Page 8 of A Game So Reckless

Darragh Gowan. Mad Darragh. The insane, sadistic leader of the Irish mob.

The man who turned Toronto upside down trying to find Deirdre and who nearly killed both her and Elio in the process. The last time he had any contact with our family was in the boxing ring, where he broke several of Elio’s ribs and put my cousin’s kidney out of commission for weeks.

The sweat turns to ice on my skin. Has he come for me?

That question dies as soon as it arises. Because he doesn’t even glance my way. Darragh’s eyes are fixed on my fiancé.

Darragh doesn’t seem to rush, yet somehow he closes the distance in no time at all. Dario keeps tripping and half-falling backwards, colliding with furniture until Darragh puts him out of his misery with a punch to the face so swift his fist reminds me of a striking snake.

Stunned, Dario’s knees buckle. Darragh seizes him by the lapels of his suit…

And drags him to the edge of the roof.

My fiancé’s back hits the glass barrier. Darragh bends him backwards over it until the tips of Dario’s shoes scrape and stab at the roof’s surface, trying to gain purchase so that he doesn’t fall.

I can’t hear what either of them are saying. Blood roars in my ears like a storm. And behind the storm, there’s the sound of punches and a door clicking closed as a man dies behind it.

Four years old in a darkened hallway.

Nineteen years old on a sunlit roof.

These are the moments that make me. The moments I can’t escape. The violence that acts like lethal landmarks, damning drops of blood on the map of my life.

Dario’s feet are off the ground. I know what’s going to happen before it does.

But it shocks me all the same. The way Darragh hoists my fiancé up like he weighs nothing at all…

And throws him off the roof.

My body jerks violently. It’s only then I remember the olive still in my mouth.

And just like a second ago, I already know what’s coming next. A spasm of breathless dread goes through me at the exact same moment that I gasp involuntarily.

The olive lodges in my windpipe.

I choke.

Chapter5

Darragh

Fucking Fabbri fucked me over and I should have fucking known he would. Don’t know why I expected any better from the Sicilian piece of shit. He deserves far worse than the nice sunny flight with the sudden stop on the pavement below that I just gave him.

He deserves to have his balls ripped out, sliced open, then emptied into his eyes.

But he’s not some low-grade mafia nobody who’d only be missed by his own mammy. He’s a Toronto city councillor. Orwas, if the meat-sack thud that just cut off his scream is any indication. He’s too public, too well-known for me to just make him disappear without a massive investigation. A staged suicide is certainly more boring, but in these circumstances it’s the better move.

I step away from the glass at the edge of the roof and fix the chairs Fabbri knocked over in his pathetic attempt at escape. Rage writhes within me like a living thing, unsatisfied with the near-bloodless way I killed him. I know from experience that this is the sort of anger that won’t go down easy – not without my knife in the guts of some poor sod. But I don’t have anyone else on my hit list today.

I’ll fight instead. Get inside the ring and beat the shit out of somebody – or maybe three or four somebodies – so that I can fucking sleep tonight.

I’m ready to split when the sound of shattering glass makes me pause.

A woman rises, shuddering, from where she’s apparently been sitting this whole time. I don’t know how I missed her with that black dress and black hair against all the sunbaked white furniture. Wet glass sparkles at her feet – a drink she’s just dropped.

This could be a problem. It’s not like I can just throw Fabbri’s whore, whoever she is, over the roof with him. There’s not a woman alive in this world who’d kill herself out of grief for that greasy dipshit. No one would believe it. And if I kill her another way, it’ll make Fabbri’s death look a lot less like suicide and a lot more like somebody purposely made him go splat on the pavement.

I could take her with me. Kill her somewhere else. But it’s already going to be tricky getting out of here without being noticed, let alone with some wriggling, screaming Italian girl in my arms.

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