Coraline looked at me shaking her head in sadness before leaving. Taking off my shirt, I threw it next to the clothes Adriana had laid out for Melody. None of them seemed to have been touched since this morning.
Kneeling next to her, I brushed back her hair. “Have you eaten?”
She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. Five days of this and I feared it was just the beginning.
“Adriana, I need food. Anything Mel would like, now.” I snapped the phone shut before sitting on the floor in front of her.
At least she’s breathing. That was the only comfort I had. Flipping through the file in my hand, I just started reading, I didn’t want her to feel like I was cutting her out, or that I didn’t need her. Because I did, I needed her badly.
“Declan and Monte have been trying to get through the Valeros’ firewalls. Their system isn’t as strong as ours, so instead they created a freakin’ hundred different firewalls. They can hack it, but it will take time. Right now they haven’t had any luck. They are working through the eleventh firewall now.” I waited to see if she would say anything but again, there was nothing.
“So far we’ve spoken to seven Valero members, and they have all said the same thing. Vance and his family have gone into hiding like some fecking caffler. The two bit arsewipe took his manky whores . . .” I paused for a moment and groaned. “I’m so pissed off I’m sounding like my grandfather on St. Patrick’s Day.”
MELODY
He made me smile. I didn’t know if he could see it, but he made me smile. I did wonder why he tensed just slightly when mentioning his grandfather.
“Anyway,” he said without less of an accent. “They’re in hiding. We have all their bank accounts being monitored. The moment we break through the firewalls, we will drain them dry. For now, if any of them withdraw even a penny, we’ll know about it. We’ve already burned all their known crops on both hemispheres and bombed twenty-nine meth labs. If there are more, we will find them. They aren’t getting away from us. They have no other choice but to die.”
He stood up when Adriana came in with a bowl of something. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, and I didn’t care. I wanted to go back to sleep, but my body wouldn’t let me.
“Love,” he whispered above me, but I didn’t reply.
Sighing, he lifted me up with ease and placed me on his lap, as if I were some chi . . . child.
“Love, eat. It’s just soup,” he said as he started rubbing his thumb against my bottom lip. “Mel, love, I’m begging you. Open your mouth, or I will force it open.”
I listened and he looked disappointed, like he wanted me to fight him. But I was tired. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. The only way I could do that was to listen and allow him to feed me, one spoonful at a time.
DAY 9
“It’s morning, Melody,” Olivia said as she opened my curtains so wide the sun blinded me. I didn’t want the sun. It was too happy. Too full of joy and life, it didn’t know when not to shine. It should know that it was a dark day. It should know not to come my way. I wanted the moon. I wanted the night. I wanted the darkness.
But I was too tired to yell at her. Instead, I simply rolled away from the sun.
“You know I was jealous of you,” Olivia said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m still kind of jealous. I’m always jealous. I don’t try to be. It comes from having divorced parents I guess. You’re always fighting for attention, and they’re always giving it to you because they feel guilty. But with you it was a different type of jealously.”
Go away Olivia, I thought but didn’t speak.
So she went on. “When I first heard that Liam was getting married, I was kind of hoping she, you, would be like Coraline, the old Coraline, willing to let me have the spotlight and come to me for advice. I think I wanted to be Evelyn in away. I wanted to be the heart of the family. But you weren’t like Coraline, or even Evelyn. You were a mafia boss. You, a female, ruled the Italian mafia. When Neal first told me, I thought he was joking. It should have been impossible. No way would any man, true mafia gangster bow down to a woman, and yet there you were. And the men were bowing so low they were almost kissing your white shoes. Do you know that’s a thing on Twitter?”
Please go away Olivia, I thought to myself once again, and again I failed to say it out loud. So she went on . . . again.
“Hashtag, Melody Callahan,” she whispered. “You’re trending. You’re always trending, and you don’t even know it.
“Anytime we step out in public, you’re on Fashion Police, or some other random magazine, being praised. But you don’t care because you’re a fucking Boss. So of course, I was jealous. The stunningly beautiful, always fashionable, deadly frightening Melody Callahan? How the fuck are any of us supposed to stand next to that?”
Why won’t you go away?
“I shouldn’t care right?” She sighed. “But I do care. You’re everything I wanted to be and then some. The object of every man’s desire, and yet never a person. I was born beautiful, and I don’t mean that in a cocky, ‘I love myself’ sort of way. I was born beautiful, and guys always liked me for it. But there was one guy who liked it a little too much. I was a freshman in college. I was actually saving myself for the one, and I knew he wasn’t it. So instead of paying attention in school to those stupid flyers and posters that all read ‘No means No,’ he . . .”
She sobbed, and I just wanted to sleep.
“He pulled me into his dorm room, and no one did anything because I was the pretty girl who most likely did get around. His friends were there and they all—” She stopped, staring at her tattoo, running her finger over it so many times I stopped counting. “When they finished, they laughed at the fact that I was the loosest virgin they had ever had. When I got home, I had never cried or scrubbed myself so hard. The next day I pulled out of all my classes and finished the rest of my college career from the safety of my bedroom.”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me, but I enjoyed the silence as she lost herself in her thoughts. Sadly, it was short-lived.
“I got this tattoo a month before I found Neal. A Dara knot, I wanted to be strong again and it made me feel that. I think that’s why I found Neal, I wasn’t broken anymore.”
If you are in this family you are broken, don’t kid yourself.
“He made me feel safe again, happy again. But there is still this part of me that I can’t fix. I hate people. I hate men . . . all men outside of this family.”
That is the very definition of broken!
“And I hate women in some ways, because I hate myself. So when I saw you walking as if you were on water, I hated you the most. Neal tried to knock some sense into me. He said you’re the queen and I’m the princess. After that, I was able to handle it until Evelyn told me you were pregnant.” She laughed bitterly.
You are insane Olivia. Leave me alone.