Page 112 of Tempest

“My name is Miguel Rossi, and as a sign of good faith, I’ll allow you to keep your name. You will come to my university, attend classes, and show me that you’re smart enough to obtain a perfect GPA. Otherwise, you’ll be punished in the worst of ways. Starting with your fingers.”

“Uh—what?”

We reach the plane’s steps, and Miguel shoves me to take them first.

“I find the easiest way to test a man’s longevity is to have him kill immediately,” Miguel says.

I try to pierce him with a look over my shoulder. “Dude, what are you talking about? I’m an asshole, sure, but I don’t kill people for the fun of it. Never have.”

I catch Miguel’s grin before he pushes me up the rest of the steps until we reach the cabin.

Miguel’s gun digs into the small of my back when I stumble to a halt at the front of the aisle.

It’s a private plane with six seats, three on either side, and two of them are occupied.

An elderly man and woman, tied, gagged, and bloodied from previous beatings.

“I don’t understand…” My voice is small. I hate myself, fucking hate myself, but suddenly I’m scared.

“I think you do, boy. I’ll even allow you the choice.” Miguel moves in front of me, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. “It’s their plane. Bianchi doesn’t give me enough money to properly secure more men, forcing me to figure out more imaginative ways of success. What was it you said? You’re poor with instruction? Let me make it easy for you: I don’t have many men under me because I’m forced to kill most of them after they prove how short-lived they are. Are you a coward, Tempest Callahan, or can you be my Vulture, pecking at dead meat, allowing your victims to rot and circling the men I tell you to?” Miguel brings his face close to mine. “Will you be a good little baby bird until you earn your black feathers, or should I just kill you now and save us both the trouble?”

I gulp. My eyes are hot and too wet, and my fingers tremble at my sides.

“Choose, Tempest. Or, I’m told, Mr. Callahan is more than happy to offer up his daughter if you fail.”

The couple whimpers behind him.

Then do it! End your legacy by taking the coward’s way out!

Those were the last words I said to my father before he sold me to a madman, and that is exactly what I should do now.

Allow Miguel to kill me.

End the Callahan line for good and get back at my father that way. Protect my sister. Protect my sister from all of this.

She knows nothing of this life, my success in my father’s realm enough to convince him to send her to a Manhattan school and nowhere near Briarcliff and keep her sequestered. She’s grown up normal. Clover has weird friends and is a little too invested in ghost stories and true crime, but she’s happy. Acclimated. Enjoying being a teenager.

I cannot be the reason she’s thrown into this life.

But I also … “Can’t do it.”

“Excuse me?” Miguel asks with deadly calm.

“I can’t do it. Sir.” I swallow reflexively. “Please don’t make me.”

Miguel veers toward the man, knife held high.

It’s messy, the stabbing. Brutal and filled with screams—both the man and his wife’s.

To prevent me from throwing up, I think of Dad, how he molded me in his image, expected me to take on the title of cruelty with no push-back, then cast me over to a vicious undertaker when all I did was hurt his pride. And his willingness to sell Clover, the heart of our family because I’m not evil enough for him, and he’d like to poison her innocence next.

When he finishes, Miguel turns to me, wiping his blade clean by using my shirt.

“That is how it’s done. Now be a man,” he seethes, “or join that man. Here. I’ll even let you be a pussy about it.”

Miguel shoves the gun into my hand.

The fury of the last four years, the amount of survival I had to learn when I hadn’t grown pubes yet, the rage at being left behind by my friends, my family, and my complete lack of control over my future give me the strength I need to shoot the woman.

To prove my longevity.

“Very good,” Miguel croons behind me. “Now. Let’s move onto the pilots and ensure they take us where we need to go.”

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