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

After Da left, I headed upstairs to my apartment, stripped off the suffocating suit I’d been wearing for far too long, and promptly passed out. I was beyond exhausted; my brain burned the fuck out. I needed sleep.

By the time I woke up, it was late afternoon, and beyond the window, the city rushed into another chaotic evening.

I lit a cigarette and inhaled slowly. My mam, bless her, had always tried to get me to quit, back when she still knew who I was.

“That’ll kill you, Bran, and then what’ll we all do without you?”

Mam was the only one between my parents who had worried about that. That was then, of course, and it had always annoyed me when she picked at me. Now, I’d trade ten years in prison for the chance to have Mam niggle me about smoking. When she’d gotten dementia, my world had spun off its axis. I was still waiting for it to go back to normal.

Now, I was a stranger to Mam. She mistook me for a male nurse sometimes when I visited her, or worse, a thug come to rob her. Only Quinn remained steadfast and unwavering. The one person who trusted me, and last night… she’d nearly been hurt.

Last night had been close, far too fucking close, and I couldn’t let it happen again. I inhaled deeply, the nicotine racing through my veins, relaxing for the first time since Declan had showed up at Giada’s door.

Giada’s striking face filled my head.

What a fucking woman. My future wife? Ha, I doubted any man would survive forcing that wildcat into holy matrimony.

I ambled to the window and pushed it up as far as it could go, leaning out to look down at a bustling Hell’s Kitchen. My domain, my American home. It was noisy and chaotic. It suited my personality.

Cian, my man for surveillance, called me as I smoked and watched the traffic snake through the neighborhood. The city was loud in the background, screaming sirens and trash collectors overlapped by cars honking and people talking too loudly.

Giada Santori was the woman my father wanted me to force into marriage. It was surreal. I supposed, considering we’d met at Renato’s wedding, it wasn’t that crazy, but still. I had vowed never to be like my father, and marrying a woman because I had been ordered to was exactly that. I wouldn’t do it. Not for Da and not for anyone. The fact that tangling with her probably spelled certain death, plus the fact that my da was so keen on it, hardly warmed my heart. Seeing as Da rarely had my best interests at heart, I needed to stay the hell away from Giada Santori.

Unfortunately, there was nothing I wanted to do less.

Cian’s voice came over the line. “I’m just getting set up to keep an eye on your mystery woman⁠—”

“Forget it,” I interrupted him, stubbing out my cigarette. “I don’t want to know.” I’d planned to have her followed so I could keep tabs on her and fuck with her at will. Sure, we were enemies, but that didn’t mean the chemistry wasn’t off the fucking charts. They hadn’t yet invented a way to measure the electricity created when Giada Santori glared at me, never mind when we touched. I’d never felt anything like it, and having poor impulse control and a penchant for self-destruction, I wanted to see what we could do with it. So, I’d planned on collecting what she owed me, giving her back her little knife, and going back to being rivals. If the sex was good, I wouldn’t have taken enemies with benefits off the table. For a woman like that, I’d lie, cheat, and steal any day. In the case of Giada, I’d live with the threat of her brother’s wrath, just to have a taste of her.

But marriage? As much as I might like to joke about it, I didn’t really have a death wish. In fact, marrying Giada Santori wasn’t only a death wish, it was a fucking guarantee.

Cian was quiet for a long while. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Any particular reason why?”

Fucking Cian and his intrusive questions. Him, Doc Keiran, Declan, and I had been friends since we were young. Because of that, he never felt afraid to say whatever was on his mind.

“I’m just not interested anymore,” I lied.

“I think you’ll want to know where she’s going tonight,” Cian started.

“I said I don’t want to know,” I insisted, shoving my curiosity down deep. “Let her be another pretty face on a crowded street, and we can pass by like strangers.”

Cian sighed. “You’re in a mood.”

“I’m not.”

“You need to get laid. You lost your game in prison, I hate to say it, but your love life sucks, and it has for years.”

“Maybe I switched teams inside and I’m waiting for the right time to ask you on a date… Is this our moment?” I mused and lit another cigarette.

“Very funny. This Italian is the first one to have caught your attention in… I don’t know how long. Years.”

Try… ever.

“Just drop it and do something useful. I want the CCTV from the place where Ion and Quinn were last night. All of it you can get. We have some walking dead men to find.”

“Got it, and you’re absolutely sure you want nothing to do with Giada Santori?”

I felt a sudden tightness in my chest.

“She shouldn’t have anything to do with me. It’s for the best,” I confirmed.

I wasn’t my da, and I wasn’t starting now.

I wasn’t stealing anyone’s skin.

As I stared down at the street, my phone rang again. Christ, phones and people’s propensity to use them made me miss prison.

I pulled it out of my pocket, my irritation turning to anticipation as a familiar name flashed on the display.

“Da, bratan. How’s it hanging?” Nikolai’s Russian accent made the phrase sound off, which was exactly his intent. My best friend and former cellmate had been trying to learn more American slang to keep up with his young son. It was going interestingly.

“Bigger and straighter than yours, like always,” I murmured. Despite how fucked up my life was, talking to Niko always reassured me. He was a crazy motherfucker, and there was never a problem he couldn’t solve through his creative means.

“Don’t make me jealous. What’s going on there?” Niko asked.

“Quinn got mixed up in some trouble last night, and she picked something up that was going around the club scene.”

“Is she okay?” Niko’s first question. Nothing was more important to the Russian than family, whether it was the ones you were born with or the ones you chose.

