Page 140 of King of the Cage

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 find 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 beena 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.

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