Page 11

Diletta

I ’ve never needed a reminder that this man is one shade above a wild animal. Now, I’ve been so stupid that I’ve trapped myself in a small room with him. At least there’s a tiny window on the far side, past a queen bed, a nightstand, and a dresser. The walls are bare, white drywall on three sides. The far one with the window is brick. The floorboards are the same hardwood as out there.

Out there, where it was safe.

My brain warns that I could be in danger, but the rational side of me still refuses to kick in. The metallic bite of rage is real. He’s still breathing heavily. He could have killed that man, all because of me. I woke something in him, primal, dangerous, and metaphorically blood soaked. I remember the first time I saw his face in that shoe store, and I thought to myself, that there was a man designed for enjoying violence.

But then, there’s the other side of what happened out there. The other reason that he’s breathing hard. I’m across the room from him and I think he put that distance between us intentionally. I want to hug him, hard. Again. His naked shame and pain were out there for every single person to see. He stripped himself down in order to cover me and it was clear that no one knew about those scars. He didn’t want them to, but then he bared himself for me without a second thought.

“Gunner… I’m- I’m so sor—”

“Shut up,” he growls. His pulse beats jaggedly at the golden skin of his throat. He’s ferocious, shaking, a man feeling all of it when I think that he’s used to feeling nothing at all.

“That’s too far,” I seethe, setting aside concern for myself. He wouldn’t hurt me. I intrinsically know that. “You can’t tell me to shut—”

“Your real name is Diletta Cosmo. Your father is Luciano Cosmo.” He glares at me, cold and hard while my heart plummets to the floor and cracks wide open with shock.

“H-how?” At least that one word gets past my constricted throat.

He slaps a palm against the wall as his chest heaves. He makes no move to steady me. He tears his eyes away like he can’t look at me either. They stray to the wall as he turns his face.

“I know, because I was there. Not when you were kidnapped, but after. Adolfo told me to keep an eye on his shitfuck of a son. Romeo is impetuous. He thought because his father was Don, that he was owed the world. Anything he wanted, he took. He saw you, wanted you, had his father’s men kidnap you. He told them it was an order from the Don. He made up some conflict between your father and his, said it was a matter of honor. He said Luciano wouldn’t listen unless we had his daughter for bargaining. When he had you, though, he went straight to his father and confessed everything he’d done. I didn’t know about any of it. I was too close to Adolfo, his personal bodyguard. I was with him all the time, so there were moments I couldn’t always be watching Romeo.”

He pauses, he’s still facing the wall avoiding my eyes.

“Adolfo was enraged at his son’s stupidity. While he tried to work out how to avoid a war over his actions, I was reassigned to immediate damage control in Romeo’s house. You never saw me, but I saw you. You were locked in that room and the second you turned your face to the camera and I stared into your tearstained eyes… it was over for me.”

I can taste his words, heated and heady, scalding between us. “What was over?” I whisper, trembling like he did that night when he went into shock in my bedroom.

He ignores my question. Or maybe he’s taking the long way round in answering. “I made sure you were fed. Given clean clothes. Taken down the hall to the bathroom to have a proper shower. You didn’t want to eat or move or do anything. You were so scared that—”

It’s my turn to cut him off. “I was more angry, than I was afraid. I knew my father would find me. I was being kept alive for a reason. If you want someone dead, the mafia doesn’t piss around with that. I was trembling because I was angry. I cried because I couldn’t hold those tears in. Yes, I was afraid, but for my father. For his men. I didn’t know what was happening. But every one of those tears that fell were from pure frustration.”

His chest heaves with a shaky inhale. “You have no idea what seeing you cry did. No one’s tears had ever bothered me. Nothing bothered me, do you understand? I watched you for days. Nights. I couldn’t explain it, but you felt more like mine with every passing second.”

“That’s something only a psychopath would say,” I fire at him, cold and unfair.

