Stepping down the stairs, I walked up to the bar completely aware everyone was now watching me.
“Sweetheart—”
“You know, if I were having a better day, I would have batted my eyelashes and spoken in a cute voice, begging you for just one drink,” I said. Lifting the vodka from behind the bar as well as a glass, I poured myself a shot before throwing it back. “And you would have given it to me, too.”
“This is a—”
“Please don’t interrupt me,” I said, pouring myself another shot. “I’m trying to get something off my chest here.”
Two men stood, walking to the bar and flanking me on each side.
I just threw back the shot and glanced at the bartender. “Well, straight off the bat, your customer service is shit.”
“How about I get you a cab, little lady?”
“Wow, you all really are going through the chauvinist dictionary, huh. What’s next? Little girl?” I snickered, taking another shot.
The bartender nodded his head to the others, then lifted the duffle bag I had on my arm. He dumped everything onto the countertop…and by everything, I meant just one thing.
“That is the arm of the last man who got on my nerves. Would anyone like to add to my collection?” I asked, raising my glass and looking behind me at all of them.
They were all just staring at the now burnt arm between me and my vodka. Taking another shot, I glanced back at the bartender. “Now that I’ve established I’m not a cop, do me a favor, sweetheart. Go through those doors, do your special secret handshake or knock or whatever the hell you all do in this pitiful place, and get my grandfather before you get hurt.”
“I don’t know who your grandfather is, but you got another thing coming if you think you can come into my place and order me around,” the bartender snapped, lifting a shotgun from under the table and pointing it at me, each of the other men following his lead.
“If this gets any more cliché, Robert De Niro will have to be wheeled out on his death bed,” I muttered, filling my glass before meeting the eyes of the black and white model on the screen. “Grandpa, would you prefer your friends to die of old age or by me this afternoon?”
“That’s it. I’ve had enough—”
“It’s okay, Garry,” my grandfather stated, coming in from the back, dressed in a gray suit and holding his damn silver, eagle-tipped cane…despite the fact that there was nothing wrong with his legs. “She’s family.”
“That’s right, Garry; I’m family. Which means that the gun should go down now.”
He looked between us and then back to my grandfather. “This is the grandkid you’re always going on about? The one you said was an angel?”
“Duh. Do you not see the halo?” I said, pointing to my head.
“Forgive her,” my grandfather said toward me. “She’s apparently out of sorts today.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I muttered, this time sipping my drink. “You’re forcing me to be out of sorts today, would be a much better way to put it, though. Because of that, I brought you a present. Sorry, I had to burn it or the blood would ruin my interior.”
“Gentlemen, I’m going to need the room,” he said, and all of them got up, walking toward the same back door he’d come out of. It was only when the doors stopped swinging back and forth did he step up beside me. “This is sloppy, Calliope, and unlike you. You took a loyal man’s arm off because—”
“If he were loyal, he’d still have the arm,” I stated, shifting my glare to him. “But then again, I guess it’s a question of loyalty to whom.”
“If we are all on the same team, does it matter?”
“You are a shitty teammate, Grandpa.”
“Calliope, I am hurt. After all these years I have spent raising you, now I am a bad teammate? You know this isn’t—”
“This isn’t about me?” I asked and then laughed. “Yes, I know. This is about your plans. Your revenge. I’m just the vehicle that gets you there. Let me guess, you denied me my people because you wanted to cut the Callahans down even further.”
“And since when has that been a problem?” he snapped.
“Since I got into the damn house!” I took a deep breath and pulled back.
“Grandpa…we have a plan. It’s gotten us this far. We are nearing the end of the road, and yet, you and Grandmother seem dead set on fucking all of us over. It’s not me who is being sloppy; it is you two! You don’t think Ethan won’t find it odd that on the same day he tried and failed to get more men, someone tipped off the FBI to one of his biggest stash houses just one day after he told me about them? Hell, not even a full day. Because of you, I am now a failure to him.”