Vicious Minds (Children of Vice #4)(89)
“And not to play the race card,” Darcy spoke up, and we all knew where he was going. “But I am the only black guy here.”
“I’m Asian,” Sedric reminded him.
“You’re half-Asian.”
“You’re half-Black!” Sedric shot back.
“I’m half-Italian,” Ethan said to them, making them both look at him. They were shocked he jumped in but didn’t miss a beat.
“You’re white,” they both said.
“I know,” Ethan drank some more. “I just thought we were sharing obvious facts with each other.”
“Are you all done?” I asked them, truly feeling as if I’d lost my damn mind. His behavior, even before this, when he’d picked me up at the hospital…it was off. That plus all of this…and our parents. I wondered if I really died and this was just the beginning of hell?
Fuck it! Fine!
Reaching over I took the bottle of brandy and drank straight from it, cringing before speaking again. “Ten million on the mafia.”
Ethan raised his eyebrow at me. “You always did make safe bets.”
“So you have a plan.”
“Welcome her with open arms?” The fact that I didn’t know whether or not he was being honest was the reason I often lost my cool around him. He gave me a headache. This family… “Why can’t one thing be simple with you?”
“Says the man in love with his cousin.” He snickered, but stiffened when he heard Uncle Declan exhale deeply behind us.
Son of bitch did that on purpose.
“I have a question,” Uncle Neal boomed, kicking his feet up on the table and never was I more I grateful to him.
“What?” I asked.
“No, not for you.” He pointed to Darcy. “Isn’t it only in horror movies that the black guy dies first?”
“Uncle Neal!” I snapped. Fuck me for thinking he was going to ask something serious. Ethan just rolled his eyes.
“What? I want to know. If it’s not, then who would be the first to go?”
“It’s a trick question,” Uncle Declan replied, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling sharply. “Nine times out ten there is no Asian in the movie, so the black guy dies first. One out of ten times there is an Asian, but he blends with the white people so the black guy still dies first.”
“Mom told you that, didn’t she?” Darcy asked.
“This joke has gone on way too long,” I told them. Ethan just sat there happily like a drunk cat. “We’ve all lost our motherfucking minds.”
Chapter 19
“And the women answered one another
as they played, and said, Saul hath slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”
~1 Samuel 18:7
SEDRIC
“This is a bit much,” I murmured, mostly to myself. It had taken all of two hours for our home to become an armed fortress. It reminded me of the Terracotta Army, aka the eight thousand sculpted soldiers that Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, had in his tomb. Except it wasn’t eight thousand soldiers, it was a hundred men with guns, which might as well have been eight thousand ancient warriors. They lined the halls and filled the courtyard out back and out in front. None of them seemed to understand why they were called, but they stood tall, proud, and eager to prove themselves anyway.
Which made all of this even more ridiculous. What was Ethan thinking?
“Two more minutes until she gets here.” Darcy checked his watch as he stepped up beside me at the top of the stairs
“You guess,” I muttered.
“What?”
I looked him, still baffled. “You don’t think this is insane? Ethan has called one hundred men to face one woman who he knows nothing about other than some old Italian mobster with dementia told him she’s an assassin. What if he was just speaking out of anger? What if she has no plans to fight and just wants her daughter back? He hurt his cause by putting this much pressure on her. Maybe she’s afraid of the family and didn’t show herself before. Maybe I’m understating her and she’s Lara Croft meets the Terminator. Option one: she magically figures out how to kill all of us and get her daughter and Ethan loses. Doubt it. So option two: she dies, and Ethan kills the mother of his child. Making him 3 for 3 in one goddamn year, and mentally screwing up his daughter….so he loses. So again, this is insane. And not how Ethan does things.”
“You’re right.” He nodded, leaning on the railing and watching the men below us. “But like always you’re being logical at the wrong time.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“If this seems crazy to all of us, don’t you think it seems crazy to him too? Ethan’s trying to prove a point, you heard him in there, he said she made him look like a fool. So now he’s trying to show her who the boss is. All of this is a show. He’s not out to kill her…yet.” He checked his watch again. “You have to give her credit though, it takes a lot to get under Ethan’s skin like this.”
“Yeah, just one illegitimate child—ah…ouch!” I snapped, rubbing the back of my head. “What?”