re a fucking Boss. So of course, I was jealous. The stunningly beautiful, always fashionable, deadly frightening Melody Callahan? How the fuck are any of us supposed to stand next to that?”
Why won’t you go away?
“I shouldn’t care right?” She sighed. “But I do care. You’re everything I wanted to be and then some. The object of every man’s desire, and yet never a person. I was born beautiful, and I don’t mean that in a cocky, ‘I love myself’ sort of way. I was born beautiful, and guys always liked me for it. But there was one guy who liked it a little too much. I was a freshman in college. I was actually saving myself for the one, and I knew he wasn’t it. So instead of paying attention in school to those stupid flyers and posters that all read ‘No means No,’ he . . .”
She sobbed, and I just wanted to sleep.
“He pulled me into his dorm room, and no one did anything because I was the pretty girl who most likely did get around. His friends were there and they all—” She stopped, staring at her tattoo, running her finger over it so many times I stopped counting. “When they finished, they laughed at the fact that I was the loosest virgin they had ever had. When I got home, I had never cried or scrubbed myself so hard. The next day I pulled out of all my classes and finished the rest of my college career from the safety of my bedroom.”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me, but I enjoyed the silence as she lost herself in her thoughts. Sadly, it was short-lived.
“I got this tattoo a month before I found Neal. A Dara knot, I wanted to be strong again and it made me feel that. I think that’s why I found Neal, I wasn’t broken anymore.”
If you are in this family you are broken, don’t kid yourself.
“He made me feel safe again, happy again. But there is still this part of me that I can’t fix. I hate people. I hate men . . . all men outside of this family.”
That is the very definition of broken!
“And I hate women in some ways, because I hate myself. So when I saw you walking as if you were on water, I hated you the most. Neal tried to knock some sense into me. He said you’re the queen and I’m the princess. After that, I was able to handle it until Evelyn told me you were pregnant.” She laughed bitterly.
You are insane Olivia. Leave me alone.
“I wanted a child of my own. Neal and I tried over and over again, and
“I never ever meant to hurt you, and I swear from this day forward I will always love you like I should have from the very beginning.” If she knew me at all, she should have known I didn’t want or ask for her love and that I knew it was bullshit. She wanted to make herself feel better not me.
I was tired of listening to her. So I just slept.
LIAM
“What’s your name dear?” my father asked the young crackhead before us as I drank my brandy.
“Whatever you want it to be.” She winked, and I almost puked.
My father on the other hand just leered. “I think Julia Roberts is the only one who can do that line.”
“Redheads your thing?” She pouted, which was also sickening, as she twirled her brown hair.
“My wife’s my thing,” he replied, taking a seat before her. “And your life should be your thing. You see, the only thing that is keeping you alive right now is the thought that you may know something. If you don’t, well . . .”
He just stopped, and the whore began to shake. “I need something to get the edge off.”
Rolling my eyes, I forced myself not to snap her neck.
“What’s your poison?” Sedric said, walking over to the tray of drugs Fedel laid out for him.
That got the girl to perk up like a bitch in heat. “Heroin and Cocaine.”
“Somebody’s a rock star,” my father said. “But let’s not get greedy. Pick one.”
She pouted once again, and once again, I was torn between puking and ripping her lips off.