Vicious Minds (Children of Vice #4)(56)
“So you did?”
She nodded again. “What else could I do? I was child. The adults told me to be quiet and accept it, that she didn’t really mean it. So I did. Teachers started noticing the bruises, and I learned how to play with makeup to hide them, to protect her. Later I chose to go to military school. Anyway, long story short, sometimes I feel like a fraud calling myself Calliope Orsini…the Orsini name is a fake shield in my mind. I don’t want to remember all of that when I look at my own daughter. So like I said, we are picking from your family. A family she belongs to without any doubts.”
That was that. She drank her water and tried to get up. Getting up off the bed, I walked around to her side and gave her my hand.
She took it and held on to the IV pole. “I’m fine going to the bathroom. Stay with her, I don’t want her to be alone.”
Ignoring her, I helped her walk to the bathroom. She didn’t fight me. She didn’t have the strength to. I opened the door and she went inside, holding on to the wall rails. Closing the door behind her, I leaned against it as I stared at our daughter, this innocent child who now had a death grip on my heart. I wondered what I would do for her…how far I would go for her. It reminded me of my own mother. I felt her…not physically, but in my memories, all of her hugs, all the time she held ran her hands through my hair. Her yelling, us swimming together, her teaching me how to shoot…her yelling. My father teaching me to drive, him giving me lectures at the most awkward and uncomfortable moments…him saving me from my mother’s yelling. All the times he’d just sit with me, said nothing, just sat down and did his work next to me. It made me laugh and smile until I remembered her death…his death…their fake deaths. I could feel that pain coming back but I pushed it back as I always did.
But my pain is nothing in comparison to what Calliope had pushed down. I didn’t want to think of what her childhood must have been like because then I’d want kill her whole family…and they were now my family by fucking connection.
“Come up with something?” she asked when she opened the door, and this time I didn’t have to guide her. She reached out to me to hold onto my arm.
“Yes.” I helped her back onto the bed, lifting the tray and setting it over her.
“Really?”
I nodded. “Giovanna A. Callahan.”
She grinned. “Giovanni…Giovanna. I like it. I’ll tell my family her name is Giovanna Siena Orsini-Callahan? Siena after my grandmother.”
“I want to keep some family traditions. They can add as many names as they want. Siena, Orsini…whatever. But her name is Giovanna A. Callahan.”
“Athena, then.”
Right on cue, Giovanna woke up, starting to cry. Calliope reached over, picking her up from the bassinet.
“Hi, Giovanna. That’s you, Giovanna Athena Callahan.” She kissed her forehead before undoing her robe and pressing the baby to her breast again. She latched on like a little vacuum.
“Father Macrae has cancer, and it’s progressing fast. I think he wanted to do something big. I heard the nuns speaking about it. That’s why he came to Chicago. He wanted to die as the man who condemned Ethan A. Callahan.” She rocked Giovanna. “I didn’t know beforehand, but when I found out I put something in his cup which would irritate his throat and give him a bad cough.”
So that was it. I huffed, annoyed. “How weak. He tried to attack when he thought had nothing left to lose. Meanwhile nuns are selling babies, and the Pope is hiring assassins. Hypocrites…all of them.” I shook my head.
“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints,” she teased with a grin on her face.
I rolled my eyes at that, still somewhat amazed at how beautiful she looked. How all of this felt.
“Giovanna Callahan…Calliope Callahan.” She froze when I said their names. It wasn’t the first time I had said it, but after what she told me…it meant something different now. Leaning over, I placed my forehead on hers. “Calliope Orsini is just your mask. The person you really are, the one nobody can take or taint, is Calliope Callahan, mother of my daughter and my soon to be wife. You, me, her…we’re a family…a family we choose happily.”
She nodded and smiled. “You know Giovanna means ‘the Lord is gracious’, right? That’s a perfect message for this Sunday.”
She laughed and so did I.
Because I had my family.
La mia anima and il mia Tesoro. My soul and my treasure.
Chapter 12
“I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark.”
~Andrea Gibson
ETHAN - AGE 26
Rome, Italy
Friday, April 25th
Something was wrong.
I knew it.
I felt it.
Like the breath of a hungry wolf on the back of my neck, I could feel the danger looming over me. It made the hair on my arms rise and chest tighten. I looked around the café, but only saw my men, as well as few tourists happily talking amongst themselves. My gaze shifted to the street, however it was more of the same tourists taking pictures in front of…everything from the water fountains to the buildings themselves. It was busy, but Rome was always busy, and this wasn’t even peak tourist season. Even still, my people were in the crowds, amongst the tourists, and furthermore this was my country, my mother’s country. No one would dare try anything here. So why? Why did I feel this pit in my stomach? Why did everything feel like it was slowing down, as if I were watching my last few moments of life? What was this feeling of dread?