American Savages

  Which was odd since it was Mel’s gun.

  I placed the gun down on the dresser and started at my reflection. I looked like shit and felt ten times worse.

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her.

  I’d said that I was done and I was. Right now, I needed to focus on getting our…my…the men back in line.

  Leaving my room, I hoped no one else would care to share their wisdom with me. I figured Mel was going to give some sort of speech, which meant I was going to have to add something. Riding the elevator to the basement, I heard nothing. It was completely silent, the air was still and no one moved.

  Stepping out, I saw Coraline sitting in the corner with Ethan who stood on her lap. The rest of the men, including my father, Olivia, Neal, and Declan all stood around my boxing ring. Mel was inside, walking in a square, slowly wrapping her fists. Her dark hair was in a tight ponytail and her face was void of anything but stewing raging. When her brown eyes fell on me, she seemed stuck in place, as if I had pressed pause. Moments later, she regained her stride and composure.

  “As you all can see, I am not dead. For those of you who doubted me, I will find you and I will weed out your sorry asses. You all were supposed to be rock solid, made of iron, and instead you all look weaker than a newborn calf. Fedel, get in,” she commanded. And like the Red Sea, the men parted and allowed Fedel to enter the ring. “Hit me.”

  He positioned himself and within a second his fist went flying towards her face, fast. I took a step forward without even thinking about it before I stepped back. He was fast, but she was faster. She blocked his fist, and punched him in the neck and chest before dropping low and kicking him off his feet. She pressed her foot into his neck, and held him down.

  “Get out of my ring,” she sneered, as she lifted her foot.

  Coughing, Fedel rolled over and picked his sorry ass up off the ground.

  “Next!” she called. One of my men, Kain Fionn, slicked back his dark hair and held his fists up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He had at least a hundred pounds, if not more on her, but that didn’t seem to faze her a bit.

  The second his arm came towards her, she dodged it. He kept punching and she just kept moving. She was letting the idiot overexert himself, and like a fool, he was letting her. He was pissing me off and making the Irish look bad. His fist slowed as he drew in a breath, and in that second, her arm curled back and her fist collided with his nose. We all heard the sickening pop as his head snapped backwards. His blood dripped from both his nose and her fist as he went down.

  Moron.

  “You’re an idiot, get the fuck out of my ring,” she sighed. “Next.”

  Monte went up and Monte’s ass came right back down. None of them could even land a finger on her. She was ten times better than I remembered her being.

  But then again, she had spent five months training. God only knows what these fuckers had been doing in those five months…most likely blowing my…our…the family’s money away. It would’ve been funny if I wasn’t so pissed off and turned on by her all at the same time. The way she breathed, how her hair whipped back and forth, the amount of damage she did. She was beautiful, even covered in blood and sweat. It reminded me of when I first saw her.

  Damn it, calm down. Calm down.

  I could not face her with a hard on.

  When Declan got into the ring, I grinned. I grinned so wide I must have looked like the Cheshire cat. Declan met my gaze and glared.

  This is what your bitch ass gets.

  But, she didn’t fight him. Instead she began to unwrap her fists.

  “How many of our people have betrayed me, Declan?”

  This isn’t fucking jeopardy. Kick his ass.

  “Two?” he asked eyeing her carefully. “Patrick and Adriana.”

  She smiled. “Wrong.”

  With that she jumped up and kicked him square in the fucking jaw. The child in me wanted to fist pump. In my peripheral, I saw Coraline stand and glare into Mel’s back.

  “Three. Patrick, Nelson, and Adriana,” she said as she resumed taking off her wraps. “After Patrick had been set on fire, I assumed none of you would want to follow in his footsteps. But I was mistaken. Loyalty is the price you pay to us. Every moment of every second, your life’s goal is to please us. And yet I know one you cocksuckers is still stupid enough to try and one up us. Patrick, Nelson, and Adriana are all dead. I will find you. I will break you. And when I do, you will have to crawl into hell to find relief. No one has the benefit of the doubt. I do not trust any of you. It saddens me that it has to be this way, but it is what you all chose. If I think you are betraying us, I will torture and kill you, slowly. Blood…” She looked at Declan, Neal, Olivia, Sedric, and Coraline. “Or not. I have my own to protect, and if you think that in any way makes me weak, you are sorely mistaken.”

  Glancing outwards, she waited for me to add something as if I had anything else to add to her display of power.

  “Things are going to change,” I said to them all as I walked towards the ring. “From now on, we will personally call on you at random, even if it’s to tie my fucking shoe. If you fail, you will die. If you disappoint me, you will die. If we have to remind you of something twice, you will die. I hope your vacation was well spent. You have streets to run, correct? If I were you, and I’m glad I’m not, I would start double checking them. I feel like I’m losing the money. How about you, dear?”

  Mel raised an eyebrow and frowned. “My pockets do feel lighter.”

  “So why are you all still here?” I snapped at them. “Do your jobs and make us fucking giddy!”

  They left quickly, trying to hold on to any sliver of pride they had left.

  “Liam, can we talk?” Neal asked me.

