Page 12

Gunner

D iletta puts her hand on my shoulder. Her entire face is gentle, her body at ease. She’s brushed up against me. Touched me intentionally. This is the second time and the world hasn’t imploded.

The last thing I could ever be termed is a superstitious man, but I can sense that darkness like another entity. A thing, a force, living inside of me. It demanded me early as a sacrifice and I gave myself up to it in order to survive.

Have I ever done one truly selfless, good thing?

When I saved Adolfo from dying, it was because I saw an opportunity to get to the top. I paid for that advancement with my own flesh and blood, the smell of burnt skin and hair, charred flesh, and pain that lasted for years. When I kidnapped Diletta from her kidnappers, it was because I’d grown obsessed. I couldn’t live without her.

She could never be mine, but I couldn’t live if I couldn’t see her, watch her, guard her.

She strokes my chin gently, her fingers fluttering against my jawline like they’re trembling butterflies afraid to land. I nearly choke on my own saliva. It’s impossible to swallow easily.

“Know what?” she whispers.

I shiver violently. She snatches the black comforter off the bed, bringing the edges we’re not sitting on up and around me. She takes my face in both hands, palms scalding, and forces me to look into her eyes. The gold sparks snap like burning coals popping late at night in the hearth’s grate of the fires that rich people can afford.

I’m not worthy to look at her like this. To have her kindness. She just covered me up, and now she’s got her skin pressed to my skin. I want to yell at her, shove her away before she can be infected, but the calm in her eyes gentles me.

My lungs loosen.

If she can sit here and relive such a horrifying, painful event and be the one who wants to offer me warmth and comfort, then I can believe in her strength long enough to give her the rest of my wretched honesty.

“Know what it was like to be something more than an animal. I wanted you to fix me. to touch me. I fucking wanted your comfort and compassion and kindness. I could bask in it from afar, witness it all I wanted, but after years, you were the light I couldn’t stop myself from flying into your fire. I’m like every other pathetic man out there. Just one taste. One touch.”

“That’s not like most people at all.”

I can’t look at her. Again. Not with her warmth bleeding into me, hitting my rock bottom, sparking light to chase away darkness where none existed before. She’s goodness and I am struck all over again by the powerful knowledge of how unworthy I am.

“Just one simple act of kindness to fill me up for a lifetime, knowing one was too much, and a lifetime wouldn’t be enough,” I mumble.

She chokes and my neck snaps up so fast, ready to protect her from the harm I’ve caused, but I realize that she’s not dying, not choking on my darkness trying to crawl down her throat. She’s just biting back a sob. Her beautiful, pure heart, breaking for me.

Her palms leave my face and grasp my hands. “You know that can’t infect me? Me, who carries the blood of one of our country’s greatest killers in my veins? My father deals death to innocent people. I don’t have to explain drugs to you. They do far worse damage than anything else I can think of. Drugs ruin lives. They ruin families. They impact generation after generation. Your mother… people like my father are responsible for stories just like yours. I know my father isn’t a good man. I know he’s pretty much the worst, and I still love him. I only ever wanted to grow up and save people, to put some good back in the world, maybe balance things out for him. I was born with blood on my hands. At least you had to earn it. At least your sins weren’t inherited. I am far, far blacker than you will ever know. I don’t believe that I’m a bad person. I’m not unworthy of love. I want the things that other people want. Badly. A happy life. A family. Children. I had a happy upbringing despite it all. By all rights, you should be the one who hates me. It’s so ironic. It’s all twisted together.”

I want to be twisted up in her. I grasp her shoulders and hug her hard against me, the blanket falling away. She gasps but twists her arms around my neck in the next instant and holds on to me like her life depends on it. Once, it did.

I inhale her shampoo. Her perfume. “The most fucked up version of destiny. I knew I needed to save you, but you were never for a man like me. I wanted to keep you safe. It filled up the emptiness in me just to watch you be happy. To live. I’ve called you mine, claimed you out there, but the truth is, you’ve owned every bit of me from the second I saw you and I crashed back into my body and after a lifetime, I felt.”

“Feeling is hell. A blessed, horrible, lovely hell. It’s a gift, life, and a curse.”

Truer words were never spoken. A curse. That’s all I can be. I’ve done Diletta wrong, coming here. I’ve done the club wrong and all the men in it. Leaving is the best thing I can do for anyone. Leaving and getting lost.

“Gunner…” Diletta pants. She tilts her face up, eyes swimming, her pain and torment etched all over her face. She arches against me, her lips parting. “Tell me your name. Your real name.”

“Can’t do that.” I need to disentangle myself. Fast. “It’s not safe for you.”

She’s been kind to me. Understanding. She should have been raging mad beyond comprehension, but she opened her heart to me. All I see in a flash is her beautiful eyes, full of life, gold flecks gone dark, all that she was and is and could be, extinguished forever. I can’t bring her harm or death. My instincts might be screaming, mine, mine, mine. protect, protect, protect, but she can never be bound to me in any way.

Fury at the injustice of that creeps up into my chest. I soak it up, needing it for strength.

