Children of Ambition

“This is the first verse of genesis. Holy art thou, chaos, chaos, eternity, all contradictions in terms!”

  ~ Aleister Crowley

  GABRIEL

  “Another reason I built that hotel,” I said, lifting the panel so she could look out the window. “Was so that you could see this.”

  “What are you…?” Her voice trailed off as she looked out. We had taken off a little bit ago and she’d been quiet…too quiet. I didn’t want her to miss it. “I can still see it.”

  “I told the pilots to fly as low as they could until you couldn’t see it anymore,” I told her, looking out as well to see the Obelisk in the distance, the only thing still so clear because of the light reflected in the glass. “In ancient Egypt, the Obelisk represented the mound from which a cry awoke creation and set life in motion and it also symbolized another cry, which would mark the end of life.”

  She snickered to herself, leaning on the windowpane and watching until we were too far to see anything else and the plane began to rise. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. When she opened them again I saw a familiar look of determination.

  “Amelia, tell her everything you know,” I said, rising from my chair. “I’ll be back.”

  I walked to the front of our cabin and into the guard’s cabin. They all began to rise to their feet, but I shook my head. I noticed two who didn’t move. Sebastian stood in the aisle beside them.

  “They gave us kids?” I frowned. The two teenagers were familiar.

  “When do you think they’re going to ask us our ages instead of calling us kids?” The one on the right said as he clicked away on his video game again.

  “I think we’re always going to be called kids,” the other yawned, tugging on his eye-mask and shrugging his shoulders as he relaxed into the chair.

  “That’s going to get annoying,” the second replied and Sebastian looked at me as if I had some damn answer as to why they were on my plane. Last, I remembered seeing of either of them was when they were driving me and Donatella to the mansion.

  Finally, the second one rose from his chair and put his video game on the seat. His brown hair was buzzed on the sides and kept high at the top. He had two small black birthmarks, one by his right eye and other over his left lip.

  “I’m Gunner, short for Guthrie, full name Jerome Guthrie. If it shoots, I can shoot it, and I don’t miss. I’m seventeen,” he looked Sebastian. “I’m not kid. Don’t like being called a kid.” He looked back at me. “Behind me is Loïc Landry, they found him in a ditch in De La Fontaine, so I don’t know if that’s his real name but you can call him either Loïc or Landry. If you need something or someone, he’ll find them and get it. Nice to meet you, Sir… We look forward to working for you.”

  He said the last part with no emotion, as if he were reading off a cue card.

  It was quite funny. I put my hands-on Sebastian’s shoulder as I moved them forward. “Teach them the rules and don’t call them kids…at least to not their faces.”

  I didn’t hear whatever else was said between them as I walked to the cockpit of the plane. The steward there bowed once, taking his leave. I knocked once right over the keyhole and the door slid open.

  Stepping inside, the door slid closed behind me as I sat in the seat closest to the door.

  “Don’t you think the two of you are being quite bold?” I asked, leaning back in the chair.

  “You obviously don’t know us very well, Gabriel,” he replied coldly, looking over his shoulder to ask, “How is our princess?”

  I glared into his green eyes, the spitting image of hers. “How in the name of God can you both sit here so comfortably, knowing your daughter spent the morning putting flowers on your grave?”

  He got up, taking off his hat and running his hands through his dark brown and gray hair. He walked the two steps it took to get to me then bent down and smacked the side of my leg.

  “I sit the same way you’re sitting; the same way you will continue to sit knowing full well you’ve been lying to her face. That your father didn’t give you any letter. He didn’t tell you to go to England for school. You were exiled by your step-mother. When we found you, you were waiting to die, not planning revenge. You haven’t been speaking to Evelyn but to us. Lie after lie after lie and now you want to take the moral high ground with us? Us, who saved you from hopelessness. We spent the last ten months teaching you everything you needed to know about our children and walk out alive. We picked up that crown, dusted it off, and put it back on your handsome little head. We did this not for you. I couldn’t care less about you. We did this for her. It’s her country, her throne; we’re just letting her share it with you. Have you forgotten?”

