“What is it?”
“This bloody phone keeps acting up. Can you fix—”
“Can I can fix it? Mom, I’m hurt, don’t you know I’m a genius,” I said with a gasp, my hand over my heart, and took the phone from her.
She snorted. “How can I forget? You and your father remind me every day.”
I couldn’t help but beam with pride as I scrolled through the code on her phone. It took only a few seconds. “Yeah, Mom, it’s just because you forgot to update—”
When I looked up, she was looking through my tablet.
“Mom!” I yelled, reaching over and snatching it out of her hands. “Don’t just go through my stuff!”
Her eyebrow raised, and I closed my mouth quickly. Her eyes focused on the tablet and then back to me, and I hung my head. I was a fucking adult, and yet in this moment I didn’t feel like one…and I didn’t know why.
“Helen.”
“Sorry I snapped, but—”
“Is that what’s scared you?” She cut me off, and when I met her gaze, she nodded to the split feed of Wyatt’s press conference and the deleted footage at the O.S., which was now playing on my tablet. I watched for a moment, but the moment the little girl burned, crying out for her mom as he just sat there, I turned back. “Why are you scared?”
“I’m not scared.”
“You look it.”
“Well, I’m not.” I snapped again. Standing upright, I looked her in the eye and told her the truth. “I’m not scared. It’s just…it’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
She was going to keep pushing!
“It’s Wyatt! He’s…different, and I don’t know how…I don’t think I’ll be able to talk to him the same way now.”
She stared at me for a long time. Slowly, she crossed her arms, which meant I wasn’t going to like whatever she was going to say, but she was going to say it anyway.
“What? Mom.”
“Why do you think you can’t talk to him?” She asked.
Of all the things, I thought she was going to ask that wasn’t it. “He’s like a completely different person—I was wrong about him all this time.”
“Helen, I know you, that you know what this family sometimes needs to do—”
“I know what this family does, Mom. I’m not an idiot, but Wyatt doesn’t do…do this,” I replied, lifting the tablet for her to see again. “If he is violent, he never hurts people who aren’t related to the issue.”
“This is who he’s always been,” she replied softly, looking at me as if I’d just time-traveled and didn’t understand how the world worked.
“Mom, Wyatt tries to be to be good despite the fact that he’s a—”
“Helen, I’m not sure why you think that.”
“Can you stop making it seem like I’m crazy? Wyatt has a temper, he can be like a little kid time sometimes, and sure, he gets in fights. He’s even killed people, I know that. But he’s never gone off the deep end like this.”
Again, she just stared. I sighed, adding, “Look, obviously he’s not the best of people, but between him and his siblings, he’s the most—”
“Violent,” she interrupted me.
“What?”
“Out of all your cousins, Wyatt is the most violent, Helen. I’m not sure why you have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to him. Or how you missed who he is, but you need come to grips quickly. Whatever he, your father, and uncle are planning, that,” she pointed to the tablet in my hands, “is just phase one.”
“Of all the things Ethan and Dona have done, why would you say that Wyatt is the most—”
“Do you remember when your biological father took you away from us?” she asked it, and it was as if she’d slapped me across the face.
Nodding, I whispered back, “I was eleven.”
“You were gone for two weeks,” she whispered, her hands balling into fists. “But it felt like two years to me. It left like he gutted me. And your father, your aunt and uncle, they kept telling me to wait. Your father swore upon his life that he’d you bring you back, but they just wanted to get you back without causing a scene—”
“I know—”
“No! You don’t know. Because they didn’t get their way. Wyatt, at twelve, brought you back himself.”
“What?”
CORA – AGE 38
“We need to wait?” I asked softly, glancing over each and every one of their faces around the living room until I finally looked to Declan, my dear husband, who sat on the edge of the sofa, by the fireplace, his knuckles white, his face blank.
I didn’t need blank. I needed determined.
“Cora, we need to be careful,” Evelyn said as reached out to me, but I smacked her hand away.
“Careful?” I repeated, feeling ready to wring her neck. “She’s my daughter. Some nobody has TAKEN MY FUCKING DAUGHTER!”
“He’s not a nobody,” Melody said as she tucked her hair behind her ear, and took the glass Liam offered her, rubbing the side of her head. Apparently, her highness had a fucking headache.
Liam leaned over the back of her, adding, “He’s a sitting senator, civil rights attorney, and activist—”
“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” I hollered. “He’s not a Callahan! Therefore, he is a nobody! Or have the rules changed now because it’s my daughter? Because she’s not really Declan’s daughter?”
“Don’t you fucking dare! SHE IS MY DAUGHTER!” Declan finally chose to come back to life.
“PROVE IT…FIGHT FOR HER!” I screamed back.
“What do you think I’m trying to do, Cora!”
“I don’t know, Declan,” I hurled back at him. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re letting someone steal our daughter! The daughter we raised…the daughter we fed, and clothed and loved! The daughter who is…everything to me! You all can destroy cities; you can bring ground men to their knees. Within minutes, you have the FBI, CIA, Chicago PD, and every other goddamn acronym at your fingertips, and yet for some reason, it’s hard for you to figure out a way to bring back our daughter!”
“And what do you think will happen if we
