Melody's POV

Kill her. Put a bullet through her pretty fucking head and toss her off a motherfucking bridge, my mind yelled as I glared down the barrel of my fiancée’s semi-automatic.
I tried to stay calm. I even prayed for the strength not to lose it, but all I could see was red. Glancing over to Eric, who stood closest to her, he took charge and put a gun to the side of her head, causing her to lower her gun.
“You little bitch, have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Carrot top,” she said, still staring into my eyes. “You better pull the trigger now. You will regret it if you don’t.”
He glanced at me, but in a split second, Melody swung around and used the butt of her gun to bash his face in, knocked him off his feet, and held her gun to his balls.
“I said you would regret it,” she hissed. She pulled back and hammered into his jewels with the butt of her gun.
My father frowned, stepping forward as I reached for my gun. There comes a time when enough was fucking enough. “Ms. Giovanni, I would ask that you not to kill anyone in my house.”
Monte, I believe the man’s name was, walked forward pointing his firearm at Eric as Melody turned to my father, gun held right at his face.
“Sedric, I like you. I really do,” she said with no emotion in her voice.
“But step out of the way or I will kill you before I kill your son.”
“His mother is fond of him, and I am fond of his mother, Ms. Giovanni.”
The motherfucker smiled, as though this bitch had not just insulted us, as if she hadn’t almost killed family. “Melody, I understand your anger, and you are justified in it—” “The fuck she is!” I shouted, holding my gun up as well. Never in my life did I ever want to put someone down so fucking badly.
“Liam Callahan. For the next forty-eight hours I still rule. Stand down!”
Once again, the blood in my veins was demanding blood to be spilled, and so I shot right past her head and at Monte’s arm.
Melody eyes glowed with rage, but before her bullet could hit me, my father went for her hand. He twisted her wrist and struggled with her until the gun was out of her grip and he had her arm behind her back.
“Melody, listen to me,” my father said while she snarled like a damn lion. “As the head of the Callahan family, I apologize for my son’s idiotic move today and the memories it must have recalled of the damage that was done to you. But, I need you to breathe and walk away from this now. Not as a woman, but as a Boss, to regroup and think. If you found this room, you must know where Liam’s is. He will be there momentarily, and you can speak Boss to Ceann na Conairte.”
When she nodded, he let her go, and she left with Monte, who held on to his arm, and Fedel, who hadn’t moved from the destroyed wall. When she was gone, my father didn’t even have to speak, he glared at our guys and they left faster than she had—leaving me with the man who had just spit all over my victory. Once again, all I could see was red, and for the first time in my twenty-four years of life, I wanted my father’s blood.
“You embarrassed me! This relationship, this marriage will not work. I will burn the fucking contract so I can put a bullet in her myself.”
He stepped forward, his eyes darker than a brewing storm. “You embarrassed yourself today. Did you not think that a woman, a Boss, like Melody, could have easily bombed the fucking plane? Yes, I knew where you got the intel from, you fucking idiot. I checked their files, too, while you were busy chaining your fiancée to a pool chair.”
“But she didn’t do it, probably because she was weak and didn’t want to kill innocents,” I snapped back, trying my best not to point a gun in his face.
He pointed at the crumbling wall, which now exposed us. “Did that look like weakness to you, or are you so blinded by the thought of power that you have forgotten everything I have taught you?”
I sighed deeply, dropping the gun on the table before I pulled the trigger.
“Everything I did today, you would have done as well.”
“Yes, but I would have made sure it didn’t hurt my wife first.
Congratulations, you have proven to Vance and his brothers that you are just as merciless as they are. You won the pride of your men, and you pulled off a job no one will tie to you,” he snapped angrily. “But if you had heeded my words and tried to make peace with Melody instead, you would have used your access to the Giovanni files and did your homework on what happened to Melody and her mother to bring you both together in the first place.”
I froze, not understanding what Aviela Giovanni had to do with this. She had died years ago.