He nods, his hand still shoved against the door, still not looking at me. “Somehow, Romeo convinced his father to give you to him as a wife. The plan was to have you marry him and then unite your families that way. On paper, it would be a good agreement, ensuring the peace that your father already had with the Rossi family. I couldn’t let it happen. Romeo is nothing like his father. I’ve seen the mess he made of his whores in the past. The world thinks men like me are the monsters? They have no idea. The worst kind are the beautiful ones. The ones that are at home out in the world because they have everyone fooled. Do you know how many women disappeared because of that man? There was no fucking way I could let him get his hands on you. He would have married you, beat you, raped you—all because you’d have been little more than his property. Adolfo might have been a man of honor at heart, a man of the old world and old ways, but he knew what his son was and turned a blind eye to it. His son was his weakness.”

His words make my head spin. My stomach cramps, nausea washing over me until my skin breaks out in a cold, clammy sweat.

I lurch forward, trying to get closer, needing something to hold myself up, but Gunner shakes his head viciously and surges past me. He throws himself down on the bed and bows his head, wrapping his hands around the base of his neck.

“I couldn’t let it happen. It was easy to fuck with the cameras and the men because they trusted me. I caused a disruption.”

“There was an explosion in the house. I heard it.”

“The garage. I don’t think any of those cars survived. They were Romeo’s pride and joy. It was only too pleasurable to light them up. While the men were busy thinking someone was trying to blow their way in through the back of the house, I got you out. It was natural that you be protected. No one questioned why I was rushing upstairs. It was important that you not see my face.”

“You had that black mask on. It didn’t even have eyeholes.”

“It was lightweight around the eyes and mouth. I could see and breathe.”

It’s my turn to cross my arms, now that the shock and sickness is fading. Anger is a much more welcome fuel. That, and adrenaline, will keep you upright and going every single time. “You threw me in the trunk of a car, asshole.”

“I drove out in my own car, mask off, so no one asked any questions. They thought I was heading across the city to Adolfo’s, but I drove you straight to your father instead. I brought you back safely. Demanded a massive sum of money to get out of Italy because eventually, someone would figure out what I’d done and then there’d be a price on my head. He had the funds transferred pretty much instantly. He could have killed me, but I knew of your father, and I’d heard that despite what he did, he was an honorable man. Like Adolfo, he believed in the old code. Blood debts. A life for a life.”

The implications of that crash down around me.

“Look at me!” I thunder, but I’m still shocked when he lifts his head.

“Take out the contacts. Now. I want to see your real eyes when I talk to you.” I’ve asked this before, but now I’m not asking. I’m demanding.

This man isn’t just my stalker.

He’s the man who saved my life.

I waver backwards a step, bumping into the door until my spine grinds against it. The breath punches out of my lungs as he removes the blue lenses. His eyes are soft and dark. Darker than my own. There are no soft gold lights in them, no hazel spokes. Brown so deep they’re almost black.

He stares at me, and as I watch his face, I can see how much practice he has with boxing up and packing away his emotions. It’s not shutting down if you don’t feel them in the first place. I have no idea how to get to a place where feeling and not feeling, memory, pain, goodness and life, is a choice. I’ve been around men like him my whole life and I never realized what a basic line of survival for them looked like. I had a loving childhood. I was adored and protected, well fed, doted on—a typical mafia princess. I was never abandoned, tortured, starving, or in so much pain that I had to tunnel into a place of non-existence to get through it.

It makes me feel like someone just ripped a hole in the fabric inside of me.

I want to know how he became Adolfo’s man. What his childhood was like. What hell he lived that made him say that tears had never affected him before he saw mine, but there’s too much rage flowing white hot in me. I clench my hands into fists and hiss under my breath so that I don’t yell, scream, and lose my shit.

“You have to be fucking kidding me. All this time, you’ve been here, knowing what could happen to good people because of you, and you stayed anyway? If it was just me, I could handle that, but what about all these people? Some of them have families. That little girl. Penny. Do you want to bring the wrath of the Italian mafia down on this town? You know as well as I do that no one would be left alive.”

