I dropped down onto my stomach, shooting straight into his knee. His leg buckled as he kept firing, and I waited for his arm to stretch out once more before shooting right into his wrist, forcing him to drop the gun and when he did, I barely pushed myself up before rushing at him. He still held on to Gabby, but I didn’t charge into them both. His body went flying out the glass door.
“Move!” I screamed at Gabby, who was still dizzy, confused, bleeding, and scared. She rolled off of him, crawling over the broken glass on the sidewalk. Stepping on his bleeding body, I shot into his other hand.
“You bastard—”
“I know who my father is, thank you.” I snapped out, stretching my arm and shooting in his other knee.
“I’m your fucking package.” I shot into his right foot. “I come with the note: if you fuck with this family, we fuck back.” Then again in the left.
Then his chest twice.
He grinned up at me, a dark red mark over his face. “How’s your brother?”
I shot again at his crotch. “How’s yours?”
“FUCK YOU…”
“You think you’re going to die, that’s why you’re so brave right now. Why you can even smile. You think this is as bad as it gets…but, Elroy.” Crouching down beside him, I pressed the gun into his bullet wound. “I’m a very good doctor and an even better shot. Which means I’ve missed all of your most fatal organs and know how to keep you alive just long enough to see what my brother will do.”
His eyes widened.
“Do you know what this is?” I said, taking out a vial from my coat pocket along with the syringe, slowly filling it up. “I guess you don’t and it doesn’t really matter. Just know it will hurt, and no one will hear you scream. You walked into the wrong barbershop today.”
Forcing his eyes open, he shook, but it didn’t matter. It only made it hurt more as I injected it into his eye.
“My brother has saved my life more times than I can count and you almost took him away before I could say thank you.” I rose back to my feet. “Pray he recovers fast enough to kill you himself because if it were me…I’d make sure you never died. I’d take you to the edge and bring you back over and over…and over again.”
He passed out either from the pain or fear…maybe both.
When I rose back onto my feet I looked around at the neighborhood, and of course there were more than a few people, all of them staring at me.
“GRANDPAPA!”
Rotating back toward the shattered store, looking through the broken glass door, I watched as Gabby, just as Ivy had done for Ethan, crouched down beside her grandfather crying, holding on to him. Rushing back to him, he grinned up at me.
“G...ood…thing…I drank…the wine…huh?” He laughed and coughed up blood.
“GRANDPAPA! GRANDPAPA!” Gabby screamed, shaking his arm, looking up at me. “HELP HIM!”
I couldn’t. There was nothing that could be done.
He knew that and just kept smiling at me, hugging her with one hand while he reached up for me with the other. Kneeling down, I took it.
“Your brother…Il bur…attinaio…” He laughed, and then he was gone.
Your brother, the puppet master… His words seeped into my mind like poison and I stared down at his blood…as it crept over the black and white checkered floor.
No.
Slowly rising from the ground, I just watched the blood as it rolled over the ground toward my feet. Gabby’s sobbing was fading into the background as I tried to deny this feeling coming over me.
He didn’t plan this.
Not with Gabby.
Not with Ivy…no.
But then I thought about how I had everything I needed to save his life.
How everything was so tightly cleaned up. How he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Boston was on its knees.
The Finnegan brothers…were dead or dying.
And me… I glanced up into the fractured mirror, staring at myself, dressed in a blood-covered suit, looking just like…Father.
And the longer I stared, the longer I started to see those strings, over me, and those strings turned into a web. I thought I’d escaped. I thought I’d become a better person. I thought it was Chicago that brought out the worst in me…But this time…I chose to let people die. I chose to wear the suit. I chose the go after Elroy. I chose family.
I chose family because I could never not choose family.
Ringggg.
Pulling out my phone, I saw his name on the screen. Hesitating for a moment before answering, I put the phone to my ear but couldn’t speak.
“Ask me,” his deep voice said on the other line.
“Is this all a game to you?”
“That isn’t the question you want to ask.”
“Fine. Did you plan this?” I asked him in Irish so Gabby wouldn’t hear.
“Yes. Do you really think I left my city, my home, to chase after a pair of senseless, undisciplined, wannabe Whiteys? If I wanted them dead, they could have been dead in a second. I could have had them all packed, shipped, and delivered to Chicago to let Ivy have her revenge there. If I wanted Boston to be torn to pieces, it could be done overnight with or without me here. This is a fucking game, Wyatt. It’s called the survival game and there are no rules. There are no take backs or time-outs. You do whatever you need to do to win by the widest margin.”
“All of it? Ivy—”
“Between my wife and me…the only one with a secret was Ivy.” Her pregnancy…he didn’t plan for that. Which meant Ivy still went along because she wanted him to win.
“I told her the truth.” He went on. “I told her everything and because she understood the importance of having all of us united, she took the bullets for the both of us. She hid the truth for the both of us. Family united cannot die. We survive because we all understand the game, and now you do too. Bring Elroy. We leave in the morning.”
With that he hung up.
And so there was the truth. His truth and mine. We were both monsters. He was the Ceann na Conairte because he was much more monstrous than me but that didn’t absolve me of anything.
I was born Wyatt Sedric Callahan.
Medical school didn’t change that.
Boston didn’t change that.
Nothing could change that.
EPILOGUE
“I'm asking, what's your vice and what brand of trouble does it lead to?”
~ Neal Stephenson
IVY
“A new dawn has risen over Boston, but sadly the dark cloud that hung over the city still lingers as many residents in Southie awoke to find the head of Cillian Finnegan, the dealer behind the infamous drug commonly known as the Cocktail, hanging over Old Northern Avenue Bridge. The BPD currently have no leads as to who committed this heinous act nor how the perpetrator was able to get into the coroner’s office undetected. We reached out to the mayor for comments only to be told that the mayor Toma Takahashi has resigned and can no longer be reached for comments. Leaving many of us wondering what now? Are we safe or not?”
“Safe…for now,” I whispered to myself as I lay on the bed inside the jet. My slinged arm was resting on my stomach as I looked up at the ceiling.
I heard the door open but didn’t move.
“You still asleep?”
“Nope,” I whispered, feeling the shift on the bed.
He lay down next to me, groaning. “Walking was a bad idea.”
I giggled, titling my head to the side to look at him, but he just kept his eyes closed. “Did he get on the plane?”