King of the Cage: A Dark Irish Mafia Romance (Devil’s Own)
King of the Cage: Chapter 42

Five men into the beating, and I was flagging.

I needed a holiday after this. A month-long beach vacation. At least a month. However long my wife could stand me. We needed to get out of town.

Someone hit me from the side, and I staggered. He’d managed to get me right on my fucking stab wound from earlier. I was officially getting too old for this. Busting skulls and fighting to survive was a young man’s game. Niko had it right. It was time to take the wife, settle down somewhere small and quiet, and have kids. Put down roots. A family of my own. Maybe it was time Hade Harbor got a new family. I’d always fancied trying out ice hockey as a hobby.

I went down on a knee and threw the guy behind me over my shoulder. He crashed onto the floor, taking down a few others with him, knocking them like bowling pins down the stairs. I’d lost sight of Aldo.

Ahead of me, two more men stepped up. They had tasers. Motherfuckers.

I went to stand just as shots echoed down the hall, deafeningly loud.

The two security guards fell, shot in the chest.

I spun around and then sagged against the wall.

Elio stood at the end of the hall, bloodstained and lethal, his sights still narrowed down his pistol. Declan climbed up the stairs behind him and doubled over dramatically.

“Jesus, this man is trying to kill me. I was just in the hospital last week.”

“Where’s my sister?” Elio demanded, striding down the hall. He appeared as fresh as a daisy, except for the blood. It was other people’s, it was safe to assume.

“She went looking for the files on the drug operation. And Regina, the brains behind this entire fucking thing.”

“Let’s go,” Elio said curtly and walked off.

Declan raised his eyebrows at me. “He’s a man of few words… unlike us.” He grinned and eyed me up and down. “So, you’re not dead. Your father will be happy.”

I snorted. “Doubtful.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. He called me, very worried about his youngest… ‘Bring my boy home, Declan,’ and that’s a direct quote.”

I blinked at him, trying to reconcile the idea that my father might have been worried about me with my lifelong certainty that he didn’t care if I lived or died.

“Really?” I asked.

Declan nodded. “If you don’t believe me, wait until we get downstairs. He sent all the O’Connors he could replace at short notice to come along and fight.”

“Are you serious? He didn’t want to get involved in this,” I muttered.

“Exactly, but he did… for you. He only asks that we make sure we’re not associated with any of this in the morning. Got it?”

“Got it. Come on. I can’t have Elio playing hero to my wife. That’s my job.”

There had been a scuffle in the office, and a door at the end banged open and closed in the wind. We followed it out to a metal staircase that led up to a roof hatch.

Wind buffeted us when we got up to the roof. This was a tall-arse building, and this was the helipad. We were sickeningly high. I saw Giada immediately. She had her arm around another woman, and Regina was there, too. She had a gun, and it was pointed at my wife.

Elio had his own weapon aimed at Regina, his laser-like focus on the threat.

Giada saw us. She held a hand out to her brother. “Don’t. You don’t need to shoot her… That’s not how she dies.”

Elio didn’t drop his weapon. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… she’s no threat. I guess it’s working now, since I’m not dead…”

I strode across the helipad to Giada’s side. Someone staggered up the stairs and took in the scene, before rushing downward.

Aldo Sepriano.

Elio nodded at me. He moved toward the place Aldo had disappeared. I trusted him to see to it.

I walked to Giada, the cold air wrapping around me, turning my skin to ice. I arrived at her side. “What’s going on, wee one?”

Giada smiled at me. It was like a sunrise.

“This is Alice. She’s my friend,” Giada said. It was a hell of a situation for an introduction, but whatever.

“Nice to meet you, Alice.” I glanced at Regina, who stood watching us.

“And what about her?”

“Her?” Giada faced to Regina. “She tried to kill me, and to make you her boytoy.”

I blinked at my wife. “And so?”

“And so, she needs to die,” Giada announced. She eyed Regina. “Take a walk, Regina. Keep walking until I say stop.”

Regina started forward. I watched with morbid fascination as she approached the lip of the building.

Without a second thought, she walked right off the precipice and disappeared. She didn’t even scream.

I jogged to the edge and stared down. It was the dead of night, and there was no one around. Her body was splattered on the street like an egg fallen on tile.

I straightened and returned to Giada. Declan had taken her friend inside, sheltering her from the wind with his jacket.

Giada shivered under my hands.

“I would give you my shirt, wee one, if I had one.”

She laughed. “I know.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to my lips.

“Wow,” I breathed when she pulled back. “Jealousy is a bloodthirsty look on you. I like it.”

“I wasn’t jealous!” Giada exclaimed. “Okay, fine. I was. I didn’t like her coveting my husband, or my life… It’s mine.”

“Yes, it is. Now, we need to get out of here. I’m pretty sure between my family and yours, this building is either going to explode or be burned down by morning, so it’s time to go.”

“I need to get into the computer first. I need to scrub the formulas of Regina’s work from everywhere I can replace it and then plant a virus the system never recovers from.”

“Can’t we just blow it up?” I asked.

Giada rolled her eyes. “What about the virtual places the data is stored?”

Right. I scratched my head. “Right, well, I’ll leave that to you then, my clever little wife. I’m pretty sure a good number of Enclave cockroaches fled.”

She shrugged. “If I have Regina’s laptop, it doesn’t matter. We can hunt them down, one by one.”

I laughed. “Sounds like the perfect honeymoon, selkie.

She grinned and nodded. “Yes. It really does.”

“Let’s get the computer and get the fuck out of here. Even if I have to tie you up and steal your skin… you’re coming home with me.”