Mila: The Godfather (Unholy Trinity Book 7)

MILA

“If you look at her the wrong way, I will hit you so hard, you will puke out your balls.” – R

“Are you sure this is safe?” I look at the big men stepping out of a fighting cage with blood-covered hands and lots of visible bruises. Some have blood running down their noses, and one big burly man is being held by two men and that looks even worse. He has bandages on his head, and I’m pretty sure he has a concussion. My head starts to spin with the possibility of Riagan getting hurt, and it makes me feel anxious. So much so that I make up scenarios in my head in all the ways it can all go wrong. “Did you know that the probability of you dying while in a fighting cage is 73.6 percent? Did you know that?” I blurt out.

Okay, I might be stretching the truth a little.

The overall injury prevalence for combat sports like this one is reported to be 73.6 percent, so I stretched the truth a lot, but I have good reason for deceiving him. I’m… afraid.

Feeling guilty about lying, I whisper while holding onto his hand, feeling his band-aid fingers. “What I just told you was not accurate. I apologize.” I tell him truthfully while looking down at our joined hands.

I hold my breath and wait for his response.

Is he mad? Disappointed?

He chuckles softly. “You don’t need to worry, baby.” He tips my chin up, making me look at him. “I won’t lie to you or insult your intelligence by telling you that cage fighting is not dangerous because it is.” I frown at his callous way of saying it. How does he expect me not to worry? I don’t want him to get hurt. Ever. But I also know who he is and what he does, so the probability of him getting hurt, is high. “The only one who needs to worry is my opponent,” he says calmly. Too calm, I think.

“Be careful still,” I grumble, worried and he hasn’t started fighting yet.

Looking around the establishment, I notice how crowded it is. Mayhem. I think it’s what Riagan called this place, which looks like an abandoned hospital on the outside, but it fools you. There’s nothing old or abandoned about this place. It looks exactly like how a professional Mixed Martial Arts ring would. On our way here, he clued me in about the place and how it came to be. Riagan’s family, like my own, have built empires out of their legal business, which in this case would be the O’Sullivan brand of alcohol their grandfather founded and the casinos all over the city both Cathan and my husband own. Then there are the underground businesses. The gun trade, the illegal casinos hiding in plain sight in hotels, and the business that is solely Riagan’s.

The illegal fighting matches.

Cage fighting to be precise.

A normal woman would frown when finding out all this but not me. I grew up aware of the illegal activities my father did for Detroit. I might not have been treated like a mafia princess like the other girls in the families were, but I did hear the whispers and saw with my own eyes the same brutality that’s going to occur here tonight.

I just wish it didn’t involve Riagan.

But I trust him.

I’ve seen firsthand what he does to someone he deems as a threat, and he is right. The one who should be worried about permanent brain damage should be the man who decided to get inside a cage with my husband.

“Hey, lost you there. Come back to me, butterfly.” Riagan’s voice snaps me out of my head. I zoned out. Looking up at him and then at his cheek, I smile, not wanting him to think I’m afraid of his life. At one point, I was, and to an extent, I am afraid of losing him, but I don’t want him to think he made a mistake and realize he should have married someone who isn’t afraid of the things he loves.

Why did he have to enjoy fighting? Out of all the dangerous sports, he chose the most dangerous one. Not dwelling on it too much, I shake off the nerves that start to rise and touch his cheek. I touch him to remind myself that he’s here with me and he is real. “Good luck, and fight smart, okay?”

“Okay, butterfly.” He pulls me closer, and the noise around us fades away. It always happens when he touches or kisses me. It’s like he has the power to slow down the world and stop time. It’s almost magical but everything about him is. As silly as it might sound. To me, Riagan O’Sullivan is what dreams are made of, at least for me. I also can see how he could be other people’s nightmare.

Not to me, though. Perhaps, I am biased.

Oh, well.

