Page 3 of King of the Cage

“The one about the Selkie and the spring tide.’”

I stared at her, willing her to tell me the story again but too proud and aware of my age to ask for it.

“One day, the spring tide will bring a selkie to you. She’s yours, this magical creature… you’ll have to decide to let her go or to hide her seal skin, so she can never leave. If you let her keep her the skin, she might leave sometimes, but she’ll always come back. If you hide it, one day, she’ll find it and leave for good. Or so the song has it.” Mam smiled at me.

She hummed again, and my eyes drifted closed.Just stop trying.Just be you.

Maybe I should. Just be the black sheep. The disappointment.

Maybe I wasn’t capable of being anything but.

1

BRAN

NOW

Níl aon comhtharlúintí ann, níl ann ach cinniúint

There are no coincidences, only fate

There was something about weddings that made me want to punch someone. Maybe it was having to wear a suit and play nice with half of the most dangerous men on the East Coast, eating shrimp cocktail and pretending that on any other day, we wouldn’t be trying to kill each other.

Or maybe it was because I knew that as the youngest son of renowned Irish mobster, the great Colm O’Connor, one day in the not-too-distant future Da would make sure I was standing at the end of the aisle and not in the crowd. Apparently, it was my duty to make sure the genes were passed down. Considering Killian, my older brother and heir to the family business, wascurrently incarcerated, it appeared producing little O’Connors would fall to me.

“It’ll be you next, if the boss has anything to say about it,” Declan, my right-hand man — and father’s spy — elbowed me in the side as we watched the dangerous criminals of New York mingle at the bar.

I shot him a dark glare, and the fucker chuckled, cracking his scarred, heavily tattooed knuckles.

“Look on the bright side. Maybe you’ll die first and never make it to theI do.”

My da had been making it known lately that it was time I settled down. He was in the market to find me a bride, and I was seriously considering going to jail again to avoid it. I wasn’t the marrying type.

“Here’s hoping.” I sighed, surveying the crowd. “I should go and pay the family’s respects to De Sanctis.”

The last thing I wanted to do was pay respects to that lot. Lately, there was nothing but bad blood between the O’Connors and the De Sanctis family. O’Connors were Hell’s Kitchen born and bred. It was the basis of our operations in the city and where the entire clan lived. Lately, there had been skirmishes with De Sanctis men over the river. The De Sanctis family owned New Jersey. Increasingly, keeping the Hudson between us wasn’t enough space. Shipments were going missing and men attacked. Of course, O’Connors couldn’t help but retaliate. Right now, it was a blood-soaked game of tit for tat. Renato De Sanctis, thecapo dei capiof New Jersey, had invited us to the wedding for two reasons. To show the world that we got along fine, nothing to see here, folks, and also, to remind us of whose dick was bigger.

Declan nodded. “You’d better do it soon. Judging by the stare he’s giving his reluctant bride, I think they’ll leave soon.”

I squinted across the room at the new Mrs. De Sanctis. She was pale and a little dazed. Renato De Sanctis had broken the mold by taking a wife from the real world, and not the fucked-up seedy underbelly the rest of us thrived in. She was pretty enough, in a blanched and ethereal kind of way, but her subtle beauty was overshadowed by the woman sitting next to her.

I stared. I didn’t even try and stop myself. Sure, the Italians were generally a bonny bunch, but the woman beside the bride was really something. It wasn’t just her small and curvy body, waist-length black curls, or dark all-knowing eyes. It was the wicked curve of her smile.

She looked like trouble.

I couldn’t turn away.

“How long do we have to stay?” Quinn, my younger sister, appeared at my side.

At twenty-one, her idea of fun was hanging out with her friends at the shore or going shopping. She’d had no choice about coming, seeing as my father was currently laid up healing from surgery and Killian was in jail. The only other family member, Ronan, was a stepbrother and far too high-and-mighty to lower himself to represent the clan. Ronan was a criminal attorney and a damn good one, working with some of the worst felons the city had ever seen, getting them out of jail time, in return for riches and favors.

Everyone in the O’Connor family had a role, except for me.

The black sheep.

The disappointment.

Da had known it since I was a boy. He’d evaluated my worth early and found it lacking. And since I was to be known as a disappointment, then I’d made it my life’s work to live up to that reputation.

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