“Think about it, then go back to her and grovel.” With those words, he left the room.
Taking a seat at one of the only computers not blown to the heavens, I pulled up the very files he was bitching about, and my blood froze.
MARCH 19: FLIGHT 307 CRASHES INTO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN; ONE SURVIVOR, SIX-YEAR-OLD MELODY NICCI GIOVANNI.
“Fuck,” I murmured to myself as I read the title, but it only got worse.
NOTES:
According to young Melody’s memory, there were four men on the plane who stood up mid-flight and started shooting and demanding Aviela Giovanni, wife to the Boss, to show herself.
Mrs. Giovanni, with the help of her bodyguard, placed Melody into one of the overhead compartments right before they were both shot and killed. The men, who were later identified by the V tattoo on their arms, were Valero. After the death of Mrs.
Giovanni, they proceeded to kill everyone on the plane. It was due to her tears and whimpering that the men found her. Landing the plane on the surface of the sea, they filled the chambers with smoke before dragging young Melody onto an awaiting boat.
Melody explained that, because she was praying, they decided they would let God decide her fate and threw her back into the ocean holding on to a piece of wreckage. As they drove away, they told her that if she survived to join the Valero when she was older.
The Boss found his daughter the next morning clinging on to one of the broken wings of the plane. The plane was torched beyond recognition, and the body of Mrs. Giovanni was never recovered.
Melody was alive, but suffered from hypothermia, and developed extreme Achluophobia, which she still has not recovered from. With therapy, it might lessen with time.
COVER-UP: PLANE CRASH DUE TO ENGINE FAILURE.
“Fuck.” I sighed running my hands through my hair. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Mother of fucking fuck.”
My mind was so messed up. I couldn’t think straight, all I could see was a younger version of my fiancée, clinging to a wing in the middle of the fucking Atlantic Ocean.
In the dark. Just how I fucking left her. “Fuck.”
My father was right. I truly needed to grovel, but even that wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough, and I had nothing left to give.
I had no idea I was even moving until I found myself standing outside my bedroom, dreading the thought of going in. My bedroom was my sanctuary, and now, it was going to be place of my death. But, I needed to man up and deal with the consequences of my actions.
Inside, she stood at the foot of my bed, dressed in gray with a gun and a knife strapped to her thigh. She seemed to be taking it all in, from the dark reds and gold of my bed and walls, to the wooden floors, large windows, lion-skin rug, piano in the corner, and flat screen plastered on the wall. She turned around slowly, and I really wished I could hear her thoughts. It wasn’t a woman friendly room. However it was wasn’t meant to be.
“We had a machine onboard recording their conversations. It’s now somewhere in the ocean. A team and I will be getting it back,” she told me as she tried to leave the room, but I grabbed hold of her arm first.
“I can go,” I said as she glared up at me. “I should go because it’s my fault. I’m sorry. For everything, I . . .”
“Look who finally did a background check. If you want to come, I can’t stop you.” She ripped her arm from my grasp. “You are everything I thought you would be—a child in a grown man’s body. You’re brash and wild, and you don’t seem to get the gravity of our situation. You don’t impress me, Liam Callahan. So get that poor little girl out of your head, because I am not her.”
Closing the small space between us, I glared down into her brown eyes, wanting to rip them from her oval-shaped face.
“I am brash? I am wild? So says the woman who blasted her way into a private meeting nearly killing her future in-laws. You do not know me, Giovanni. Do not be fooled by my wit or charm. It has taken all my strength not to kill you.”
“What wit? What charm? You’re nothing but talk, and I do not need to know you, Callahan. I just need to marry you.” With that she held her head high and left.
I would not bow down. She would not bow down.
The gravity of our situation was starting to eat away at me. I needed this to work. The Irish needed this to fucking work. But how the hell was I going to handle a lifetime of her—a hot-blooded Italian Boss?
Step one, accept she was a damn boss.
Step two, hide all the knives, guns, and maybe the pillows, too.