“Then we got to live to 201,” he replied. “I don’t want her grieving over anyone else. She’s been through hell because of all of this.”
I nodded. When I thought about how long she’d lived on the sidelines of our merciless, bloody lives…how many people she’d watched get lowered into the ground, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to just let her have peace. Let her enjoy family. “We’ve always watched over them…but Wyatt’s right. We need to be together again. One family under one roof again. Whatever he needs…no matter how far…we’ll have their backs right there on the ground with them. Ethan, too. Dona if she ever gives up that crown.”
He scuffed. “Yeah, good luck getting that thing out of her hands. She’s been walking around with an invisible one all of her life. Now that it’s real and everyone knows it? I feel sorry for the poor motherfuckers that try to get in her way.”
“When this is settled, I want to take a better look at this Gabriel, too.” The fact he’d just take her from the family without even meeting the rest of us…I don’t give a fuck that he’s a prince. I wouldn’t stand for such disrespect. Liam would have spoon fed him his own balls.
“Understood. Now if you’ll excuse me, the Mahdoc is walking up, and I have questions about your thinking equals grey hair bullshit!”
“You’re an idiot,” I laughed, and he just hung up on me. Taking off the Bluetooth and tossing it on to the table, I glanced out at the blue sky. We were going back to Chicago. Home.
And with home came the madness.
“Are you going to sit there all day, or are you going to help your wife get some proper rest?” Evelyn called out to me.
Grinning, I stood up, turning back to them. “The moment I move her, she’s going to wake up.”
“Not after the s
edative I just gave her,” Evelyn replied, sipping her tea.
My eyes shifted quickly to Cora, watching her chest rise softly, thankfully, as I moved to her. “You drugged my wife?”
“Somebody had to…the way she’s been hovering over me the last few weeks, she was bound to crash sooner or later. Better now before we go back into the heart of darkness,” she said with no remorse as I gently brushed the dark curls of Cora’s face, moving her head onto my shoulder.
“Evelyn,” I inhaled, trying to speak calmly. “Thank you for your concern, but I’d rather you didn’t resort to drugging her.”
“I rather not have churches fall on top of me, but what can you do? Some things are out of your control,” she replied, sipping her tea again. I didn’t want to smile, but I couldn’t help it. It was good having her back to her normal, witty self again.
For the most part, thanks to some of the best doctors, and most expensive, on this planet, you could barely see the scars on her arms and neck anymore. She sat on her own, dressed in black trousers, a stripped blouse, and a gold and green double-breasted jacket.
“Ethan took care of those ingrates,” I told her seriously.
She looked to me, her dark eyes hard and angry. “Then another set of ingrates killed his wife. They hurt my grandson. Now he’s only god knows where.”
“He’ll be back—”
“I know he’ll back. He’s Ethan. He knows his responsibilities. He needs to get himself straight, but I don’t doubt he’ll be back. What I need to be sure about is Wyatt.”
Once again, I remembered that I wasn’t just sitting across from the woman who had raised me since I was a child—my aunt and my mother—but instead the former wife of the Ceann Na Conairte, mother of the Ceann Na Conairte, now grandmother to Ceann Na Conairte. She was as, if not more, attached to our family’s business and empire than anyone else.
“Wyatt was the one who set who fire to our center? He put our people into the hospital?” she asked me for confirmation.
I nodded. “They’re calling him Mahdoc now.”
“Good.” She placed her cup down and lifted her book again, which was ironically Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. “It’s time he became the man his mother said he’d be.”
“What?” Melody never said anything about Wyatt. In fact, she seemed to coddle him, which for Melody, it was odd to see how soft and gentle she was to him. She loved all of her children. But she was always especially attached to Wyatt…it was how everyone knew he was her favorite.
“You didn’t see it?” She glanced to me and seemed honestly shocked.
“See what?”
“Declan, she wasn’t coddling Wyatt. She was weaponizing him.”
“What?” I laughed, holding on to Cora. “You make it seem like she was creating a biological weapon.”
“In a way, she was.” She leaned back, propping her head up on the arm of the couch as she explained. “Slowly, carefully, painstakingly, she was morphing Wyatt, a boy who was going to be dangerous simply by nature for being a Callahan, into someone more dangerous. She pushed Ethan and Dona to be strong mentally and physically, because she knew they were both going to rule. They needed to be able to see all the people trying to hurt them. They needed that foresight. But with Wyatt, she wanted him to forget who our enemies were and who our friends were…forget everything but who he was. While Ethan and Dona always cared about the overall family, Wyatt only cares about Wyatt.”