  How could anyone forget selling their souls?

  GABRIEL - TEN MONTHS AGO

  “What do you think? Could I be the next Monet?” I asked Sebastian, looking up from the painting back at him only to see his old brown face frowning at me. “What? It’s good!”

  “It's a bowl of fruit,” he stated.

  “It's a painting of a bowl of fruit,” I corrected, wiping the red paint off the tip of my brush.

  “Yes, another painting of a bowl of fruit to add to the world’s never-ending collection of painted bowls of fruits.”

  I didn't say anything, gently cleaning off the paint, which made my hands look like they were covered in blood.

  “But yes, sir, your painting is nice.”

  “No point flattering me now,” I snickered and looked to him again as he walked over to the kitchen sink. “Tell me, Sebastian, what is an exiled prince supposed to do with his time?"

  He paused for only a brief moment before slipping the dishwashing gloves on to his hands. “One of two things. Option one, forget he was ever a prince at all and live as all normal men live.”

  “Option two?” I asked, rising from my stool and moving to the sink beside him.

  “Be a prince, take back your birthright.”

  “Two impossible options, thank you,” I said bitterly, washing my hands before reaching to take the second pair of gloves but he stopped me. His brown hand on my wrist. His brown eyes serious as he said, “Only one of those things is impossible and it’s not taking back your country. Don’t wash the dishes; it's beneath you.”

  “It’s beneath you too, and yet here you are.”

  “I know it’s beneath me.” he replied, snatching the gloves from my hands. “So, let’s just think of it as an investment.”

  “In what?” I turned around to watch him complete the task that he thought was beneath me.

  “One day when you return, when you are crowned sovereign, you will remember my many long years of suffering beside you and you shall drape me in honors so high even my great-grandchildren will brag.”

  I laughed at that. At least one of us still dreamed. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I told him the hard truth. "For you to have great-grandchildren… You’re going to need children, and I don't know how you are going to do that when you've decided to spend the rest of your life hovering over me."

  “You must be a prince; you have to have the last words on everything.”

  “I do not!” I said, walking over to the refrigerator and reaching inside for a bottle of water. All of sudden, a chill went down my spine.

  Lifting my arm up slowly, I watched as the hair on it began to rise.

  “What now—” Sebastian looked over to me. The look on my face must have terrified him so much that he forgot to take off his gloves before rushing to me. “Gabriel! Gabriel!!”

  I tried to speak but I couldn’t. My throat burned hotter than hell. It was like someone was pouring lava down my throat. My legs buckled…my body fell forward…was like my mind was disconnected from my body and I lost complete control of myself… “Gabriel hold on! Dear me, hold on!” I could see his lips moving but couldn't hear him. He rolled me to my side and I don’t know when he managed to get ahold of his gun or why he even needed it until glasses and plates above me shattered, raining broken shards all aro
und. I could only see their boots as they attacked.

  Peaches and vinegar, I could smell it. It was coming from me…

  MOVE, Gabriel! FUCKING MOVE! My mind yelled for a brief second but just when I tried the burning intensified. One minute I couldn't feel anything and the next, I could only feel the burning; as though my flesh was being scorched off my bones.

  Please, God, please… I begged as I saw a pair of black combat boots stop in front of me. The boot rose and kicked me to my side.

  No. I’m a goddamn prince! I won’t beg! I will never BEG! With all the strength I could muster, I found the will to say, “Fuck you.”

  Breathing through the pain, I could barely see anything but the slender object in his hand. Bending down, he brought his hand back and I didn't look away. He was not going to see fear in my eyes. Like a hammer, he brought his hand down into my chest. Whatever he stabbed me with, spread like ice throughout my whole body. As if I were coming up for air, I inhaled greedily and rolled on to my side.

