Page 5 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I’m tunnel-visioned, reclaiming my throne, leaving no uncertain doubt about who owns this pit, when out of the corner of my vision, a cute little brunette in tight pants and a low-cut top comes shimmying up the cage, mad as hell.

For a split second, I think it must be this guy’s girl, pissed off that she’s going to have to either take it doggy-style for the next three months or try to get off to a Picasso painting when he has her laid out on her back.

But the second we lock eyes, I know I couldn’t be more wrong. The recognition hits.

Ava St. Clair.

That pimply little runt that used to follow Marcel around, always underfoot and yelping like a kicked dog. When I knew her, she was barely more than a kid. She had braces and a nervous smile—a really fucking unfortunate combination—and not a backbone anywhere to be found. So how in the name of puberty did she turn intothis? A curvy little viper with a wolf-cut and a temper, barking orders at men twice her size.

The crowd screams every insult in the book at her, but Ava doesn’t flinch. Her eyes are only on me, and mine—hell, I can’t pull them off her.

I’m not a man easily rendered speechless, but before either of us can wrestle with our surprise, two thick arms wrap around Ava’s waist and haul her down, kicking and thrashing. The security man screams at her and chucks her into the angry crowd, like chumming the waters.

“Hey!” I yell, slamming up against the cage, but it’s too late. Ava goes spilling into the hands of a few dozen pissed-off psychopaths already keyed up on bloodshed. They rip her back into the crowd immediately, the sharks swarming to feast.

I push out of the cage door and jump into the fray.

Ava twists violently as men rip at her hair and grab at her shirt. She tries and fails to push them away, swinging as she’s swarmed on all sides. She keeps fighting, even when she’s taken off her feet, kicking and twisting.

The sport changes when one of the men gets her around the legs and starts pulling at her jeans.

I surge into the crowd, ready to fight them all off bare-handed.

“Get the fuck off her!”

I throw one clean punch and the fucker goes down like a bowling pin, taking out a couple of the men standing nearest to him. My presence alone has most of them startled, backing off, but some are slow to catch on, caught up in the mob mentality with their hands already on her. I fight them off, punching and pulling and throwing them to the ground. There is a new main event now, and those not involved whoop and whistle as if it’s just another match. I’m a single wolf surrounded by a pack of dogs, outnumbered but not outmatched.

I clothesline one of the men over the barrier, then take another off his feet. He smacks his head against the concrete and doesn’t get up again. The cowards clear out fast once the odds turn, once they are dealing with more than just a defenseless girl barely weighing a hundred pounds.

I circle Ava, daring another fucker to step up and try his hand.

Finally, it’s just me and her, surrounded by a semi-circle of onlookers giving us a wide berth.

We’re both breathing hard. I watch the peripheral, waiting for someone to get his pride hurt and try a sucker punch. But out of the corner of my vision, it’s Ava who rushes one of the men. The one who had his hands on her jeans. She charges at him, a feral scream on her lips, ready to rip him apart. I get her around the waist first. I hoist her up over my shoulder. She doesn’t weigh a thing, even as she screams and tries to claw her way back to him.

I push through the crowd, forcing my way through, ignoring the dozens of words being thrown at us. Some are congratulatory, some welcome me back, some are outraged that I would spoil the fun. I ignore it all, my grip iron on the squirming girl.

I take a private exit, the one reserved for the staff and the fighters, where we won’t be followed—leave the hapless fucking security to clean up the mess they created. We emerge into a dimly lit stairwell leading up to the staff rooms and the VIP levels.

“Easy, kid. Easy. I’ve got you,” I tell her.

I sit her down on the steps. I kneel down and put us almost eye to eye. She’s breathing hard, her mouth a bloodied smirk. It’s a look I’ve seen in the ring before, and I’ve seen it behind bars, too.

She gathers her breath like she’s coming down off a high, adrenaline crashing, blood dripping off her chin from a split lip. It looks good on her.

“Goddamn little psycho,” I mutter, taking Ava by the jaw to hold her steady and get a look at the damage. I scrub my thumb against the wound, swiping off the blood.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says, all accusatory, like she’s still pissed atme.

“Sounds like an awful lot of syllables for ‘thank you, Nico,’” I say. “I must have misheard.”

She barely gives me a shrug, much less a thank you.

“If you wanted thanks, you could have spared yourself the bruises. How are you out?”

“I was a model inmate. A paragon of rehabilitation. A real fucking testament to the virtues of the correctional system.”

Ava gives me a long, disgusted stare at my lying, then turns away to pull off her shirt. Someone tossed their beer over her. Utterly shameless, she tosses it aside, leaving herself in just a skimpy bra with blood seeping into the white lace; it drips from her lip and carves a path toward that deep cleavage. My eyes follow it—from one place I want to put my mouth to the next.

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