I tear away from her before she can look at me with those stars in her eyes, like it’s possible to erase the past and change the future. It’s not. Destiny? The only destiny a man like me could ever have is to spread poison on the earth and eventually be put to ground for it. I’m walking death until the reaper comes for me. I’m not here to sow seeds of happiness, peace, and fucking joy.

My bag is already packed. I tear off Bullet’s too tight t-shirt and grab another out of the dresser drawer. It was near the bottom and has that musty smell of clothes that have been shut in for too long. I slam it on and throw my plain, black leather jacket over it. Snatch up the black backpack with my fake passport and a change of clothes. I’m back to being a shadow, a wraith with no identity. I have my wallet and cellphone in my pocket and in there, is the title to my bike, where I’ve always kept it, along with my other fake IDs—driver’s license, credit cards, the whole works.

That’s all I need.

Thirty-five years old and I could walk out of there with nothing,

Diletta shoots up when she sees me grab that backpack. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Leaving,” I grunt, refusing to meet her eyes.

She hesitates for a single second. Kindness hasn’t worked. Compassion, empathy, pity, soft touches, nursing me back to life. She might as well try violence. It’s usually the only thing that a man like me knows how to respond to.

She flies at me, shrieking. “ Testa di cazzo! Stronzo. Figlio di puttana! ” She goes for the backpack, tearing the strap out of my hand. I let it go immediately so she doesn’t hurt herself. She swings it and hits me in the side, as she yells . “You’re going to drop this on me and then just walk out of here? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I can’t stay here. Not with a target on my back. You’re right about that. It was wrong. If I want to be more than a killer, I can never have a family. Kindness and love aren’t something I can claim for myself. I wasn’t built for it.”

She tosses the backpack aside, absolutely wild. Her hair is all over, her face a terrible, insanely gorgeous mask of fury and passion. My dick is hard in a second, thinking about pinning her to the door or throwing her down on the bed and burying myself to the hilt inside of her tight, hot heat while she scratches my back raw with angry, terrible claws.

“So after five years you decide to just grow a conscience and a pair of balls? You’re going to be the selfless martyr now?”

I roll my massive shoulders back. This might be the one time in my life I get to stand tall in front of her. She knows the truth. I have nothing else left to give her. Everything else from this point will only be a detriment and a danger. “Yes.”

She shoves me. Or at least she tries. I don’t budge.

She has more than that up her sleeve and immediately drops down into a crouch. She kicks me straight in the shin and makes sure I take the stiletto heel. Hard.

I hiss, but don’t give her anything more.

She comes at me again, beating on my chest with her fists. She even times one well to my still healing shoulder. It hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the bomb blast crater that my chest has become.

As soon as she winds down, her shoulders heaving with the effort, I step aside, pick up the backpack, and start for the door.

She doubles around, racing for it, and throws her whole body against it to keep it shut. “ Figlio di puttana!” She screams again. I’ve heard that curse a few times in the past, cursing me as the son of a whore. It might be correct, but every single person who has ever said it to me has wound up unconscious, missing a few teeth, or with bones broken through their body.

“Diletta.” I’m so calm. Weary. Exhausted. “You deserve so much more than this and so does everyone here.”

“You’re not leaving. You’re going to stay and fix your own bullshit. You don’t get to just walk out on it. You don’t get to walk out on me.”

“You asked me to leave.”

“I know.” She inhales sharply and exhales loudly, trying to catch her breath. “I know.”

“I’m a killer. Maybe not as often as I could have been, but I am.”

“Did you not just hear anything I said?”

“I don’t believe in sins of the blood. It doesn’t pass from generation to generation. There’s only this life. Only what we’ve created with our own two hands.”

“Uhhh, yeah. I’ll ask you again. Didn’t you hear what I just said? About loving my father even though I know he’s a bad man. That’s not all there is to him and that’s not all there is to you.”

“If you want that to be true, then I need to go.”

“Alright.” She swipes her hair out of her eyes, smoothing her hands over it so she doesn’t look half crazed. “Fine. You can go, but you’re taking me too.”

“Fucking. Never.”

“You might think you can leave, but you’ll only be drawn back. That’s what being an addict is.” She scans my face, my cold, dead face where I carefully drop all emotion and any sign of what my plans are, but she sees it anyway. She knows me without knowing me at all. “No. No!” She charges at me, hitting me square on, so that I have to catch her to keep her from bouncing off. I try and set her back, but she thrashes against me. “No! You think you can just go and disappear? Delete yourself? Erase yourself? Cease to exist?”

“I’m not going to kill myself, Diletta.”

“It’s the same thing! Leaving here will destroy you. You’re not a weapon! You’re not a beast or a monster or just a killer. You’re not a human fucking meat shield with zero feelings. I promised that I wouldn’t contact my father unless it was an emergency, and this is. You wanted to protect me, but I’ll make sure you’re under my protection and his. No one will touch you then.”

“That’s insane. You think there aren’t accidents? Hits? People disappearing in the night? That would only put you in harms’ way and probably get you killed.” She’s not going to listen to reason. I should never have told her the truth. Now she feels indebted to me. I saved her once and she sees me as needing the same. She won’t stop until she accomplishes that. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need you to save me. I need you to go on living the way you did before I fucked everything up. That was never supposed to happen. You were never supposed to meet me. I might be obsessed with you, but I don’t love you. I might have felt something, but we both know it’s warped and twisted. I’ll never be able to love anyone.”