  “Fuck me? That's not what you say to the people who just saved your life, now is it?” An older woman, not a man, with an American accent spoke. She took the black mask off her face, revealing her shoulder-length black hair and brown eyes.

  “Do you plan on lying there all day?” I glanced past her towards the brown-haired, green-eyed man walking up to us. He reached into the open fridge and took out an apple. His accent was more… Irish?

  “Really?” the woman said to him.

  “What?”

  “You're going to eat an apple from the fridge of a prince whose evil stepmother's favorite method of murder is poison.”

  “What? She wasn't poisoning the food; it was his paint.”

  I glanced over to my canvas…then back at them.

  “Who…who are you people?’

  “Who we are isn't the question you should be asking,” the man crouched down in front me, taking a bite of the apple. “This is the part where you ask me what you should be asking.”

  The woman beside him didn’t speak, merely putting her elbow on his shoulder blade…in her hand a silver gun. She smiled, but it wasn't comforting.

  “You saved me to just kill me?’

  “We've done crazier things,” the man replied, shrugging before taking another bite. I believed him.

  “What is the question I should be asking?” I asked, as he had requested.

  He stood upright, offering his hand to the woman who took it, rising beside him. She spoke for him, “Can we help you kill your stepmother and punish your enemies…can we make them bow at your feet…so you can cut their heads off?’

  “Can you?’ I asked.

  This time, she was the one who grinned. “We're the mafia, we can do everything.”

  “The mafia?” I snickered. “Do you both know what year it is?”

  “Apparently, it’s the year of bitch-ass princes locked in towers,” the man stated, walking over to Sebastian, who lay bleeding the ground but still breathing. The man pulled out his gun again and pointed.

  “Stop!” I pushed myself off the ground, my legs still so weak I nearly fell. I forced myself up right and I grabbed onto his arm. “He's my guard.”

  “He’s a shitty guard,” he replied.

  “He’s with me.” I could only repeat because my throat still ached when I spoke.

  “When you’re with us, you don't need anyone else,” the woman said and the man glanced down to my hand on his arm, telling me with his eyes to release him. I only held on tighter.

  “I didn't say I was with you.”

  “That doesn't save him; it just means you die with him,” he countered.

  “And here I thought the mafia honored loyalty—”

  “Only until it comes against self-preservation,” she said, walking over to us. “He's old; what you need to do is beyond him. He can't protect you anymore—”

  “I'll protect him, then! He's family! MY FAMILY. SO PUT DOWN THE FUCKING GUN!”

  “Yell at my wife again and I’ll shove this gun down your throat first,” he snapped, the barrel of gun pointed at me.

  “Go ahead, then. You’re the ones who have wasted your time. Or does the mafia go around saving bitch-ass princes in towers for free, now?” I snapped back.

  There was silence.

  They glanced at each other for moment and when the man took his hand off the trigger, I finally let him go.

  “Fine, he lives. But if you want to win this fight, you’re going to have to leave him, your morality, and any sort of compassion left in you, behind,” he said, staring me the eye. “You'll never take the throne with how weak you are now. Abandon him and everything else and we'll make sure you’re stronger than even you thought was possible.”

  “Why does it sound like I'm selling my soul?”

  “What good is a soul when you’re not even free to live in a shitty apartment in West London,” she stated, waving her arms around the hellhole I'd been calling a home. “Do you want this or do you want Monaco? If so, there is a price. That is how your stepmother took it out of your family’s hands to begin with. You can only beat evil with a greater evil. So, I will ask you once and only once: do you want to rule or do you want to die in this shitty apartment?”

  I didn't have to think about it which said a lot more about me than I was willing to admit aloud yet. “My humanity never helped me, anyway.”

  “Then let us introduce ourselves,” the man said and outstretched his hand. I outstretched mine but instead of taking it, he balled his own hand into a fist, pulled it back, and punched me in the face so hard I felt blood pool in my mouth, and stumbled back. “I'm Liam, the beautiful woman standing behind me is my wife Melody. You can call us Mr. and Mrs. Callahan until you earn the right to call us by our first names. It’s an impossible goal, but you should still put in the effort. Now pack. We have less than a year to break and remake you.”