Then he pulls back and fishes something out of his shorts’ pocket. “Got you these. Use them when the crowd gets too loud.” Looking down at his extended hand, I see pink earplugs in his palm, and just like that, I feel myself melting at the sweet gesture. He never forgets, and he always puts me first. Pulling my curls aside, I shiver when I feel his touch on my neck before he puts the noise-canceling plugs in both ears. Wow.

The noise of the crowd is not that loud with these on. It doesn’t completely drown it out, but it doesn’t hurt my ears. I’m still able to hear, just not as intensely as before. “Thank you.” I breathe out, beaming at him.

He then kisses my forehead and lingers there for a long moment before he says. “Stick close to Kelly. He’ll protect you while I’m inside the cage.”

I nod, a little bit less anxious than I was before. “Riagan.”

“Yes, baby?”

“I—” Looking at his chest, I can’t seem to finish my sentence. The words get stuck in my throat.

“I know, baby. I know.” He grins as if he just won the lottery. Does he know? Does he really? I didn’t even know, and I’m still not fully sure I understand this feeling that takes over my chest when he is near. “You just made me the luckiest fucking bastard twice. First, when you agree to marry me and now.” Before I can reply, he leans down and kisses me.

Not gentle but hard.

It’s a brutal kiss.

Claiming me.

I feel it down in my soul.

Too quickly, it ends, and he is pulling back and moving away from me. “See you in a bit, baby. This shit won’t take long.” He says cockily as he retreats into the crowd, not once averting his gaze from mine. With my heart in my throat, I smile at how genuinely happy he looks.

This smile seems different.

So, as he walks away from me, I save how he looks in my memory, not wanting to ever forget it.

I know, baby. I know.

His words play through my mind, making my heart beat faster.

He knows I love him, and that has to be what he meant because that is what I wanted to say.

I was about to blurt it out, but something didn’t let me. Perhaps nerves or fear, whichever it was, got in the way.

“This is him, little one.” A rough voice says from in front of me. Too busy staring at Riagan, I didn’t realize his men had made a barricade around me. Bain is standing to my left, while Cianne is to my right. Looking over my shoulder, I spot men I’ve seen guarding the mansion, and the one who spoke is guarding my front. Byrne. Riagan calls him Byrne, but Maeve told me his name is not actually Byrne but Callam. “This is the boss. This city’s Godfather.” He says without a smile on his face. Nothing. His expression is unreadable and difficult for me to understand. Out of all Riagan’s men, he is the one I have the least contact with. He makes me nervous, I must admit. He’s never been rude to me or unkind, but the times we’ve crossed paths at the house, he just nods as he passes by without saying anything.

He gives some serious grim reaper vibes.

Still, he is one of Riagan’s closest friends, even if my husband would rather die than admit that is what these four men are. Kelly, Bain, Callam, and even Conor, Maeve’s twin brother, who is sitting not so far from us, typing like a crazy person on his laptop.

If I thought Riagan looked scary at times, this one is much more scary-looking in an attractive way. Yes, I’ve noticed most of the men who work for Riagan are good-looking in a savage way. Not clean-cut like you would expect most mafiosos. Byrne looks as big as a tank, which is good since he serves as the muscle. His hair is blond, just like mine, and he has it shaved at the sides with a bun at the top. He looks like one of those Vikings warriors in the movies Carlotta loves so much. There’s also something tragic about him, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s in his eyes.

I’m no expert in understanding human emotions, but I know what sadness looks like, even when you’re smiling or making jokes. Even when you have no expression on your face, like the man in front of me.

But before I can give Callam much thought, the distant noise of a bell going off sounds in the distance, followed by a slightly accented Irish tone greeting the crowd.

It’s starting.

The nerves are not completely gone. They’re there but under the surface, bubbling and wanting to take over me, but I don’t allow it. Instead, I take a deep breath and count to three.

He got this.

They don’t fear this man for nothing.

I’ve seen him fight.

He fights like he hates the world.

Angry. Pissed.

Ready to tear the world apart.

