Page 194 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

“That’s the spirit. Mr. Optimism, Artem Kovalyov, ladies and gents.”

He’s laughing, but his eyes are sad. He knows what’s at stake. There’s a very real chance that, if things go badly, we’re close to the end. Splitting up could mean we’ll never see each other again.

I refuse to let that happen.

“Where will you go?”

He hesitates.

“No, you’re right,” I say. “Maybe it’s better if you don’t say.”

“Safety first, you know? Just in case one of us gets caught. If we don’t know where the other one is at, can’t give up the location, right? Keeps us both safe. Lord knows your pain tolerance ain’t shit.”

I laugh. “Let’s just not get captured.”

“Deal.” Cillian leans back in his fold-out chair, his eyes fixed on the pool. “It’s fucking ironic,” he says in a quiet voice that’s weighed down with old memories.

“What is?”

“Just, you know… life,” he says with a shrug. “When I left Ireland, I resolved to leave this kind of shit behind. I figured it had screwed me over enough times, and cost me everything in the process. I told myself I was done.”

“And then you met me,” I chuckle.

Cillian smiles. “I gave fate the middle finger and boarded that plane to L.A., and I guess in a way, you were the middle finger that fate gave back to me.”

I roll my eyes. “Geez, fucking thanks for that.”

He laughs easily. “Hey, man, I’m not complaining. I know now—this is the only kind of life I could have lived.”

“You think?” I ask. “You don’t think things would have been simpler if you’d just taken some run of the mill, every day job, found a nice Irish girl, and settled down?”

“Oh, life would definitely have been simpler,” Cillian agrees. “But I’m not convinced I would have been happy.”

“You would have been bored out of your fucking mind.”

Cillian raises his beer to toast to that. “I was made for this life,” he says. “Just like you were.”

I’m not sure why, but his words make me feel strangely uneasy.

I sit with the feeling for a moment—before I realize it might have something to do with the brunette beauty sleeping on the other side of this wall.

“I spoke to my ma the other day,” Cillian tells me. “Patrick’s being groomed to take over.”

“Patrick?” I ask, in confusion. “I thought Sean was the older one?”

“He is,” Cillian nods. “He walked away.”

I whistle low. “Bet your old man had a fucking conniption.”

“That fucker,” Cillian says. His tone is light, but I can see the resentment in his eyes. “He’s used to being disappointed by his sons. I still remember the look on his face the night he bailed me out of jail.”

“Wasn’t a warm fatherly hug, I imagine.”

Cillian’s gone down memory lane. “‘A smart man knows his place.’ That’s what he told me through the bars of my jail cell,” Cillian tells me, his eyes far away. “‘A smart man knows not to fuck with men above his station.’”

“Fuck.”

He runs his hand over his face. “I didn’t even know that the fucker I fought with was some politician’s son,” he whispers. “All I saw was some entitled motherfucker who put his hands on my woman after she’d asked him not to. I told him once nicely—he flipped me off. The second time, I wasn’t so nice.”

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