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

I was dead. It had finally happened. This had to be death, because it was warm and comfortable, and I never wanted it to end.

Then my nose itched. I wiggled it, hoping that would stop it, but it went on. With a grunt, I lifted my arm to scratch it.

“Shit! Don’t move,” a young female voice worried.

A beeping sound cut through the silence, and I cracked open my eyes, blinking in the harsh daylight flooding the room.

“I’m not dead?” I croaked roughly. My voice was dry as hell.

A figure sat next to my bed. Selkie? But as my eyes cleared, I made out the long red hair of my visitor. Quinnie, my little sister, with a goddamn feather in her hand.

“Nope, not yet. Better luck next time.” She grinned at me. Gallows humor tended to run in O’Connor blood.

“I felt like I died. I was at peace.”

“That’s the morphine,” Keiran called. He came into the room and picked up my chart from the end of the bed. “It’s good shit, but don’t get too used to it.”

“Finally, we can get out of here.” Quinn stood and stretched this way and that.

Declan looked over at her and then cleared his throat.

“I’ll go tell your da that you’re awake,” he said. “Finally, we can get rid of all these De Sanctis fuckers all over here,” he muttered and headed out of the door before I could ask what he meant.

“De Sanctis?” I asked instead of what I really wanted to ask, which was where Giada was. Had she taken the opportunity of her brother’s attack to leave me? Was the marriage already annulled? I rested my head back against the pillow.

Quinn nodded. “They’re everywhere, and some of them are really hot.”

“No eyeing up the enemy,” I warned my sister.

She laughed. “Why not? You married one, remember? Aren’t we all just one big happy family now?”

“I don’t know, are we?” I wondered.

“In a way… your Da demanded amends for Elio stringing you up and nearly killing you. We now have an alliance with the De Sanctis family. Our problems are solved thanks to your near-death experience,” Keiran told me cheerfully.

“I’m happy to be of service,” I muttered. Keiran slipped the chart back and put his hands on his hips, giving me a nod.

“Right, you lazy fecker, now that you’re awake, hurry up and free up a bed for some poor bugger who really needs it.”

“I’m injured,” I protested.

“You’ve had worse. I’d know, seeing as I’ve put Humpty-Dumpty together again enough times. I’ll check on you later,” he called, displaying his usual bedside manner, and left.

Quinn rushed around the room, grabbing her bags. “I’ve got to get to class. I wanted to stop in and see my dear, dear big brother.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You mean check out the Italian eye candy?”

She grinned. “That, too. Ciao, fratello,” she said in the worst accent I’d ever heard.

“Hey, who’s teaching you Italian?” I shouted after her, alarmed at the thought of some smooth-talking De Sanctis made man whispering sweet nothings in Quinn’s twenty-one-year-old ear.

I was tired. I rested my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes. Why was the De Sanctis family here if Giada had abandoned me? What had happened in the meat locker? I could remember the cold feeling, and the way the blood seemed to drain out of me, like a carcass before butchering. But nothing beyond that.

I dozed, tugged under by exhaustion. There were no dreams, only warm darkness and a gentle song.

And in the magic of the Spring Tide, the moon brought my selkie to me.

When I woke again, it was night beyond the window. A fat, pale moon shone through the blinds, sending slices of light over my bed and the woman asleep beside it. Her dark hair was like a rippled blanket across her shoulders, her sooty eyelashes fanned over her cheek. A pinch of worry lived between her thick eyebrows that I wanted to soothe away.

Giada was here.

I lifted a hand and rested it on hers. Her fingers were so slender and tapered, the opposite of mine. The touch startled her awake, despite my attempt to be gentle.

She raised her head and yawned, the delicate muscles in her throat working and drawing my gaze.

She rubbed her mouth and sat up, stretching her arms over her head and pushing her breasts against her tight T-shirt. She had glasses on. I’d had no idea my smoking-hot wife could also look so fecking adorable.

She glanced around for what had woken her and then down, jerking with fright as she noticed my hand on hers.

Her eyes shot to me, and I gave her a crooked grin.

“You’re awake again! I missed it before,” she murmured and shifted forward to rest the back of her palm against my forehead, as if checking for a fever. “The doctor wasn’t sure if you needed antibiotics, or if any of the cuts on your back got infected.”

