13

Callahan
I don’t look at my mother’s portrait when I pass it but turn the corner into a darker corridor. I make my way to my study thinking about what Portia said.
That I have my mother’s eyes.
It’s such a strange comment to make. Especially from her.
Once inside, I close the door. The desk lamp is on. I set the whiskey bottle down, pull my sweater over my head, and sit before pouring another into a glass Lenore left on the desk. She worked for us before, too, and has been living with her family for the ten years since the massacre. She was one of the few people who knew Antonio and I were alive.
I took three bullets during the attack. Two to my torso, One to my head. They’d mistaken me for a soldier or I’m sure I would be dead now. No execution style killing for me. But I did watch from my place on the bloody marble floor that mom loved so much. I remember how cold it felt, even in the July heat. How that small, inconsequential detail stood out.
My older brother and father were already injured when they brought them in. My mother had been seated in her favorite chair. I watched the tears slide down her face as her husband and sons were made to kneel in a line facing her. Michael, the heir to the throne. Luca and Gianni just kids, scared and trying hard not to cry. The soldier they had mistaken for me, my best friend Jonah. My sister Elizabeth they killed in her room. Lenore’s granddaughter, Mara, is the one body we didn’t recover.
My family must have thought I was already dead, and I guess I was. Bleeding out while Fernando Mancini the leader, Gregory and Vincent Esmeralda and their army of soldiers stood in our house, desecrated it, bloodied our floors.
They killed Michael first. Bullet to the back of the head while my mother watched. While we all watched. Even injured, he was a threat.
I think, though, that it was a blessing for him given what followed.
Fuck.
I forgo the tumbler and bring the bottle to my lips, forcing down big gulps of burning liquid even though my throat has closed up. Even though it feels like I’m already choking as sweat coats my forehead.
Opening the drawer, I take out the machinery. I made it myself, my home tattooing kit of sorts. I’m not half bad when I’m not drunk. But my tattoos aren’t meant to be pretty. They’re meant to never let me forget what happened. Never forget those who betrayed us. Those who will be made to pay.
Not that I need a reminder for that. My memory is fine now. Intact from the moment I woke up after almost six years in a coma. I just can’t remember anything before.
Well, apart from that night.
I set the bottle down and take out the disinfecting wipes to clean the spot on my chest where the names Vincent and Gregory Esmeralda are written. My reaper’s list. I will reap the lives of every single person named. I’m a little more than half-w ay through.
For a moment my mind wanders to what happens then. After I’m finished. I don’t see a future after that, though. I’ve never even tried to imagine one. When the last name is crossed off, I’ll be done with anything having to do with this life, this world
.
Cleaning the space that will be tattooed and then cleaning the needle itself, I get to work, the little engine humming. I dip into the ink, wipe off the excess. I don’t use a mirror.
Probably should.
The names themselves my brother tattooed. I remember how he’d looked at me when I’d told him my idea about the list. How he’d seemed disturbed for a moment before he’d grinned and picked up the needle to get started.
I’d sat through it without a sound, without a word. Whiskey at hand, hate in my heart and vengeance on my mind. He tattooed the names my uncle provided. We’d never even heard of most of them, but he told us their stories night after night, patiently working.
Patiently preparing me, our family’s deadliest weapon. Because as the oldest surviving son, it was up to me to avenge their murders.
I think about Antonio. About how he’d gone off the island at the last minute that night. How lucky he was to have been gone.
It was him who’d found me still alive the next morning. When every single person on the island lay in a pool of their own blood, I still breathed. Not a day goes by that I wish I’d been dead too.
My uncle had then taken us both into hiding. It’s the one time he and Diamente worked together. He swore Lenore to secrecy.
I guess my uncle wasn’t ever really a threat to the Mancini family since he wasn’t a part of the business. The only reason he’s still alive. Or maybe they just couldn’t risk killing him. He was and still is very well connected politically. To take out a mafia family is one thing. You’re almost doing a service. Two mafia families at war and toss in a Mexican Cartel too?
Win-win-win.
But to kill a man like my uncle, a legitimate businessman at least as far as the public was concerned – who rubs elbows with the elite of the Europe’s high society, well, that’s something else altogether.
And so, I lived. Broken and damaged beyond repair in some ways, but alive. And Antonio lived in a sort of coma too as he waited for me – to wake. He was sixteen at the time of the incident and my uncle, rightfully so, wouldn’t allow him to retaliate.
Even without my uncle egging me on, it’s not only duty that drives me to avenge my family’s murders. I want it. I want the blood of their killers on my hands. I want to watch their eyes as I steal from them what they stole from me.
Not that it will ever bring back my own family. Or even my memories of my family.
That’s the worst part. This not remembering anything.
I’m not sure how long I’m in the study but by the time I finish and stand, the bottle is almost empty and my chest aches where I drew the lines. But my mind is on something else now. On the girl upstairs.
Fuck her and get rid of her.
I’m not committed to that last part yet though. Not sure why. Maybe it’s her eyes. Looking at them gave me back a memory.
Burnt sugar. Creme caramel.
I know it’s my imagination making me think I can smell it as I make my way through the dimly lit house up the stairs and to my room. Alec is standing guard. He’s Lenore’s nephew, and a soldier I trust.
“Did she give you any trouble?”
“Apart from asking me to let her see her brother again, no. She’s been quiet as a mouse.”
“Good. Check on the kid before you go to bed, will you? Take him what’s left of the cake.” I may not be very principled, but I always keep my promises.
“Sure thing.”
I open the door to my bedroom to find the two lamps by the bed on and Portia standing at the window, looking out at the water.
She’s still wearing my things and doesn’t turn right away, but I see how her body stiffens when she hears me.
How far would she go for her brother? I have a feeling she’d die for him if she thought it would save him.
“Did you fuck Fernando Mancini?” I ask. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have. She was his fiancee. It makes sense.
She turns around and I see a bottle off whiskey in her left hand. The one I keep up here. I don’t comment but I am surprised.
Although it seemed like she wanted some downstairs.
“It’s really pretty here,” she says and brings the bottle to her lips as she takes a step. She falters when she does but catches herself on the back of the chair. “Considering.”
“What are you doing?”
She raises her eyebrows.
I gesture to the bottle.
“Preparing.”
“Preparing?”
Her eyes fall to my chest. She points a finger at it, arm not quite steady. She’s not quite steady on her feet.
“You’re bleeding,” she says.
I look down, wipe away the smear of blood.
She shifts her gaze up to mine and drinks another sip, dropping down on the edge of the bed like she can’t stand anymore.
“Yep, preparing,” she says, and I’ve almost forgotten that I asked. “I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much. Also, I just don’t want to remember. So, if you don’t mind,” she says, holding up the same finger she used to point at me as if to say ‘hold on’. She glugs down a couple more swallows that look almost painful from here. “I’m almost done.”
“Wrong. You’re done now,” I say, closing my hand over the neck of the bottle.
She doesn’t fight me when I take it.
Mostly because I don’t think she can. She’s drunk about half a bottle and judging from the size of her, that’s about half a bottle too much.
“Christ,” I mutter, looking for the cork, finding it on the floor by the window. “Am I going to have to lock up the liquor?”
“Does that mean I’ll be around long enough for you to have to do that?”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?” I ask, corking the bottle and setting it on the table before turning to her.
Her face falls a little, her shoulders slumping forward. She rubs the heels of her hands over her eyes. But when she looks up at me, they’re bright again like she has a new idea. I inhale sharply, caught off-guard. The sheer joy on her face unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It fills me with something. Something I can’t explain.
Something I wish would never go away.