“If you try to put me on the bench, Liam, so help me I will start cutting body parts off. I may be pregnant, but I am still Bloody Motherfucking Melody. I can destroy anyone I want. I’ll chalk it up to hormones.” She glared, and I could see the same woman who shot me in the thigh.
I felt my dick rise at her words and her position on top of me.
“Bloody Motherfucking Melody, indeed.” I snickered, rubbing against her. I watched her eyes glaze over as she let the knife drop to the floor and kissed me.
When our phones rang and she pulled away, I felt the need to snap whichever fool thought to call us at two in the morning.
“Speak,” she said into the phone as I kissed her legs. “We will be right there.”
No, we’ll be right here! My mind begged.
Hanging up, Mel jumped out of bed, leaving me hard as a fucking rock in bed.
“Amory and Saige burned down my fucking house,” she snapped angrily as she stomped into the closet.
I groaned to myself. “Damn them all to hell.”
“Liam, get your horny fucking ass out of bed and help me kill a bitch!” she yelled.
Oh, I was going to kill them all right.
MELODY
I leaned against the car, watching as the Giovanni Villa burned to the ground. The fire department was trying their best to control the fire, but a deadlier one was burning inside me.
Fedel ran up to me. “There was a note on the gate, ma’am.”
I saw Liam reaching for it, but I snatched it before he could and glared at him. He was not going to treat me differently. I wouldn’t have it.
You burn my shit, I burn yours. All is fair in war. Congrats on the baby. Such a happy time for you both.
XOXO
A&S
Liam grabbed the letter, his nose flaring with just as much rage as mine was.
There was only one other person who knew I was pregnant.
I roared into Fedel’s face. “Find Dr. Anderson, now!”
Liam turned to me, his eyes still hard. “Everything is different now.”
I nodded, opening the car door and taking a seat. Everything was different. I was now a bigger target. I was always a target, but now so was my child—the next leader of our empire—and because of that, I was going to have to change. Not into Evelyn or Coraline, but a different type of leader. I was going to have to figure out how to be ruthless and pregnant. Amory and Saige picked the wrong motherfucking family to mess with.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“He pulls a knife,
you pull a gun,
he sends one of yours to the hospital,
you send one of his to the morgue . . .”
~ Al Capone
LIAM
“What’s a five letter word for mortality?” I asked the man in the hospital cast in front of me.
He said nothing, but that had to be due to all the morphine. Smirking, I snapped my fingers and filled in the spaces of the newspaper crossword.
“That’s right, death,” I said to him. “It seems even God is mocking you Commissioner . . . ex-Commissioner now, right? People don’t like suicidal cops.”
He just glared as I continued with my game.
“Seven letter word for ineffective. Don’t tell me, failure. Seriously, this is today’s crossword. Can you believe it? It’s like they made it about your life.”
“Is that why you’re here, Callahan, to kick a man when he is down? I’m not shocked,” he hissed out, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to the pain or because he was ticked off.
“I don’t kick a man when he is down. I put a bullet in his skull. You should know that.” I sighed, placing the paper down.
“Then kill me already,” he yelled, making me want to roll my eyes.
“Not until you answer a few of my questions,” I replied, rising to my feet. I reached over and grabbed his oxygen mask.
Taking it off his bruised face, he took a deep breath before it turned into short gasps for air. He reached over for the nurse call button so I pushed it for him. Once, then twice, and then a few more times for the heck of it.
“This side of the hospital has been cleared, so let’s chat.” I grinned, giving him a few seconds of air before pulling the mask from his face again.
“Go to hell,” he breathed out.
“My wife is a raging homicidal hormonal pregnant woman. I sleep with hell.” I sighed, giving him air again.
“Give me a second to shit bricks of sadness.”
And I laughed, too, before grabbing the pillow from behind his head, pressing it against his face.
“I’m not in the mood for a smartass,” I snapped at him. When I took the pillow off his face, he coughed like a dying chain smoker.
He held on to my hand as I fed him his air. “Let’s start with something simple. Why did you jump out of your hotel room? That could kill, you know.”
He tried to hold on to the air but I simply ripped it from him.
“You burned down my house.”
“I wasn’t charged, tried, or arrested for anything.”
“I know it was you! You Callahans destroy everything.” His voice broke, and again, I rolled my eyes. “But you warned me and I should have . . . you warned me and so it’s my fault they died. That little girl, you sick mother! I told you about her! It was me. I-I—”
“Please don’t get emotional, that was only my first question.” I needed him alive right now.
“No games, what do you want from me? You have taken everything.” He coughed, leaning back on his bed.
“I want to know everything you have on the Valero.” He laughed liked a mad man, and when he did, I held the pillow to his face again. He struggled until he was too weak, and it was then that I let him go.
“Let’s do this again.” I held on to his face. “Tell me about Amory, Saige, and Vance or so help me God, I will make you wish you had died. I will make sure you are alive and well, trapped in your own fucking body like a jail cell. Each day, I will make sure someone personally gives me a patch of your skin until you are nothing but an open wound. What . . . do . . . you . . . know?”
He smiled. “They want you dead, your wife, your child, and every last Callahan. They tried bringing you down the legal way, but I’m a failure remember? They are just as ruthless as you are. Word on the street is that your wife’s personal doctor was tortured and then dismembered.”
“Word on the street? Did you hear that when your body collided with it?” I wanted to rip the smiled from his lips.
“Doesn’t change the fact that they are coming for you,” he said, and when he did, I pulled away, grabbed the morphine drip and replaced the liquid.
“This is adrenaline in small doses. It blocks out pain. In large doses, it does the opposite. You feel everything.” I tapped the bag. “You’re not going to ride to the afterlife in sweet painless bliss. You’re going to feel it all, and right as your heart gives out, think about how big of an idiot you were to step into my house. The very day this city was born, people like me have run Chicago. You thought you were the next somebody who did shit. But all you will be remembered as will be the motherfucker who failed at his marriage, failed at his job, and failed to even kill himself.”
Grabbing my newspaper, I walked back to the door.
“This isn’t over Callahan. It doesn’t just end with me. You won’t always be untouchable. You’re only human!” he yelled at me.