“What happened? Your brother was ready to kill me,” I said.

Giada’s face darkened. “He’s over it.”

“The urge to kill me? That’s good to know, but why didn’t he already do it?”

“I should get Doc,” she muttered, avoiding my eyes.

I grabbed her wrist before she could run away. “Why, Giada?”

She stared at me. “I asked him not to.”

“Were you there, wee one? Did you come to rescue me?”

My chest tightened at the glint in her dark eyes. Worry, guilt, and anger. For me. It was a thick balm filling in the places inside me that had cracked more and more over the years. A lifetime of being the disappointment and the one who nobody really needed.

Now, she needed me. She believed in me. She wanted me.

Now, I was bulletproof.

“Well, it was my fault you were there,” she pointed out, trying to rein her emotions back in.

My girl didn’t open up easily.

“Technically, if I’d never stolen you and married you, I guess I’d never have been there either.” I let go of her wrist and slid my fingers through hers.

“Yeah, well, technically I guess you’d have been a better match for Elio if you hadn’t had twenty lashings. Now, that is my fault,” she started.

I couldn’t have that. I reached up and grabbed her chin, tilting her face forward so she had no choice but to look at me.

“Don’t you dare blame yourself for the fucked-up shit of other people. Ever. Got it?”

She nodded slowly.

I sighed and rubbed my thumb along her jaw. “For the record, so we’re clear, I don’t blame you for anything. I don’t think you’re too loud, or a know-it-all, or too fucking much of anything.”

She swallowed hard. “And… you love me.” Her dark gaze burned into mine.

“You know that polygraph results are unreliable, right?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Are they?”

“Don’t research it, take my word for it…” I gave her a wry smile, and my heart felt too big when she smiled back.

“I knew you had a soft spot for me, selkie, I called it.”

“Now who’s the know-it-all?” she murmured and brushed my hair back from my forehead.

I caught her hand before she could move back. “I want to know one thing.”

She waited for me to speak. My back felt like fire, and it might be time to get a top-up on the morphine, but it was really her next words that could make or break me.

“Are you still my wife?”

She blinked at me. A soft glow tinted her golden cheeks.

“Tell me. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

She smirked, seizing on my teasing to break the tension. “Really?

“No, I’m lying, but tell me anyway.”

She let out a long sigh.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.

My heart plummeted.

Giada lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers. There was a flash of gold from her hand. My grandmother’s claddagh ring still sat snugly on her ring finger. I took her hand and pulled it to my mouth, pressing a kiss onto the simple band. Evidence that this woman hadn’t gotten rid of me as soon as she could.

“I have to get a doctor to check on you.”

“In a minute,” I told her firmly and used my grip on her hand to pull her closer. It was like winding in a wriggling fish. “I have to kiss my wife first.”

“Bran! You’re too injured to be hauling me around. Seriously, if you open your stitches, I’ll be really mad.”

“Kiss me then, selkie, and I promise not to move,” I told her and stopped reeling her in.

She gave a long-suffering sigh and scooted closer.

“Relax back,” she ordered, jerking her head toward the pillow behind me.

“As you wish, wee one.” I grunted, carefully lowering myself back to the bed.

She leaned forward and hesitantly cupped my cheeks.

“You were there,” I murmured, the sudden warmth of her hands on my face reminding me. Sudden warmth after cold, and the sound of humming. “I remember.”

“Don’t remember too much. Some days are better forgotten,” she said softly and leaned in. Cupping my face, she pressed a kiss to my lips. It was soft, and chaste, and utterly devastating.

“I don’t want to forget a second of you, selkie, even if it hurts,” I admitted, my lips brushing hers before she kissed me again.

When she pulled back, her gaze dropped to my chest. My hospital gown was open, wires snaking out. Giada touched the black lines of my ogham tattoo, over my heart.

“It’s about your mom, isn’t it? A lament,” she murmured.

I nodded. “You have no idea the pain of being forgotten, selkie. Yes, this ink is for her. My living elegy for the woman I knew… but who no longer knows me.”

She stared up at me. There was a lot in that look that I was sure I didn’t deserve, but was going to damn well hold on to.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I promise I’ll never forget you, Bran O’Connor.”

I gave her a crooked grin. “Oh, Giada, do you really think I’d let you?”