This was unexpected politeness. With many families there was at least shouting and expletives…maybe a hurled beer bottle. In our family at this point the pistols usually came out. Mexican standoffs were de rigueur. We were trained at the age of eight in how to deal with that situation.

“That’s right,” Gin said loudly.

Carolina shook her head. “Gin, you shouldn’t even be here. You’re retired.”

Gin slammed her hand down on the table. “Why does everyone keep saying that? I’m really getting pissed off about that!”

“She really is,” Dak said in a stage whisper to his mother. “You should’ve heard her on the plane.”

Carolina turned to me. “Coney, are you refusing to accept your assignment?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

Mum clapped her hands together. “You have to kill Dekker. You have to bring Veronica Gale here.”

I shook my head. “No.”

My mother looked from her left to her right. “We have a contract to honor. And we need to know more about Gale and her friend.” She looked at the folder in front of her. “This Drew Connery could be a terrorist.”

“No. Being a Rhodes scholar does not qualify him as a terrorist. The Republicans tried that with Clinton and it didn’t stick. Both Veronica and Drew are innocent of what happens here.”

Uncle York spoke up. “Look, I don’t care about the other two, but we have a contract for Dekker’s head. We can’t ignore that.”

Cali agreed. “The Bombays have given out assignments to be accepted without question for four millennia. Why should you get to question things?”

“Why not?” came a voice over the PA. Cali cringed as the voice of her daughter bellowed from the speakers overhead. “For chrissake, Mom! You sent me on a damned reality show, where I almost killed the wrong guy, just so you could set me up with a man!” Missi appeared in the doorway and walked toward us. There she was, my ace in the hole. And I knew her recent experience gave the council reason to rethink this.

“And you did find a man!” Cali seemed surprised her daughter wouldn’t get the logic. “You found Lex! Because of us!”

Missi stopped and placed her hands on her hips. “This is idiotic. You are all manipulating us into doing whatever you want! You’re using these assignments to run our lives!”

Our parents looked at one another. Did they get it?

“The truth is,” I said, “we aren’t going to work for the family business anymore.” I gave them a moment to let it sink in. By the looks on their faces, I was pretty sure they hadn’t seen that coming.

“And we are conducting an audit to review our finances,” Paris added.

“And we never, ever want to know if we have killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.” Liv’s voice trembled with rage.

The council was stunned. They had no idea we would demand the disbanding of the family industry. In the past, the old guard would have shot us. Would they do that?

“You can’t just quit!” York protested. Somehow I took his words to mean that we couldn’t quit because he was never able to.

Paris sputtered, “This isn’t a fraternity! You can’t just do things because they were done to you.”

“Don’t you see?” Dak said calmly. “The time for things like this is over. The Dark Ages ended centuries ago. This is civilization. We can’t keep killing people.”

Liv shouted, “And we sure as hell aren’t going to kill anyone just because you think we should!”

“We won’t allow it,” Cali said with steel in her voice.

There it was. The threat.

“Are you going to kill your own children?” Gin shouted. “We represent the majority of our generation. You’ll be wiping us out.”

“And you’ll have to raise our kids!” Dak threw in somewhat unhelpfully. From what I’d heard about Carolina Bombay’s obsession with babies, I thought that was more of a strike against us.

Missi joined us at the table but didn’t sit down. “You will have to kill us. Because we are never going to kill anyone for you again.”

I fist-bumped her. It wasn’t something I’d ever done, and likely wasn’t something I’d ever do again, but I did it anyway.

Chapter Thirty-three

If you are going to make an ultimatum, you have to be ready to back it up. Once you say with absolute certainty that you will not do something, there is no going back. The Bombays have followed this flawed logic with a religious zeal that would have made Hitler envious. Family members who refused to participate in the business were “liquidated” immediately-usually by another family member.

It was a delicate and unstable way to approach life, but that was our culture. Some cultures wrestled over their differences. Others used a game of chess or a “dance-off.” We usually made one another bleed to death. Every family was different.

I was not an only child. But my brother had been such a supreme asshole that I felt like one. Dak and Paris had their sisters. They were lucky. And I was lucky that they included me in that group. And it helped make it that much harder for the council to disagree with us if they had to wipe out all their children. That was a plus for us.

So we glared at one another over a conference table for at least ten minutes, each side hoping the other would suddenly jump up and laugh and yell, “Just kidding!” But that wasn’t going to happen. And we’d use shrapnel instead of confetti.

We’d made a very dangerous move here. And we weren’t even armed. Well, Missi was. She had a button that could electrocute the council. Hopefully we wouldn’t need to use it.

While we sat there in silence, each side hoping their glares were dramatic enough to influence the others, all I could think of was Ronnie. I had it bad. It sucked that she loved Drew. But even if I died, she’d live-I’d tipped the pilot a lot to take them back home if we didn’t return. I hoped she’d take care of Sartre. I loved that little rodent. Considering that guinea pigs only lived about four years, I thought it was ironic that she might actually outlive me.

Still nothing was coming from the council side of the table. I expected our parents to scream, shout, even cry to get us to change our minds. I didn’t expect what happened next.

“What the hell,” Pete spoke up in his gravelly voice. “I’ve been wanting to retire for years.”

“It’s not like we need the money…” Montgomery ventured timidly.

The others looked at one another, then turned to us and nodded simultaneously.

“Right,” York said. “Tradition is so overrated.”

We stared at them as if at some point they were all going to burst into flames. That would have surprised us less than the words that came out of their mouths.

“You’re serious?” Gin squeaked.

Her mother nodded. “Why not? I want to spend more time with my grandchildren, not stuck on this island handing out death sentences.”

The others seemed to agree. Was this for real? How did that happen? We weren’t even that persuasive.

Dak eyed them suspiciously. “You mean I can stop training Louis? And I never have to train Sofia?”

Carolina snorted. “Like I want that precious little girl to kill people! Now, that doesn’t mean she won’t be taught how to fend for herself.”

We watched in awe as the council stood up and made small talk. This had really happened. Without bloodshed. Holy shit.

My cousins hugged their respective parents, who in return hugged them back. Mum came over to me and threw her arms around my neck. After a few seconds, I held her. It was over. It was-

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

And in a split second, the Bombay Council lay twitching on the floor. I knew Missi had something rigged up with the last council where she zapped them at a crucial moment. But I’d never seen it. It was somewhat disturbing to watch our sixty-plus-year-old parents twitching like lobotomized electric eels at our feet.