Focusing on the ring, I watch closely as the match between my husband and a man who looks as scary as Riagan is about to start.

Oh, God.

Okay, don’t panic.

Looks can be deceiving.

Take your new husband as an example.

He looks like he could snap my neck with a twist of his fingers, yet he has never laid his hands on me in a cruel way.

His opponent looks like a death machine, but Riagan looks different right then, too. Shed of his usual neat dress shirts – another of his shields, I was convinced – dressed only in a tee that he strips off when he gets to the center of the room and a pair of bottoms just like his opponent, he seems almost like another man entirely. It was in the fierce set of his jaw, in the stubbornly raised chin, in the tension that seemed to be overtaking every inch of his body, culminating in tightly curled fists down at his sides. His body, too, was intimidating. It even glistened under the light of the cage, making him look like a warrior ready to tear his opponent limb from limb.

Looking at him now, standing there as a fighter in black basketball shorts, I can’t fathom the idea of someone betting against him and putting their money on his opponent. To begin with, Riagan is taller and wider. Even his hands look stronger than the other man’s hands. He looks brutal and violent.

Let’s not forget extremely confident, as if he already knows he has this in the bag.

For a man who’s been fighting since before he learned to ride a bike, I think he does really have this in the bag.

Putting all my faith in him, I watch the scene before me unfold.

Both men stand in the middle of the cage, sizing each other up as the crowd watches intently with giddy smiles on their faces, and another voice rises from the crowd, loud, like an announcer.

I don’t recognize him – tall, mostly gray-haired, dressed in a suit much like what expensive criminals always wore, looking way too snazzy for an underground cage fight. “Ladies and gentlemen, bets are now suspended,” he calls out.

“How do these matches work?” I ask no one specific while my eyes are glued to where Riagan is standing, cracking his knuckles.

“It’s pretty simple, really,” Callam answers, surprising me once again. He’s feeling chatty today, or perhaps I misjudged him? I feel his eyes on me when he speaks. “Here are the rules. There are no rules. No shots are off-limits. There are no breaks or rounds. Tap-out or knockout is the only end to a fight. There’s no leaving that cage without spilling a lot of blood,” he says, and both Riagan and his opponent move forward, closer to each other on the uneven ground. “Fuck him up, Joke!” He demands.

I watch as Riagan’s opponent cocks back, swoops low, and slams a fist into Riagans’ side, making him hiss and fall back a step, his ankle scraping against the jagged, uneven floor. I watch as blood starts trickling down, seemingly unnoticed by Riagan. I hadn’t been aware of it, but I must have gasp, because then Bain is turning to look my way. “Sunshine, we can go if this is too much.”

“Say the word, and I’ll take you out of here,” Cianne tells me while all their eyes are on me now.

“She’s fine,” Callam snorts without humor. “This is her world now, after all.”

I feel someone touch my hand lightly. “Ignore him.” Another says. “I can take you back home if you don’t want to be here, Mila.” My head is shaking even as I see Riagan take another hit before charging forward at the man. Sᴇaʀch Thᴇ Find ɴøᴠel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“No. This is part of him,” I say, like it explains everything.

Then I watch him in his element, still worried for his safety but confident in his ability to, as Callam put it so eloquently, ’fuck his opponent up.’

Riagan lands a fist that sends the man literally spinning, but the force makes Riagan stagger back, his foot falling off the end of a particularly low break in the rocks, making him slam down on one knee just as his opponent gets his bearings, and comes charging forward. “You can breathe, milseán,” Cianne informs me, voice calm as could be. “I’ve seen him in hundreds of fights, and this one, he is not planning on losing. The captain just likes to play with his meat before he ends them.” Cianne laughs as if this entire thing is funny to him. I guess to him it would be since I’ve noticed the handsome and funny man loves chaos.

“What is so important about this fight?”

“You.”

“Me?” I momentarily meet his eyes, turning away from the fight.

“Does the piece of shit look familiar to you?”