“They want me. They aren’t in it for women and children.”

“You don’t know that that’s—”

“I do. Adolfo owes me his life.”

“You betrayed him. You have no idea how men like that—”

“What do you want me to say?” he asks evenly. “That you’re right? That I was reckless? That I’d leave a trail of destruction and blood in my wake and I’m certainly not worth it?”

“Stop it.” I cross the room, stopping right in front of him. I try to reach out, but he leans back, away. I close my eyes against the sting of him dodging my touch. “That’s not what I meant. I said the first thing that came to my mind, and it was harsh. I’m sorry.”

Sorry? That’s what I’m going to say to a man who just told me that he’s the one who saved my life?

Yes, I might still be alive, but what kind of hell would I have been living? I would never have told my father. I wouldn’t have wanted the streets to run red with blood. Would I ever have been able to escape on my own?

He lowers his head and rests his hands on his knees. Even bowed, he’s frighteningly large, oozing power and menace. And yet… so fucking vulnerable that it shreds me in half. It’s like he needs just a minute. Just one single minute to get a lifetime of pain and horror together and he’ll be fine.

I’m scared to touch him, but I extend my hand again, setting it lightly on his shoulder. His muscles bunch under the tight t-shirt the man he almost choked out gave to him. I’ve had every few friends who were real, and what I saw made me want to weep. That was true friendship. Not just giving someone the literal shirt off your back but forgiving them so easily and readily without them even asking because you just fucking get it .

“If my father found out you were here, putting me in danger…” I don’t have to finish that. My father wouldn’t stop hounding him. Ever.

“I didn’t plan on ever being found. I know the risks, but I changed my appearance. Put on so much muscle I almost doubled in size. Changed my hair, my face, got inked, even my damn eyes. When I’m out riding, I’m always wearing a full helmet, and if I have to go around, I have that aura where people take one quick look, and they don’t look again. They don’t want to draw my attention. They’re afraid of me.”

“And your life before that?” I need to understand, even if I know that I’ll flay him to the bone asking.

“Same story as so many others who get into gangs or make a home with other violent men. My mother was a drug addict. She’d do anything for her next hit. There were men. Always. Boyfriends. Clients. Until I was seven, I was kept away from the worst of it, my grandmother practically brought me up. She was Irish, that’s how my English is so good. But then she had a heart attack, and I ended up back with my mother. We lived in a shitty apartment. She’d get high and forget I was there. Forget that you have to feed living beings to keep them alive. I watched one of her clients shoot her up when I was nine. He gave her too much or the drugs were bad, but she never woke up. I knew what happened to kids like me. Care isn’t caring and the system is broken.”

I step in between his spread legs and put both hands on his shoulders, tracing a small circle down his back that he doesn’t appear to feel. I want to tell him how sorry I am again, but those words are bullshit. “How did you survive?”

“I was half-starved, but I’d lost the fear of anything. I’d already learned how to go inside myself to stop feeling the hunger, the cold, the terror. By then, I’d been feeding myself for years. I was good at stealing. I knew a few other kids, older boys, who did errands and shit for gangs. Little jobs that it’s best boys do because people suspect children less, or they don’t want to see them at all. I did that for a few years. Made some money here and there. Enough to buy food. Me and a few other kids squatted in abandoned houses, buildings, whatever, until we had to move. By the time I was old enough for real shit, I was good at living like a roach. I could barely fucking read and write, but I lived and breathed crime. I got in with a few gangs, dealing violence and drugs, but they were small time. I wanted more. Even criminals have ambitions. One of the boys I knew from those early years was working for the Rossi family, moving product. I’d grown into a big man by then. Still a teenager but built like a beast. He got me a job working at one of their nightclubs doing security. I worked my way up over the years. Did a few different jobs. I wasn’t just big, I was scary, and they used that to their advantage. Someone didn’t want to pay or get in line? No problem. That’s why men like me existed. I was never asked to kill anyone or make anyone disappear. They have specialized men for that.”

