Children of Vice (Children of Vice #1)(76)

“So you all are family,” I replied when she was gone. That made more sense. I doubted Ethan would be so comfortable with people if they weren’t family.

“Very distant relatives of my mother,” Ethan said, not looking up at me as he concentrated.

“Very distant or not,” Marco said to me, “we’re still the only relatives Bloody Melody ever acknowledged.”

“Bloody Melody?” It sounded like a bad horror movie.

Ethan snickered. “My mother’s nickname. Apparently the Irish gave it to her after she married my father. And it stuck on the count of the fact that my mother was, well…not slow to use her fists.”

“Ha!” Giovanni scoffed. “Or gun. How many times did she shoot your father? Twice, correct?”

“Your mother shot your dad?” My jaw opened as I looked at him.

Ethan made a face. “I was hoping no one would ever tell her that. She is already temperamental as it is, and my mother left her the gun.”

“Hey!” I frowned, turning back to the guys. “She sounds like a hell raiser.”

“She was. May she rest in peace,” Giovanni said seriously as did almost everyone else in the shop, everyone but the kids, far too young to know her. And I remembered the letter she’d left me, where she said, You are now the head woman of this family. Act like it and make them talk about you as they talked about me.

I realized why Ethan had asked me if I could do it. The more I found out about his mother the bigger her heels became.

“So your mom was Bloody Melody. Did your dad have a nickname too?” I didn’t ask that. Instead, Gabby stuck her head back out.

We all just looked at her for a moment before looking back at Marco, who took a deep breath.

“His name was the Mad-Hatter,” Marco spoke through his teeth. “And I used to think it was because the man thought of the most insane ways to harm people, but now I’m thinking it must have been the stress of parenting.”

“Can’t be,” Gabby said back smugly. “If it were, you’d have a nickname too, right, Dad?”

Ethan paused from cutting the boy’s hair to laugh, actually out loud, in public.

“Get back in there and do your science homework!” Marco pointed his clippers at her.

“Science is boring!”

“GASP!” I put my hand over my heart, and she turned to me. “Science is amazing. What are you talking about? You can create almost anything through science. When I was nine, I won the science fair by creating an incalescent voltaic receptacle to hasten the growth cycles of potatoes.”

“A what?” her father asked before she could. And not just him. Everyone else was confused too. Even Ethan looked at me for a quick second.

“It was like an umm…” I tried to think. “It was a greenhouse that made potatoes or any other vegetable grow faster.”

“Oh…” They all said like a light bulb clicked in their minds.

“See? Look at that. At your age people were already creating incalescent voltaic receptacles,” Marco said to her, making her pout.

“I can’t gift to people who hate science,” I told her, crossing my arms.

I heard her gasp. “Uncle Ethan…”

“What the wife says goes,” he said, snipping the back of the boy’s hair with two different scissors.

She hung her head and turned around, marching back to her homework, but before she got there she turned to him.

“Do you have a nickname, Uncle?” she asked.

The whole room seemed to have frozen, everyone a little stiff, everyone a little wary, glancing at each other. Ethan, on the other hand, simply spun the boy in his chair, wiping him down before taking the cape and neck tape off.

“I do,” he said to her when the boy got up, checking his hair. “It’s Mani di forbice.”

“Cause you cut hair?” she asked him even though I didn’t understand.

“Sure.” He nodded at her.

She thought about it for a little bit. “It’s kinda long but cool, I guess. Dad, I’m going upstairs to call Mom!”

She waved at me as she ran back into the back.

“Mani di forbice?” I asked him as an older man sat in the chair, pointing to his chin for a shave.

“Scissor hands,” Giovanni answered when he didn’t.

“Oh.” I understood if he worked here why that would fit. But I also understood from the way they reacted, and from the way Ethan wasn’t communicating anymore, that it was much deeper than that. He told me we’d go out so I could find out more about his past, so I wasn’t going to back down.

“Why, though?”

Giovanni was the only one speaking now and it wasn’t as cheerful as it had been earlier. “Rumor has it that when he was young he went to confession with his family for the first time. The priest told him to confess his sins to the Lord, and Ethan said he was sinless and would only confess when he was no longer sinless. They got into a long argument until the priest could no longer remain with him and left. Ethan, sensing something was wrong with the irate priest, followed him into his chambers, where he found the priest was breaking his vows of silence. He was trying to use Ethan as a way to get information on his father and mother in order to save himself from prosecution. He was a child molester. Upon discovering this, Ethan stabbed the priest with two blades, one a gift from his father, and the other he was holding for his brother. When they found him, he stood over the priest, holding both blades, covered in blood, and confessed to God his sins then.”