Confused, I follow his gaze back to the cage, where Riagan is currently gripping the man’s hair and punching his face repeatedly as blood pours in all directions. The scene is gruesome and quite frankly disgusting. Focusing on the man that is not my husband, it takes me a moment to connect the dots. How I didn’t see it before, I don’t know.

Locke.

One of my father’s men is Riagan’s opponent.

A man who enjoyed watching me squirm and made me feel uncomfortable with his sleazy looks and hurtful insults.

She’s fucking defective. Look at her. She can’t even speak.

You’re lucky you’re pretty, princess. It makes up for your lack of brains.

The girl has the personality of a rock. Fucking idiot.

It all comes back to me like a flood of ugly memories that I had, suppressed as I look at the man who alongside many others, made my life very difficult.

I never told my sisters. I knew if I had, they wouldn’t even be breathing the same air as me, but I kept quiet and kept my head down, not wanting to add to my sisters’ misery. They both have their own demons to deal with. I just learned to ignore mine until now.

Because what goes around comes around, and this moment is proof of it.

“W-what is g-going o-on?” I stumble through my words.

“He’s making an example of that cunt, and while he’s at it, cap is showing not just you but everyone around you what happens when you fuck with the Godfather’s heart.”

“He asks for names, and I give them to him.” Bain chimes in with an evil smile on his face. “You should’ve seen the fucker’s face when Cap told him who you were.”

I’m almost afraid to ask. “Who am I besides Riagan’s wife?”

“You’re this city— his city’s queen.” This comes from Callam. “Now, they’ll know what will happen to anyone who has ever hurt you or tries to. The captain won’t have mercy, and neither will we.”

Without really knowing what to say to that, I look at all the men surrounding me, protecting me from harm. They’re all so different. From the color of their hair and eyes, the way they speak, to their personalities. From broody to reckless, yet they all have one thing in common.

They are loyal to a fault to their boss and, by association now, me.

“Holy fuck!” Someone not far from us shouts. “This is it. Here we go.”

The oddly-sweet moment is interrupted by the crowd going insane, jumping in their spots as Riagan stumbles back from a punch, almost falling to the ground. He gets up. Doing so with a giddy smile on his handsome and bloody face, like a child at a candy store, while swinging and landing an uppercut that has blood spurting out of Lock’s mouth. Truthfully, a part of me didn’t want to watch because I didn’t want to see Riagan getting hurt. It pains me to even think about it. But it was proving impossible to look away. I was seeing a different side of him right then, a rougher side, a side he only showed the people that troubled him or hurt me. A clear part of him. His movements were methodical, practiced and controlled, while Lock got more and more sporadic, clumsy, and frantic.

I watched with a pit in my stomach as Riagan took several shots, making his lip break open, his head snap hard to one side, hard enough that it reminded me of the memories when my brain slammed against my skull, making me pass out when I was younger all those times my father pushed or threw me against a wall. I worry, for a second, that might be his fate as well. But he comes back harder, stronger, taking Lock’s ground from underneath him, then pounding into his face and midsection. My heart was slamming so hard that it was somehow nauseating, making my skin feel clammy and goosebumpy. Something about how vicious this was getting is causing me to genuinely wonder if I might get sick. There was just so much blood. Lock’s sure, but Riagans’ as well. How much longer could this go on? How many fists could your body endure before it started to give up on you? I didn’t want to find out the answer to that last question.

As the fighting got worse, the noise of the crowd got louder and louder, clearly enjoying the bloodshed while it made me completely lightheaded. Then, there was a slam that had my stomach jumping up into my throat before my eyes adjusted enough to see Locke’s body sprawled on the ground, his breathing uneven. Not Riagan. That was really all I could focus on. But then there was Riagan again as well, dropping down over Locke and continuing to beat the shit out of him. Blood splattered out onto Riagan’s skin, mingling with his own blood and sweat. I saw it then. Locke’s hand slamming into the ground. Tapping out. But Riagan didn’t stop.