Her mouth parts, fury still sparking in her eyes. “Gunner—”

“Please. If you have any mercy in your soul, any love for this community, then let me make this right by leaving. It’s the only way.”

She flies to the door again and crosses her arms once more, staring me down defiantly. “No.”

“Then you’re pathetic! You’re just like your father. Human waste with no regard for the lives around you. You’re a nurse. What happened to your vow to do no harm? You think you can call this off? Make a difference? Change shit? You can’t. You’re just a mafia princess, insignificant in a vast ocean of blood and violence where the sharks swim. You need to stand down, shut up, and get out of your own way.” I don’t mean it, but if reason won’t sway her, I have to hurt her instead.

Her lips twist, first bitterly, then into an ironic leer that I don’t like on her. I’m tainting her already. “Honest to god, you know what you need, Gunner? A swift kick in the fucking balls. That might get you to shut up and listen. No one wants to be kept safe by being shoved away. Stop trying to sacrifice yourself, sit down, and talk. Not just to me, but to those men out there.”

She drops her palm and smacks the door with the flat of her hand. “You don’t have to love me. I’m well aware that obsession isn’t love and I never asked for that from you. I have no idea what we’re even doing. One minute you claim me out there as yours and the next, you’re trying to leave. I get that you leaving is one way, but I truly don’t think it’s the best one.” She sighs loudly, her palms coming up like she’s offering a truce. “I know what I said. I called you an idiot for disregarding all of that, but you’re right. You’ve changed how you look. You’ve been here for five years.”

She looks up at me, her eyes misting over, pleading. “All your life you’ve been looking for a home and a family. You might have found it a few times, but that wasn’t the good shit. That was just… shitty shit. Even if you have nothing to do with me again, for the love of fucking god, just stay here. Let them decide if it’s worth the risk. If they want you to leave, then you can go, but don’t abandon men who care about you. Don’t say they don’t, because I saw out there, that even a few of them do. They might be outlaws, hard men, maybe even bad men, but that counts for something.”

I’m dangerously close to losing it. I don’t even know what that would look like because it’s never happened before. I need to get somewhere private to do it. That hole inside of me is tearing wider and wider with every word and every pleading look. She’s going to war here, for me. For a man who is barely a man. For someone who is utterly worthless.

She looks at me like she sees something worthy. Something special. Something priceless.

It makes me want to do stupid shit like sweep her into my arms, pick her up, kiss her breathless and senseless.

She sees that, damn it, and coils her body like she’s ready to let me do those things to her. Whatever I want. And give it back to me. Teach me. Hammer her beauty straight into me while she reaches inside of me to find that dark force and extricate it by the roots.

Heavy footsteps echo outside and then someone bangs the flat of their hand on the door. “You okay in here?”

Fuck. I shut my eyes and breathe deeply to cut off the urge to go out there and dismantle Crow limb by limb. Beating him with his own ripped off arm makes my lips twitch in a half smile.

“We’re good,” Diletta calls back when it’s clear I can’t say anything. “We’re just talking. Gunner’s going to take me home on his bike. We’ll be out right away.”

We wait for the footsteps to fade away. I frown. “You see? No one wants me here. No one trusts me.”

She bends and picks up the backpack. She walks it over to the bed and sets it down gently. She even caresses out the creases that getting in the middle of our war gave it.

Her expression is so intense that I can’t look at her when she turns around. “You’re allowed the same decency as everyone else. Humanity. Respect. You’re allowed to pursue goodness and happiness and feel it. If you didn’t have a shred of light inside of you, we wouldn’t be here now. None of this would have happened. You wouldn’t have saved me, followed me, spent years silently watching even though it hurt you. You wouldn’t have come inside my house that night, and we wouldn’t be talking now. Instead of burying that, you can give it a chance.”

I watch her boots get closer and only when she touches my hand do I dare look up. She’s fiercely determined, and I’m half afraid that it’s all for me. That she could spend a lifetime trying to convince me that what she just said is true.

That she’ll follow me if I leave. Hound me. Redeem me. Stalk me.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that my woman is a spitfire beneath that sweet kindergarten teacher. She’s tough, she’s smart, she’s everything that anyone on this earth would ever wish they could be.

“I see your torment and I raise you one ride home, a cup of coffee, and your choice of anything. I’ll bake it for you. Then, if you still want to go, you can go.”

There’s some catch here. Something I’m missing. Maybe she thinks that another few hours will change my mind.

I need to let her. Let her talk, let her get it out of her system, let her try and save something that’s never going to be worth saving so she can say that she truly tried, and go on with her life knowing that the debt that exists only in her eyes is paid. I’ll lie to her, promise her something I can’t ever mean, swear it in blood if I have to, and then I’ll leave. I’ll cover my tracks so she can’t follow and so that if she ever tried, she’d never find me.

I’ll do what I should have done years ago.

I’ll erase myself so far so that even I won’t be able to bring me back.