  Callahan. I knew that name. But I wasn’t sure where from… All I knew was I’d asked for help from God and two devils had walked in, instead.

  GABRIEL - NOW

  “Liam,” Melody’s smooth voice spoke up from behind me but it wasn’t harsh like it normal was; it was softer now, gentle. “He’s already been interrogated by our sons. We don’t want him to secretly hate her, now do we?”

  He frowned, showing the lines on his face. “Would it kill you to let me have fun, too?”

  “I’m already dead, baby, didn’t you hear?” she replied, causing him to snicker before focusing back on me.

  Rising from my chair as he rose from the ground, I didn’t back down from him. “I never want to see or hear from either of you ever again. Your version of events never happened. You hold no power over me and if you think you can use me to do anything, I will tell her that neither of you is rotting away at the Callahan cemetery.”

  “You’ll die before you can even open your mouth,” he responded and once again I saw where Ethan got it from.

  “Maybe,” I grinned, too… I wasn’t the same man they had met back then. They’d made me into one of them. Now I knew the Callahan family rules. My favorite was Rule #2 take no prisoners and have no regrets about it. I disagreed with it. Prisoner make great leverage. “Maybe you’ll kill me before I can out you… But I’ll make damn sure to take your daughter to the grave with me.”

  The smile on his face dropped as he glared at me, “Watch yourself—”

  “Better yet, you watch yourself,” I sneered back. “There is a saying… Even the devil loves his kids? Your daughter…your only daughter… Has now invested her whole life and ambitions in me. She’s ripped herself from everything knows and cares about… Kill me, you shatter that.”

  “Are you hiding behind my daughter?” His jaw cracked to the side. “She’s isn’t that weak—”

  “Not yet…But what happens if I make sure she loves me so deeply, so insanely, that if I die, she’ll want to die too? Luckily, she knows that type of love from watching you two. And we both have something to bond over??
?parents who left scars. So, you go ahead, the best time to pull that trigger is now…Liam…or should call you Dad?”

  He huffed then snickered until he just laughed like the madman that he was, leaning back on the chair his wife sat in. The way he smiled, the way he stared, it put all of his children to shame… The real devil of devils, the true Mad Hatter of Chicago.

  “Finally, you sound like a son-in-law I can tolerate. I would applaud you but again, we did all the hard work.” He said in a serious tone before dangerously adding, “Don’t worry, you won’t see us again.”

  “But you’ll be watching, correct—”

  “Liam,” Melody spoke up again, rising up from the pilot’s chair and ignoring me completely as she handed him her phone. His eyebrows bunched in confusion for a brief second before looking down at the screen… The moment he did, his whole body went stiff. He grabbed on to the phone tightly, his nose flaring.

  Melody, coldly glanced over at me, her brown eyes like daggers, “Play time is over. Go back to her and don’t make a habit of leaving her alone.”

  “What’s going on?” I knew that look on their faces. I’d seen it once before, and they only had it when they thought one of their children was in danger.

  “Gabriel, you’ll never be good enough for my daughter. I know that, he knows that, and most importantly, Dona knows that,” she said in a voice even icier than before, her stare even harsher. “Nevertheless, I chose you. I chose you because you are the only person who can make Dona do what she needs to do; focus on herself and what she wants and needs, even when she does not realize it. Do you understand?”

  The words coming out of her mouth? No. I did not understand. But the reason for her to speak so seriously, that I understood… Something, somewhere had gone terribly wrong.

  I had nothing to say, even though I had so much to say… Luckily or unluckily, there was knock on the door and they both turned, grabbing their hats and sitting back in the pilot seats.

  “Goodbye, Gabriel. Let’s not meet again,” she added… And Liam never said a word, he just sat like sculpted stone.