No.

He only stopped when he claimed a life.

The life of a man who was unkind to me when I was only a child. An innocent one who had no fault and didn’t deserve all the cruelty that was thrown her way.

Tonight, Riagan showed me, once again, a part of himself that should scare and worry me.

His dark side.

The reason why he was baptized as the godfather of Philadelphia.

The two sides of the card. The joker.

And I have a choice.

I could either run away scared, or I can hug the demons of the man I love.

Yes, love.

So very much.

I choose what I’ve always done.

I choose love over hate.

I choose happiness over sadness.

Now, I’m choosing Riagan over my fears and my reservations.

I’m choosing life.

“That’s how it’s done, Cap.” Cianne’s loud voice snaps me out of it, and I follow his gaze to the cage where Riagan is now standing over Locke’s body, staring at me with a look I’ve seen on his face many times before. The pressure in my chest increases, and I feel my heart start to beat a mile a minute as I look at him and just him. He looks like an evil villain in every old-school classic horror movie, and yet he takes my breath away. Oh, what a pair we are.

Lifting my hand to my chest, I tap it three times, and so does he.

Somehow, the gesture stopped being one of comfort but a way for me to communicate with him. To let him know how he makes my heart race and stop at times. How I’m barely able to breathe when he looks at me the way he is doing now.

As if I’m the only person he sees in this room.

Like I’m the only person who matters.

That’s how I see it.

In a sea of people laughing and cheering him on, there is only us.

I stand frozen in place, watching as he throws the cage’s metal door open, climbs down, and moves in my direction. Every step he takes my way is in sync with my heart.

Then, one second, my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and the next, I’m being lifted into his strong arms. My safe place. He hugs me tightly to him, and oddly, I don’t dwell on the fact that he has someone else’s blood on him and now on me. No. I just feel the moment. A beautiful and pure moment.

After a few seconds of holding me up in the air, he put me down, his arms going around me, and his lips press into the top of my hair. I hug him close, feeling my heart full of joy. Leaning back, I look up at him to find him smiling despite the blood in his teeth and the bruises already forming on his skin. “Told you, a chusle.” He breathes out.

Beaming, I stand on my tippy toes and press a soft kiss on his bearded chin. “You were…”

“Scary?”

I frown at that. “No.” I shake my head, and then smile up at him. “Very impressive.”

He laughs, then removes his arms from around me, and I already feel the loss of him. But then he takes out the earplugs from my ears. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“Good.”

Focusing on the gash on his left cheek, I ask. “Riagan, will you teach me how to fight?”

“There’s no need for you to fight, butterfly. You don’t ever have to fear for your life. That’s why I am here.” He says roughly, while twirling a curl on his finger. Lifting my gaze from his bloody cheek, I try to hold his gaze for as long as possible before I can’t any longer. “But if you want to learn how to fight, I’ll teach you.” How sweet it feels to have someone who never belittles your capacity to learn new things or your intelligence. Someone who believes in you and wants to protect you without clipping your wings. How sweet it is to be cared for by this man. This man covered in blood after taking a life.

“How did you know about him?” I turn to look at the cage where Locke’s body is being lifted off the ground. Riagan grabs my chin and turns my face his way.

“Bain and Carlotta.”

“Do you know all of th—”

“I do.” His voice is rough, and his eyes turn darker.

“But why?” Deep down, I know why, but I need to hear it from him. I need to know for sure.

And what he says takes my breath away and lifts my feet off the ground, and I find myself never wanting to come back down from the high that is Riagan.

“Because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, butterfly. If I have to fight the world for you, I will, and that bitch, Locke, was just the start. I’m not done, and I won’t be done until every person who made you cry meets the same fate as him. You have my word on that.” And with that, he takes me in his arms once again and kisses me fiercely.

And with his kiss, he makes a thousand promises.

Promises I know, down to my bone, he will always keep.

Of that, I have no doubt.