SEDRIC
“He isn’t going to burn them alive, though he probably wants to,” Darcy said after Wyatt left, tossing the core of his finished apple like a basketball into the air and across the room. It landed in the trash bin in the corner.
“He’s barely holding himself back. You and I both know the longer Ethan isn’t here, the more reckless Wyatt will be. We controlled the OC. Apparently, we no longer control headquarters. That means he can’t go in there guns blazing just because they ticked him off.”
“He wouldn’t—”
“Are you sure?” I pressed, and he paused before rising from his chair, adjusting his trousers. Between him, Wyatt, and I, he was just slightly taller, but still shorter than Ethan.
“There’s nothing we can do for now. He’s decided to deal with this his own way.”
That was the problem. Wyatt’s way wasn’t always the most logical or reasonable way…actually it was rarely the logical or reasonable way. “Wyatt is the type of person to jump out of a plane without checking if he has a parachute on.”
“Yet somehow, he has always managed to make it to the ground safely,” Darcy tried to remind me as he walked up beside me.
“Somehow is Ethan. Ethan has always watched over him. Before that his parents. Our parents.”
Darcy just shrugged his shoulders at me. “Ethan isn’t dead. If Wyatt gets in over his head, I’m sure Ethan will be back…even if not, there’s us. Both of them become tunnel-visioned when it’s this personal. That’s why we’re here. To see when they can’t.”
“Glorified side-kicks,” I scoffed.
A smile formed on Darcy’s lips as he nodded. “Yes. But even glorified side-kicks have their day. We already got what we wanted. We’re in, where we belong. Right now, I’m more annoyed about these ingrates.”
He meant the people on the other side of the glass. Turning my back on them, I leaned on the glass again.
“Have you spoken to your sister? It’s dangerous for her to be by herself with all of this happening.”
Darcy shook his head no. “There’s no need. She’ll be fine. Besides, I pity the fool who thinks of going after my sister.”
The moment he said it, I tried to imagine what would happen if someone did try to go after her. If Helen of Troy caused a thousand ships to sail, then Helen of Chicago could cause ten thousand bullets to fly.
There was a price to pay for messing with the women of this family. Ivy hadn’t even been part of this family for three months, and her death already made Wyatt burn people alive. Turning around, I watched as Darcy gave orders to the guard who lifted the broken, bloody, and bruised Emilio from the ground.
Why do I get the feeling that is still just the opening act?
NINE
“You're either at the table or on the menu.”
~ Al Capone
WYATT – AGE FIFTEEN
“He shit himself,” I said, looking in disgust at the man standing in the snow, in nothing but his now-stained briefs.
“The weak ones do that a lot,” Ethan said, taking a step beside me, the snow breaking under his black leather shoes. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves, tossing them to me. “You forget these?”
“I didn’t forget them. I brought my own.” I showed him the dark brown leather gloves I already had on. His green eyes glanced down at them. He nodded but didn’t say anything, putting the black gloves back into his pocket.
“Have you met my sons, Dentico?” Our father asked as he walked up behind, dressed in a black coat and scarf over his double-breasted suit, on his head one of those flat black caps. When I saw him, I thought we were going for dinner. But apparently not. “The one that looks like me…that’s the oldest. Ethan, introduce yourself.”
“Hello,” Ethan said coldly, his eyes never looking away from the still shit-stained man standing in the snow in front of us.
“This is the second one,” my father said as he rested his arm on my shoulder. “Wyatt, introduce yourself.”
“Why would a dead man need to know my name?” I questioned, uninterested in any of this. I expected him to snap at me for not following his orders, especially since we were in public.
“As you can see, you and I have something in common,” my father sighed, still speaking to the man who I could only guess was Dentico. “Raising teenagers is a pain in the ass. They barely listen. They’re almost always clueless. They take advantage of the biological link between you, stopping you from snapping their little necks when they’re driving you crazy. I sometimes wonder why the hell I was so excited when my wife had them. They are like little leeches sucking the life out of you.”
“We’re right here,” I said just in case he forgot. I shrugged him off my shoulder. Ethan, the prince of snow and ice, said nothing because either he didn’t care what our father thought or he knew my father was only talking about me. Either way, fuck him.
“And there’s that lip,” my father said, stepping in front of us both, the snow crunching under his shoes as he walked. “When they’re talking back like that I think to myself, ‘What the hell is wrong with this generation? Where is the respect?’ It makes me think of how I treated my father. And I laughed because I was a little shit to him, too. Can you believe my luck, Dentico? I got one that looks like me and one that acts like me.”
My father snickered, taking out a cigarette and putting it between his lips. I looked to Ethan, hoping he could speed this up. To my surprise, the mask on his face broke a little, and he seemed just as annoyed as me. I wasn’t sure, but I was willing to bet he was saying something un-prince-like in his head. Noticing me looking at him, Ethan’s
