King of the Cage: A Dark Irish Mafia Romance (Devil’s Own)
King of the Cage: Chapter 33

Isat in The Selkie’s Rest with Quinn when the call came. She frowned at her vibrating cell.

“Answer it,” I told her.

“It’s an unknown number,” she pointed out.

I grabbed her cell and answered.

“What?” I growled down the line. My wife was out hanging with her friends, and I wasn’t invited. It didn’t put me in a particularly friendly mood.

“Er — hello, I’m calling about from St. Joseph’s emergency room. I’m afraid there’s been an incident, and the man involved had this number saved to this phone. A Declan⁠—”

“Is he all right?” I demanded.

The voice hesitated. “I can’t disclose a patient’s private information over the phone.”

There was a scuffling sound and an exclamation of female fright.

“Sir! You can’t come in here⁠—”

“Bran?” Dec’s voice came over the line.

Relief filled me.

“Jesus, what the hell is happening over there?” I asked, standing, my seriousness drawing eyes.

“I have no fucking idea, but someone took Giada,” Declan said, anguish in every word.

I stared at the wall, the words hardly computing.

“Bran, did you hear me? Someone took your wife.”

I had men all over the scene of the accident. Cian watched the traffic cams, Declan had recalled every single fucking detail that he could manage, and none of it was helping.

She was gone.

Missing.

There was nowhere else to look but in the direction of Casa Nera. At this point, I could only hope Elio had kidnapped his own sister and planned to force her to leave me. It beat all the other alternatives.

“So, you mean to tell me that not only do you steal my sister, force her to marry you, and live in Hell’s Kitchen,” Elio sneered the last like my neighborhood was akin to Dante’s inferno, “but then you go and lose her. Who are your enemies, O’Connor? Who would have taken your wife?” he demanded angrily.

This was not a phone call I’d ever wanted to make. Fuck if Elio Santori wasn’t just as annoying over the phone as he was in person.

“My enemies are too many to name, as are yours, Santori. Are you sure she didn’t come home to you and you’re both just fucking with me?” I asked. I wished it were true.

Elio was silent for a long moment. “If she’s hurt, you’ll pay for it, brother-in-law.”

“Oh, I know I will.” In this life and all the ones to come. I’d never stop paying.

“Think, there must be someone more likely to take her than anyone else,” Elio demanded tersely.

“Aldo Sepriano. He’s the only one who comes to mind to be that pissed at me.”

“Because you killed his brother?”

“You know?”

“Everyone knows.”

“Right, well, yeah. The problem is, I’ve had someone keeping an eye on him, and he hasn’t gone anywhere tonight.” I’d decided to have Aldo watched because he seemed to be a loose cannon. While we were playing nice with The Enclave, and Archibald genuinely thought I was interested in becoming a member, Aldo was after me personally. He had a score to settle about his brother. So, I’d had him watched. Not that it had helped. It had to be him.

“Is there anyone on his side, someone who’d be helping him?”

“His investment club, I guess, but I don’t think they’d abduct Giada. They have their own rules to follow, and it doesn’t fit.”

Elio thought that idea over. “Are they the ones who fucked up your back?”

“Yeah, they’re old-school.”

“Where can I replace them?” Elio asked calmly. His tone was deceptive. He was an utterly lethal individual, and if he decided to go after The Enclave looking for Giada, then it was finished.

Maybe that was what we needed to do.

Elio spoke to someone in the background, the sound muffled. I pressed the phone against my ear, trying to hear.

“We’ve found her,” he said shortly a second later. “Someone named Regina called Casa Nera. Apparently, Giada had an accident and the hospital called her.”

Why the fuck would the hospital call Regina about Giada?

“Where is she now?” I demanded.

“They’ve got her at St. Joseph’s, in their private hospital area. I’m on my way. She asked for me… O’Connor? Are you still there? Hello?”

I made it to St. Joseph’s in record time, my bike weaving down crowded roads, over ice and melted snow. I headed straight for the private wing on the top floor of the hospital. While I stood in the elevator, annoyingly soothing music grated on my nerves, and a plaque announced that the wing had been named after Regina and Archibald Calloway in honor of the generous donation given by Cyrus Calloway, to celebrate his daughter’s marriage. Wait. Regina was the Calloway? Archibald had taken his wife’s name? That seemed startlingly progressive for a man like The Sentinel.

I put it out of my head as the doors slid open. I strode into the foyer. A couple of security guards stood around the front desk who wore the vaguely knightlike jackets I’d seen on the security team at The Tartarus. I pointed at one.

“Tell your boss I’m here for my wife. Now.”

“Brandon!” A female cry reached me across the cavernous room. Regina, Archibald’s wife. She hurried toward me, her face pale with worry.

“You’ve heard that Giada’s here?” she asked with wide, doe-like eyes.

“Yes, I have. Why wasn’t I your first call? Why would you call Casa Nera?” I demanded.

She paused. There was a look I couldn’t quite decipher in her eyes, and then it passed. She put a hand on my arm.

“I just did what she asked me to,” Regina said.

“Take me to her.” I shrugged off her hand and brushed past her, leaving her to run after me. I stormed through the building, my worry growing with every step. “You said she showed up at the hospital? She’s hurt?”

Regina trotted behind me. “Yes, kind of, it’s hard to explain.”

“Try.” My tone was iron.

“She seems to have suffered a head injury.”

Fear hit me hard in the gut, stealing my breath. My clever little selkie, hurt?

“Which way?” I growled at Regina when faced with endless glass walls and white hallways stretching in both directions.

“This way.” She pointed to one.

I took off and came to a secured door. I slammed it with my hand, the entire thing rattling.

“Open it,” I instructed shortly.