  “Is it about our personal lives?” I questioned, as I entered the ring with Mel. I knew he had to take over much of the family business while I was away, and I was going to make sure he knew that that had only been temporary. Power was far more addicting than any drug. He had tasted it and my instincts told me to trust him least of all.

  “It can wait.” He frowned, taking a step back.

  “Mel, I’ve scheduled interviews…” Coraline started to say but my wife cut her off.

  “Why?”

  “We need the image boost, it must be done,” I interrupted. Mel and I locked eyes. “We’re going to need a moment.”

  She looked so beautiful.

  “Why get me alone, so you can keep calling me an idiot for not running to you?” Mel questioned once they left.

  “Why waste my breath, Melody, you don’t give a fuck anyway,” I snapped at her.

  “Don’t speak for me, Liam Callahan, especially when you do not know what you’re talking about—”

  “Don’t I? You are—”

  Before I could get the words out, her fist came flying towards my face so quickly I didn’t even have time to think. I just reacted. I kicked into her side and she flew back. It was an automatic response, not something that was deliberately done. I thought I’d enjoy watching her hurt, but looking at her as she crumbled to the ring’s floor just made my heart lurch. I couldn’t look at her anymore.

  “I’m not in the mood to play anymore of your games.”

  I didn’t want to do this.

  “Good fucking thing this isn’t about you!” she hissed, and once she was up again, and her fist flew.

  I grabbed onto it and she headed butted me square in the jaw, causing me to squeeze tightly, and pull down on her arm. She elbowed me in the face and I grabbed her by the neck and pinned her to the ground. Her fingers pressed into my eyes, and her legs snaked around my waist as she tried to blind me.

  “I will hurt you,” I sneered through clenched teeth, as I squeezed her neck even harder.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she sneered through a wheeze.

  What the fuck did that mean?

  Letting go of her, I saw the marks on her neck from my hand and tried to back away slowly, but s
he held me in place.

  My eyes went to her breasts as they rose with each passing breath. With one hand, she grabbed my hair and pulled me down to her lips.

  It felt like home and I couldn’t resist biting into her bottom lip. Using my tongue, I begged for entrance and couldn’t stop the groan from escaping as I felt her tongue collide with my own. I cupped her breast and groaned even louder as she pressed into me.

  God, I fucking missed—no!

  Forcing her legs to release me, I freed myself and moved as far away from her as possible.

  “I can’t.”

  I turned away and tried to leave.

  “I want a divorce,” she called out behind me.

  What?

  I couldn’t even think enough to form words. How dare she? Turning back to her, I stared into her eyes, she didn’t move. Instead, she lay on the floor where I’d left her, staring up at me.

  “You want a divorce?”

  MELODY

  I knew him, his blood was boiling. This cold block of ice he was fronting…like he wasn’t mine. He was like this to outsiders and I was his wife. So I took his options off the table. He wasn’t going to be able to just glaze over this. He was going to have to assert his dominance another way. It was who he was.

  Come on, Liam.

  “You want one and so do I. It’s better this way, then we won’t continue to hurt each other,” I replied, as I got up off the floor.

  His nose flared as he walked forward and grabbed onto my arm. He pulled me towards him taking my lips with his, they were hard and hot. I felt his hands grabbing at my body before finding purchase on my top, both of his hands pulled, ripping it off of me.

  “Liam—” I moaned into his mouth as I pull at his belt.

  “Don’t talk,” he muttered as he kissed my neck. We fell towards the hollow floor of the ring together. His hands once again roughly finding a place on my body, he pulled so hard on my leggings that they ripped. His breathing matched mine; short and fast. My own hands found themselves in his hair, tugging and caressing him. I could feel him tugging on his trousers and before I could register him at my entrance, he slammed himself into me, over and over again with a relentless and punishing pace.

  “Ah…” I moaned in both pain and pleasure. I missed feeling him inside of me. I wrapped myself around him as he pounded into me. Biting my lip, I fought the urge to scream out…fuck as my legs shook uncontrollably. I understood that he needed this, we both did. It was everything we couldn’t put into words, it was how we worked out our issues, and even this remnant of the recent past caused my heart to ache, but not the way I was growing accustomed to. I was desperate for this, I needed it, I needed him to remember and yearn for what was, the same way that I did.

  “Divorce is…” he paused, thrusting into me with a delicious harshness I enjoyed. He pushed me back onto my back and held both my hands in one of his while he gripped my thigh with the other. “Never on…” Again he paused after a punctuating thrust. “The table.” It seemed as if this was a reminder, and I wondered briefly who really needed the admonition.

  He didn’t stop after those minute pauses. Biting my ear and kissing my lips, his mouth was everywhere. I tried to keep my eyes open, however I couldn’t even breathe and think at the same time, much less control my body.

  “Liam!” The sweat from his nose dripped onto me as he held me tighter. My toes curled in my shoes as I rode an almost painful orgasm to its end. His cinnamon and honey scent filled all of my senses. He was all I could see, smell, taste and hear. He surrounded me from every angle, and I missed him, I missed everything about him…about us.

  “Ugh,” he grunted as he came.

  He swallowed slowly above me, breathing me in as I was doing to him.