“She’s okay. She’s taking this whole thing better than I am. But this drug, man. We need to talk about it. Be on the lookout for it.”

Nikolai was quiet for a few seconds. “Of course. What does it do?”

I swallowed a knot of disgust, the words lodged in my throat. “It turns the taker into a human doll. The lights are on, but no one is home. A blank slate, to be positioned however you want… You can make them do whatever you want when they’re on it.”

“Z Juice. Zombie Juice. I’ve heard of it. I’ve never seen it in real life. Is there no end to the evil of men?” Nikolai swore viciously. “It sounds like the source of this new product needs a talking-to.”

“Yes. We’ll find him,” I said determinedly.

“Yes, we will, and then… we will talk to him. It’s been a while since we talked to someone together.” Niko’s voice was warm with the anticipation of violence.

A car had pulled up down below, and Keiran jumped out and rounded the vehicle, helping Quinn out. So, she was home already. Good. That meant there was nothing physically wrong with her. Just that her memory had more holes than a sieve. Someone had been inside my sister’s fucking head. Fury built steadily within me.

“Yes, it has. Too fucking long.”

“She wasn’t eating. The nurses are worried,” Quinn said, following behind me as I strode down the hallway of the nursing home where our mother lived.

She’d only been out of the hospital a few hours and she was already worried about something else. Unfortunately, worrying about Mam fell to me and Quinn, since my father had long since stopped pretending to care.

“So, what’s their plan?” I asked.

We passed the nurses’ station in a hurry.

“They want to tube-feed her,” Quinn said, sounding very upset at the thought.

I reached my mother’s door and stopped. “I don’t know what you think I can do about it.”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any other ideas. Try and talk to her. You were always her favorite,” Quinn lamented.

I shook my head, already sensing my impending failure, and slipped off my leather jacket and draped it over my arm. The jacket seemed to set her off more than anything.

“I’ll try, but don’t get your hopes up.”

I knocked softly and went inside. The room was a peaceful light-blue color, complemented by an emerald-green chair and bedding. My mother sat in her ocean-colored oasis and stared out the window blankly.

“Afternoon,” I called to her.

She turned to look at me. I waited to see which way she would go. These times were always the hardest. The hope encapsulated in those previous seconds was cruel and painful when the lack of recognition filled her eyes, and she’d treat me like a stranger. There was always a moment when I imagined it wouldn’t go that way.

I was always disappointed.

She blinked and turned away. “Oh, it’s you.”

I swallowed thickly.

“Yes, just me.” I went farther into the room and sat near her. “How are they treating you here?”

“You know. The food is terrible. Hardly five-star. The cheek they have to charge this much for a holiday when the food is the same all the time.” Ma tutted and looked at me. “You should find another job,” she proclaimed.

I nodded. “I should, shouldn’t I?” So today, I was an orderly at the nursing home. That wasn’t too terrible.

“No one with self-respect would work here… take it from me. I raised boys, I know that it matters. What a man does, is who he is,” she muttered away.

“Yes, you’re right,” I agreed.

“A person’s life should mean something, shouldn’t it?” Ma continued.

I stared at her precious profile. Fuck, I missed this woman.

“It should,” I agreed softly.

Ma had always been the moral compass of the family, and now, we were without her strong, maternal guidance.

She glanced over at me and the leather jacket in my arms. “You should never steal a selkie’s skin, Bran. It’s wrong.”

I blinked at her, processing the fact that she’d called me by my name out of the blue.

“Ma?” I asked.

She stood, suddenly agitated, pointing at me accusingly. “You should never steal the skin!”

A couple of nurses burst into the room. “What’s going on here?”

“She got upset about my jacket,” I told them, at a loss for how to explain.

“Oh, Sheila, it’s just a story, love,” one of the nurses tried to calm her down, and when it didn’t work, she looked at me apologetically. “She loves that old song, the one about the selkie and the spring tide, where the man steals her skin and keeps her?”

I nodded. I knew it well.

The nurse grimaced as Ma thrashed about. “You should go. She needs to rest.”

“She called me Bran,” I told the nurse and went past her.

The nurse nodded. “That’s good. She comes and goes, it’s nothing personal.”

I let out a bitter chuckle. “It feels plenty bloody personal.”

“I’m hungry! The service here is terrible. I haven’t eaten in days,” Ma suddenly proclaimed.

The two nurses exchanged glances.

“I’ll go and get you a tray right now, Sheila,” the head nurse said and gave me an encouraging smile. “Seems like you helped, one way or another.”

“Really?” I wondered as I was bustled out of the room.

Quinn waited outside, pointedly ignoring Declan, who leaned against the wall opposite her.

“Well?”

“She’s going to eat something, maybe. Go on in and see. Ion will take you home. I’ll see you later.”

Quinn nodded and went toward the room.

Declan detached himself from the wall and started after me. I strode down the hall.

“You’ve got a fight tonight,” he warned.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Half the family have money on it, so you better show up.”

“I’m going,” I grumbled.

“Should I invite your fiancée?”

I shot Declan a glare so dark his chuckle died on his lips.

“Calm down. It was a joke.”

“There’s nothing funny about being ordered to marry someone by your father.”

We went outside to the parking lot. Fuck, I was exhausted. It was late. Visiting hours were over, but they often bent the rules for Quinn and her winning smile.

Declan considered my words and then shrugged. “When it’s a woman like that… just don’t see it as an order.” He nudged me and passed me a cigarette.

“What else is it?” I wondered.

He smirked. “An excuse. A fucking perfect excuse.”

I chuckled. “You’re smarter than you look, you know that, Dec?”