My hand is still touching his back, I can feel his heart pounding as he speaks. I have so many questions, but I need to let him finish.

“My biggest break came when one of Adolfo’s rivals tried to assassinate him by blowing up his car with him in it. The bomb didn’t go off properly, but the car caught on fire with Adolfo in it. He was basically trapped inside. They’d been having a meeting inside a fucking restaurant in broad daylight. He’d brought half his men with him and even I was there, although I was basically just a bottom feeder when it came to that. I was intimidating, both in size and in looks, and so they’d started bringing me to shit like that to ward off trouble before it even started. No one was moving or doing anything. It was me who ran to the car. I smashed the window, reached in, cut the fucking seatbelt off him and dragged him out. He was on fire, and it only took an instant for it to spread to me. I didn’t feel anything until I had him pulled back and then men were beating at us, trying to put it out. He suffered burns over most of his body, his lungs were seared, but he was a tough fucker who refused to die. He had private doctors working on him and he’d have several surgeries in the future, but he was out of bed within a few weeks, already back to running his empire. The burns only made him more fearsome. It’s like getting shot in the face and surviving. People start getting superstitious about that shit. Making up rumors about a man not being able to die.”

“I heard about that,” I gasp.

You couldn’t live in Sicily and not hear about something like that, connected to the mafia in any way or not. I’d heard my father talking with his men one night, late in his office. He and Adolfo were never at war officially. I know he had dealings with the Rossi family, our families were the two largest organizations on the island. There was an uneasy agreement regarding which parts were controlled by the Rossi family, and which by my father. Mostly relating to ports. Any disagreements they’d had were old, probably settled when I was a child, though back then, I wouldn’t have known anything about that.

“As the man who saved his life, Adolfo made sure I survived, but like him, I couldn’t just lay there and accept it. Within the same timeframe, I was up and insisting I could work. I was in constant agony for long time, but I refused any painkillers once I’d left the hospital. It was a slow road, as it was for Adolfo, but where he went, I was at his side. A life for a life. He asked me what I wanted, and I said nothing. He made me his personal bodyguard instead. Most people don’t understand what an honor that is. I wasn’t part of the family, but I proved that I’d give my life, no matter how awful or how much pain.”

It’s a story so full of horror that I don’t even think before I speak. “You’ve owned nothing. You’ve had nothing to call home. No one to love you. That’s why you’re obsessed.”

His hands shove mine aside and rake at his hair, but then his head snaps up, real fury burning in his dark eyes. “You have no right to judge me.”

The air between us crackles with bare hostility, but thrums with something far more vital and alive.

A strand of his long hair flops over his brow. He doesn’t even notice it, but my hands ache to push it away. To run my hand through those tangled strands, to brush down his cheek, his neck, all the way to his back. I want to throw my arms around him and hug him hard. Hold him for the rest of the night.

“I’m not judging you. I’m just trying to figure out why.”

“Why?” he snaps, sounding totally unhinged. I don’t back off. Not one step. “Because the second I saw you, that disassociation I had with my own body since fucking birth shattered. I crashed into myself and I felt everything. I was no longer hovering around, living someone else’s life through someone else’s eyes. I couldn’t get back to that non-living. I couldn’t erase myself again. All anyone ever has is their truth and you were mine, right down to the core of my soul.”

That declaration is more frightening than any act of violence, any shout or punch to the wall. It feels like a hand around my throat, squeezing my windpipe. “That’s not possible.”

“It was and it is.”

“That’s not love.”

The fire burns away, leaving only ash and hard flint in the dark depths that I’m staring into. “I didn’t say it was. Never said I was capable of it. Obsession, then, yes. You can get hooked on a drug from the first try. It was like that. You made an addict of me from that first second. Have you ever heard that there are songs written and never sung, dedicated to no one at all? That you can know one without ever hearing it, know the melody, like it was imprinted on your soul from another life?”