  “You’re stuck with me. Until the day we both die. The contract says it. I fucking say it. So if you bring it up again…so help me God, Melody, I will you show you the very definition of a madman.”

  Pulling out of me, he fixed himself and didn’t look back as he walked out. He must have felt proud of himself…manly even. He’d fucked me like a caveman. But I had won here. I knew what was running through his mind since I had shown up, I had seen it in his eyes—the conflict, the indecision. I had to remind him of who we were, where we came from, and how we handled our conflicts. Divorce was never on the table for us, not being together was never an option, and he needed to remember that. I’m not sure how he’d ever lost sight of who we were, or that this was how we dealt with things—we simply fucked it out of our system. But I’d made him remember because he had somehow forgotten.

  I’d won, not him.

  EIGHT

  “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

  —Winston Churchill

  OLIVIA

  Ring. Ring. Ring.

  ARHG! Answer the damn phone! I paced furiously in the bathroom, brushing the tears from the side of my face.

  “Olivia,” the old voice, smoother than snake oil, finally answered.

  “I want out. You told me she wouldn’t be back and here she is. I only did this because you promised—”

  “Olivia, I’m going to hang up now and you are not going to call me again…do you understand? Some of us have work to do. Stand your ground and wait. It’s your life on the line, so I suggest that you do not fail and be found out.” He hung up and I wanted to smash the phone and scream.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking breathe. I had told him everything about the family, in exchange for Neal and Ethan. Neal was going to take over, I was going to have Ethan, and everything was supposed to be alright. Everything was going to be the way it should have been.

  Falling against the wall, I slid to the ground. I wasn’t sure what to do. Mel was going to find out and she was going to kill me.

  “Oh, God,” I gasped out.

  “Olivia? Sweetheart, are you okay in there?” Neal called from the other side of the door.

  My hands went to my mouth trying to stop the building panic as my whole body shook.

  “Olivia?” The handle rattled.

  “I’m fine, Neal,” I finally managed to say.

  “Okay.”

  There was silence for a moment and I thought he had left. Standing, I roughly washed my face and opened the door only to find him standing there, arms crossed, waiting for me.

  “I hate when you lie to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said bypassing him as I walked to my vanity.

  He sighed loudly. “Olivia, look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you. I was worried about Liam, and now that he’s back, I remember how much of an ass he is. But I don’t have to worry anymore. He’s going to take over…”

  “Do you want him to take over?” I whispered, as I rubbed my moisturizer over my face.

  “Are we going to have this fight again?”

  “And what fight is that?”

  “The one where you tell me to step up. Be a man—”

  “You said you didn’t want to ‘walk on the dark side,’ that you hated it. The last thing I want to be is a snake in your garden. So—”

  “Olivia.” He grabbed my shoulder. “You aren’t a snake in a garden. You’re a snake in pit full of snakes. And while it lasted, it was nice not worrying about Liam breathing down my neck.”

  “What are you saying?” I whispered.

  He kissed my head as he met my gaze in the mirror. “I have no idea. I just don’t want you to ever think I’m letting you down.”

  “You could never.” I was the one letting him down…he was going to hate me. But I couldn’t let Bloody Mel win. She had everything, got everything. She couldn’t have it all. I was stuck, there was no turning back, and it was either die by Avian’s hands or by Mel’s. At least with Avian there was a chance that I wouldn’t suffer.

  He didn’t want to control the drug trade or get rid of it.

  He had said the junkies weren’t the problem, it was the dealers. The
junkies didn’t care where they got there next fix. As the head of the FBI, he didn’t want drug wars breaking out across the country for control. If Mel and Liam were brought down, there would be a vacuum of power left that would be perfect for Neal and me to snatch up. I knew Neal wanted it, he just didn’t know how to get it.

  Feeling confident, I leaned into him. “I love you, Neal.”

  “Well, I am good looking.” He kissed the side of my head before answering his phone.

  They all thought I was obsessed with Ethan and a part of me was; he and I had bonded. He would stare at me with those bright green eyes of his and it would just pull at my soul.

  Mel was just jealous. She was to blame for this situation, not me.

  She was just a Prada wearing thug. I was the first daughter. I was Olivia Colemen-Callahan. While they worried about me with Ethan, I was going to do everything in my power to bring them down.

  They were snakes and so was I. And I was going to do whatever was needed to get everything I was entitled to.

  It was all going to work out. It was only fair. They’d had their chance, now it was my turn.

  “Olivia!” Neal grabbed my hand and pulled my fist open. I saw the blood that I had drawn myself. I hadn’t felt a thing.

  The first drawn blood of war.

  “Olivia, you’re really starting to worry me.”

  “My nails are sharp, babe. Seriously, don’t worry about it.” I brushed my uninjured hand over his cheek. “I’m fine. I’m going to clean this up and then we can head out.”

  “Should I hide the razors?” he half joked, testing me.

  “Ass,” I muttered, smacking his arm.

  “There’s my good girl,” he mockingly called me what my father usually did.

  I was the good girl. Now, I was damaged goods, yet that still had to be better than being Mel.

  Right?

  NINE

  “And above all these put on love, which binds everything

  together in perfect harmony.”

  —Colossians 3:14