Regina typed something into the keypad, and then I was in.

The suite was laid out like a private hospital ward. One of the doors was closed. I made for it. She was in there; I could feel it.

I marched down the hall, trying to slow my thundering stride so as not to scare her, and burst into the room.

Giada lay in a bed, surrounded by machines and snowy pillows. She was wearing a hospital gown. She turned toward me as soon as I walked in, my eyes immediately taking in the bandage on her temple. Her dark eyes fixed on me, and I waited to hear her voice. I waited for some emotion to appear in those huge, dark eyes. Something other than confusion. Anything.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all.

“Giada? Selkie?” I murmured, slowly stepping closer, like she was some wild creature I might spook.

She continued to look up at me, a puzzled expression spreading across her beautiful face. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“If it’s not amnesia, then what is it?” I asked, my frustration on a barely controlled leash. It had taken all of a few horrifying seconds to realize that my wife wasn’t relieved to see me, because she didn’t know me.

It was the finishing blow.

Now, Giada rested, while I stood in a room next door with Regina and two doctors she’d brought in to talk us through the problem, plus Elio and Sol. When asked who she wanted to call, she’d told Regina to phone Sol and her brother. Not me.

“Trauma from the blow? Willful forgetting something upsetting? The brain is a tricky thing, Mr. O’Connor. We don’t know a lot about memory centers and how they can be affected,” one of the doctors explained.

I glared at him. “Then replace someone who knows more.”

“Willful forgetting of something upsetting,” Elio repeated quietly and gave me a look that would freeze a lesser man’s blood. “What did you do, O’Connor?”

I blew out a long breath and shook my head. “Nothing. I fucking swear it. We were—” I trailed off. At the start of everything. “We were good,” I said instead.

“But I bet there’s something, right?” He sneered at me. “Of course there is. There always is with you.”

“This isn’t the time to talk through our issues, Santori. This is time to focus on your sister — my wife.”

“Shouldn’t we take her home? She hates hospitals,” Sol jumped in. “I mean, I don’t know what’s going on with her, but she knows me and trusts me… and Elio. We could take her back to Casa Nera and let her recover there.”

“Not happening. She’s not getting locked away from me in that armed compound you call home. I’ll never see her again,” I bit out.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Elio said coolly.

I whirled toward him, and Sol rushed between us.

“No fighting! This isn’t about you two. We need to think about Giada.” Sol turned to me and gave me a beseeching look.

I became aware of a heated stare on the side of my face and spun to Regina. She watched avidly. The woman turned my stomach, honestly. I knew Giada felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t seem to.

“Thanks for your help. You can leave it to her family to deal with now,” I ground out.

Regina wrung her hands. “But I feel I should stay. The hospital did call me, after all.”

“Why did they call you?” Elio asked abruptly. “Why you and not me, or her husband?” he sniped in my direction.

“I suppose I was one of her last calls,” Regina said.

“You two talk on the phone?” I interjected. This was news to me. I wouldn’t have liked the idea of Giada having anything to do with The Sentinel’s wife. Apparently, she knew that and hid it. Behind her tough, capable front, Giada was a bleeding heart when it came to women in trouble. She couldn’t help herself.

Regina nodded. “Yes, we were becoming very close. She didn’t mention that to you?” Her expression seemed to suggest that it was a grave failing on Giada’s part to have kept their relationship under wraps. I instinctively disliked the implied criticism of my wife.

“She probably already knew I wouldn’t give a fuck. My wife can be friends with whoever she wants. I’m not interested in them. I’m only interested in her,” I said.

Regina caught her breath and gave me a small smile. “Well, I admire that kind of trust in a relationship. It’s uncommon.”

She glanced around and caught the full brunt of Elio’s impatient glare.

“Weren’t you leaving?” he asked coolly. If tone could kill, Regina would be bleeding out on the floor.

She nodded, flustered by his obvious dislike, and headed for the door.

“I’ll be in touch and come by tomorrow. You’re not alone, Brandon. The Enclave is behind you. You’re practically family now,” Regina reminded me and slid out the doors, finally leaving us alone.

“Thank fuck she’s gone. There’s something off about that woman,” Elio muttered and then looked at Sol. “Get her ready, we’re leaving. I’m taking her home.”

I slapped a hand on his chest. “No, I am. Her home is with me.”

“Not anymore, it seems,” Elio shot back.

I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to break his fucking face.

Elio and I glared at each other in silence until Sol stepped between us.

“Okay, you two, stop. We have to think about Giada.” She gazed up at me. “The truth is that she doesn’t remember the last few months, and unfortunately, that time period covers meeting you. It doesn’t matter if she’s your wife right now, because she doesn’t remember even meeting you. You wouldn’t want to cause her more distress, would you?”

Her words were a fucking lance to the heart.

“She stays with me. If you want, you can stay, too, and make sure she’s okay, but I’m not letting her out of my sight for her brother to poison her damaged mind against me,” I told Sol.

Elio let out a dark scoff. “Not happening, O’Connor. I’ll kill you before I let you take her anywhere,” he said flatly.

There was a deadly glint in his eyes, and I knew he wasn’t joking.

“Why don’t you ask me what I want, before threatening to have a shoot-out in a hospital?” a familiar voice asked dryly from the door.

Giada stood there, gripping an IV stand. She leaned in the doorway, clearly exhausted but determined. My heart beat strangely as my eyes met hers. I searched for some spark of recognition. Anything at all.

“I think I should get to decide what I want to do with my life, don’t you?” Her voice was firm. She looked me up and down and raised an eyebrow. “If you’ve got a problem with that, Irish, you know where the door is.”

Giada O’Connor was gone.

Giada Santori was back.