“That’s just…” Incredibly romantic. “Folktales.”

He swipes a hand over his face, trying to don his invisible mask again, but it won’t fall into place. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept a night in his life. So many battles. He has to be weary down to the bone.

“You don’t believe in destiny.”

“How can you believe in something that’s so cruel? Should it be destiny to be born into shit, live in it, and die in it? I’ve seen many people live and die without knowing a moment of ease, happiness, or kindness between. Is that their lot? Their karma? Their purpose?”

His rage is like dark smoke in the room.

Just like the night he was in my bed, I want to comfort him. I want to touch him. This man who knows my past. If all we really own is our truth, he knows mine. He’s woven straight into the fabric of it, the strands like roots working their way down into the darkness of my being.

That softness is stupid. I know that. This man is battle hardened, a stalker. He’s deranged. He’s bloodstained. Black as sin. His moral compass is way off north. I told him morally black wasn’t a bad color. That was me. I’m the one who asked him to leave and then couldn’t bear that he was going to do it. I was dying a slow, painful death. With every day I came here and he refused to see me, I became more desperate. I hoped that he would hear me through the offerings I brought. Tasting all the things I could never dare say, baked and cooked straight in.

Does that make me sick and deranged myself, that I want what I should never want and certainly can’t ever have? No one owns a man like this. He does what he wants. Goes where he will. Obsession isn’t love and even love is no guarantee.

“I was going to leave tonight.”

My heart thunders in fear. I’d heard there was a party tonight and through asking around, I figured out how to get in. I’d dressed the part. I didn’t realize that I was this close to missing him. Forever.

Should or shouldn’t can get fucked. I want this man. I couldn’t explain it to myself. I still can’t. His saving me, a bad man from worse, isn’t enough. That doesn’t bind me to him in the way that I feel that I need to be bound. My father paid him and let him go. A life for a life. The debt is paid. There’s absolutely nothing to explain why I can’t just let him go. There’s very little that I’ve done in my life that wasn’t calculated. I was always prepared and meticulous.

My legs lose all their power, and I slowly sink down, dropping to my knees on the hard floor in front of him.

I set my hands on his parted knees and peer into his face.

He’s fierce. Wild. He looks ready to tear the world apart or burn it down for no reason at all. “Get up.”

“I’m sorry for coming here like this. I knew that you were obsessed and possessive and maybe even a little bit deranged, but I didn’t think it would drive you to violence. I just wanted you to hear me. I needed to say all the things I should have said that morning in my kitchen, but logical, rational me couldn’t do it.”

His hands grasp my upper arms and haul me up beside him on the bed, his touch hot and thrilling and not the least bit gentle.

“I said, get up. You can’t be on your knees, bowed before a man like me. I won’t have it.” He sucks in a massive breath like he’s struggling to keep his violence in check, but I know it’s not that.

“Stop saying that. Stop saying you’re not worthy. You’re no less human than anyone else. I don’t care about your black soul or the blood staining your hands. I want you to let me inside.” It was crazy. I was crazy, but now I know who he is and why he’s been stalking me everything seems to make sense. Or at least it does in my mind. We are linked, our lives tied together whether we like it or not.

Fated.

He groans, so fucking tortured. “I was leaving because you’re right. The minute I stepped in your house, I put you in danger. The risk is unacceptable. I never should have done it. I couldn’t explain to myself why I did except that for just one night, I wanted to know.”

“Know what?”

Oh god, oh god. I’m not prepared for his answer. I’m not ready to be this wrecked. I can’t stop it. It’s going to happen. It’s already happened. We’re here because we’ve been walking this path for five years.

I’m that unsung song, that folktale, that story that’s been waiting for the singer, the writer, the storyteller.

Nothing is ever going to be the same.