Ethan tapped on the window, never looking away from me and never letting any emotion cross his face.
“Yes, Boss.”
“Get out…Officer…” He glanced down at my badge, so I held it out for him to see properly. His jaw cracked to the side. “Officer Allahanc and I need to talk.”
“Yes, Boss.” The lanky boy came hopping out.
Ethan opened the door, entering first before I followed suit when the door closed. The very first thing he said was, “Allahanc? Really?”
“What? You don’t like it?” I snickered, polishing off the badge before taking off my sunglasses.
“I just simply think it’s moronic, for a man who is supposed to be dead to be using an anagram of his legal name as his disguise.”
“Exactly, so moronic no one would even think about it, and therefore, it’s the perfect disguise.”
“Wow,” he whispered. “Wyatt really is just a copy of you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment on both sides, especially considering how much effort you went to in order to get him back on your side.” If he loved the carbon copy of me, that meant, by default, he had loved the original. Even if he didn’t want to admit that now.
“I can’t take all the praise for that.” He frowned. “After all, you and mother were in Boston, too. Tell me, I’ve been curious to know, how does it feel to play fucking God and watch as your children suffer from afar?”
He was barely at the tip of his rage; I could feel it. Even though I expected it, feeling it was a different matter altogether.
“I didn’t come to justify my actions to you, Ethan—”
“How could you? They are unjustifiable, Liam.” He cut in with a coldness that I was prepared for but was still stunned by. The memories I had of my son and the man that was beside me were clashing.
“As are many other shitty things I’ve done,” I declared. “Just like many other shitty things you’ve done. Would you like an apology? If so, I think you should write it, so you can pass it down to your daughter when she wonders why the fuck her father wasn’t there for the first moments of her life.”
“Do not compare us. Being gone in the beginning, during a period she will not remember, is different than vanishing before our eyes.”
I clapped for him. “That is some nice bullshit spinning there, son. You almost sounded wise. Being gone in the beginning? What the fuck does that mean? Where does the beginning start and end? No matter what, you missed your daughter’s life—”
?
?I will not abandon my daughter ever, just to go gallivanting across the world—”
“That gallivanting we did saved your motherfucking life, more times than you could even dream of knowing,” I snapped.
“I will just have to take your word for it, huh? You abandon us and then tell us it was for our own good. That you saved us.” This time he clapped. “Bravo to you, then. They should carve you both out of fucking gold, and bow down to how bloody smart you both fucking were.”
“Ethan—”
“Spare me your bullshit, Liam. Maybe it will work on Wyatt or Dona…oh, especially Dona. Maybe it will erase the years she spent unable to eat, weeping at an empty grave, torturing herself every motherfucking day, trying to live up to a memory of a mother who just threw her away. You both broke us all, to the point where we wished we were dead. But hey, at least you guys defeated the invisible monsters. However, I wanted to know, if you could save us so many times while you were dead, why the fuck were you so weak when you were alive? How the fuck did every other goddamn Callahan manage to raise their children before you?”
There was a way I had hoped this would have gone. It was a stupid and impractical dream, but nevertheless, I still hoped for it. However, the reality was, there was no going back, and he was going to have this hate no matter what I said. He was justified, too.
“I came today to warn you about Calliope and her whole family,” I said, getting to my point.
“I don’t give a flying fuck why you came, Liam. Just go back under the rock you came out of, until I’m ready to kill you.”
At that, I did face him, and there was nothing on his face. “Kill me, you say?” I snickered at that. “Just me, or your mother, too?”
“My parents died a long time ago. You’re just strangers with their faces.”
I nodded and dropped a phone between us before placing my shades back on. “If you do manage to get a chance, son, remember what I taught you, twice—”
“Twice in the head, once in the heart, don’t worry, I don’t miss, Officer Allahanc,” he sneered.