Page 5 of King of the Cage

“Yes, Charlie, blink twice if you want to be whisked away to Hell’s Kitchen to live with the Irish Mafia instead of Italian.” Even her voice was hot. Deep and tinged with an Italian accent.

I wanted to hear her say my name.

I cut my eyes to her, feasting on the sight. She was even more beautiful up close.

She gave me a saccharine sarcastic smile. “If you want to rescue someone, Irish, try taking someone who won’t bring a war down on your house.”

She knows who I am.That pleased me somehow.

“Like you, sweet cheeks?” I offered.

“You’d never survive me.”

“Sounds like a fun way to go, though, I have to say.” I held my hand out to her. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced, beautiful. I’m Bran. And you are?”

She smirked at me. “Out of your league.”

Just like that, she stood and swept off.

I let her go… for now.

2

GIADA

After midnight at a wedding was right around the time when all the single people started to eye each other up and decide which of the dregs was the best to go home with. The lights were low, and the music thumped. The dance floor was packed, and there was an air of rowdy carelessness that could end in actual body bags, given the guest list of the wedding in question. The mob wedding of the year. Every young, aspiring gangster was here. It wastheplace to be. As for me, my designer shoes had given me blisters, and the fun was a little on the tame side, considering the company tonight. Every single killer in the crowd was on their best behavior, it seemed. How boring.

“Don’t look, he’s coming over,” Sol whispered, gripping my wrist tightly.

“Of course he is. You’re the hottest thing in this room,” I reassured her while prying her needle-like nails from my wrist.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered, quickly smoothing down her dark-blond hair. It was already perfect, but she wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

“You have no idea what it’s like trying to get the guy you like to notice you,” Sol muttered to me.

“Don’t I?” I wondered and fished my third olive out of my dirty martini. The only good thing about wedding receptions was the open bars. “That's news to me.”

“No. You like a guy, snap your fingers, and he’s kissing your feet.” Sol flashed a glance across the room under the fan of her lowered eyelashes.

I pulled a face. “Not feet, not my thing, and I’m obviously super popular with men.” I waved a hand at the empty chairs around the table. “Look at my harem.”

Sol snorted a laugh and immediately clamped a hand over her mouth like she’d done something unforgivable. It was her family’s fault. They were the type of Italians who’d brought their eldest daughter up to believe she needed to be refined and ladylike, instead of the lethal Mafia princess she was.

“You could literally have one if you wanted,” Sol teased. “If you could put up with a man’s presence long enough.”

I wrinkled my nose and twisted to see where the hell the object of Sol’s obsession was. Enrico Sepriano lingered at the bar, staring over at us. Trying to get his balls together enough to come over and speak to Solaria. What a loser, and yet, he was the loser my best friend liked. Madness. His father was a retired made man in the De Sanctis family, and I had no idea how he’d scored an invite to the wedding. The Seprianos didn’t even live at Casa Nera, the Mafia compound I called my American home. Both Sepriano siblings had gone into politics with varying degrees of success, setting a new bar for the amount of corruption in office.

On the other hand, Solaria Moroni was the eldest daughter of the Moroni family, an Italianfamigliaout of Queens. Their might was nothing compared to the De Sanctis family, but Renato, my capo, had invited them to his wedding out of courtesy. The King of Atlantic City had manners, and moreover, weddings were the perfect opportunity to see the competition up close and understand their ever-changing ranks and important players.

Tonight, the night when thecapo dei capiof the De Sanctis Mafia had taken a bride, his men had been watching the guests, assessing. No one mixed business with pleasure like Ren. His marriage was proof of that. Instead of getting rid of a purely professional loose end and her annoying brat sister, he’d married her. Most worrying of all, he liked her.

He loved her.

It was jarring. For as long as I could remember, since I was a little kid in the Neapolitan countryside, dirt-poor, with a last name that was despised far and wide, Renato and my older brother, Elio, had been my only friends. We were closer than friends. Family, forever connected.

Tonight, for the first time, Ren had introduced fresh blood into that dynamic, and I still didn’t know how to feel about it.

Unsettled, sure. Threatened? Unfortunately, yes.

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