Page 21

Gunner

I feel like hell was just handed to me in an internal handbasket, but there’s no way I’m letting Diletta meet her father at the airport herself. She might think that she can persuade him, but I know what men like Luciano Cosmo are like.

She laid down her own list of no ways, which involved taking the car she’d ‘borrowed’ and driving me in it. The armada of bikes trailing behind us blaze down the freeway to Seattle, the open road and sky a bruised purple pink. It sounds good to call a sky bruised, but it’s not actually a beautiful comparison. I feel like ground beef tossed into a blender to make some sort of gross pate-like product, and I can’t imagine I could look like anything better than a dog’s upchucked breakfast.

Diletta hasn’t said much, but as we navigate through the city with our full escort, she keeps inhaling and exhaling in measured breaths.

I give her time. I don’t want to intrude on her thoughts or demand answers. She’s been through enough today. She needs to mentally prepare herself to face her father. It can’t all be bad. She must have so many mixed feelings that it does her head in to the extent that mine’s been beaten. She hasn’t seen her father in years. This would have been a happy reunion if he’d just controlled his goonish tendencies and talked to his daughter. I get that the man is protective, but my god.

We could both have done without this.

Diletta breaks the silence when we’re in sight of the airport. I’ve never been to the private tarmacs, but her father’s jet is waiting there. If I ever doubted Luciano Cosmo’s intelligence, his reluctance to be more than ten steps from his getaway vehicle would have silenced them.

“I see your point about wanting to come with me for this. I understood as soon as my father asked me to meet him at the airport. Chances of him wanting to whisk me away are um- uh… fuck, I can’t even make a comparison. They’re high. Ridiculously high. Even if he doesn’t want to force me to go with him against my will, it seems like he thinks he can convince me.”

I raise my hands, even though the action makes my head pound. There’s not much right now that doesn’t, and I refused all the painkillers Archer offered. I need my head clear right now, even with the club at my back. I know they’ll protect Diletta when I physically can’t, and that means everything .

I won’t forget what they’re doing for me.

I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of knowing where I was going, even with my full faculties, but Diletta navigates the car with ease, driving right up to the parking lot at the side of the airport by a series of hangers and other buildings, like she’s done this a thousand times before.

The thunder of the bikes behind us rattles through our car when she stops. It’s an intimidating sound. Just the aura is enough to have people take shelter or walk in the other direction.

It doesn’t work like that with trained men. Luciano employs the best. They’re not all brutes, but they are wearing the typical uniforms of black suits, hidden guns, and earpieces. I should know. I once dressed the same way.

Diletta kills the engine, turns her face to me in apology, and before I can make her wait, she’s out of the car.

At least she didn’t handcuff me this time. I’m scattered and the steering wheel is right there…

I expect her to rush to her father, defying safety and caution, and it’s more than a sucker punch when she walks around to the passenger side for me. I save my pride by opening the door myself and hauling most of my ass out. The world swirls and dips. How the fuck Archer was convinced I don’t have head trauma is beyond me. I can’t wait for this shit to stop. It’s not the first time I’ve got my bell rung, but this one must have hit a spot that medically didn’t fuck much shit up but is still wildly unpleasant.

I’m not going to embarrass her. I keep myself upright, narrowing my eyes and squinting to try to focus the private jet, the tarmac, and all the men out here.

Diletta takes my hand, linking our fingers together.

The bikes cut out. It sounds relatively silent without all those growling Harleys, but we’re at an airport and the roar of jet engines isn’t that distant.

My club brothers hang back, vicious like a bunch of leather clad avenging angels. We all wanted Tyrant to stay behind in case things got ugly. Raiden stepped up, leading the run, Axe, Crow, Scythe, Odin, Bullet, and the terror twins—Grave and Decay, following behind him.

I expect Diletta to leave me with them, but she only drops my hand in order to slip her arm through mine. Subtly, she’s holding me up. Not so subtly, she’s sending a message to anyone watching that she’s not going to be so easily parted from me.

Everything might be spinning, but the thought that I don’t deserve her by half still rocks through my skull as loudly as it ever did.

Luciano’s men part, the bulldogs in suits giving way for their master. I hate the sayings about aging, but if one thing is true, it’s that Luciano Cosmo hasn’t aged a day. His dark hair is liberally sprinkled with gray, but no more so than that night I sat down and spoke with him face to face after returning his daughter.

Here I am again, but I can tell by the way his eyes flicker over me with equal parts mistrust, wariness, and anger, that he doesn’t recognize me.

Diletta was right. Her father thinks I’m some thug biker who took an interest in his daughter and wanted to warn me off. He didn’t give a shit about starting things with our club. We’re small compared to his empire of violence. He’s not afraid of the mob and he certainly wouldn’t have been intimidated by some bikers.

It makes me confident that what I did to fake my death all those years ago, worked. He might not think I’m dead because he knew the truth, but the steps I took to alter my appearance were so drastic, that even a smart, shrewd man like Luciano doesn’t recognize me.

He’s not going to be happy when Diletta tells him the truth. I just hope that if Luciano loses his shit, Diletta won’t put herself in the middle of it. If I have to die, then I die. I don’t want any of the men out there, good men who have my back by more than obligation, to get hurt and I certainly don’t want the woman I’d love if I understood what that even meant, to put herself in the line of fire.

“Papa!” Diletta gauges her father, taking his measure for half a minute, but she can’t hold herself back. She breaks my hold and rushes to him. He opens his arms and sweeps her up.

In this moment, he’s not the head of a criminal empire. He’s not a rough drug lord. He’s just a man who has missed his daughter more than words. His emotion is evident on his face when he sets her down. He looks… broken. Older now, just in those few seconds, dark eyes shining with unshed tears.

“Come inside,” he instructs gently in Italian, brushing at his eyes. “There’s an office set up in there for us.”

It’s not my place to tell Diletta no. I expected this. She changed her mind and wanted me there, but she might not have the final say. Her father might only take so much of her messing up his plans. She already disarmed a group of men, stormed their hideout, shot one, and borrowed a car—all to get to me and keep me safe and alive.

I’d fight a thousand men right now to stay by her side, but I can’t start a war on this tarmac. Those men at my back are here for the club, but for me too. I can’t get them killed.

“No.” Diletta purses her lips, shaking her head stubbornly. “We’ll have to talk out here. My plan is for this to be peaceful and if I disappear, those men back there? They aren’t going to like it. No one needs to get in a fight or get hurt because of me.” She rejoins me, slipping her arm around my waist, staring at her father lovingly, but her gaze is full of defiance. “Most normal fathers just talk to their daughters if they don’t like their boyfriends. They don’t kidnap him, beat him, and stick him in a freezer. You’ve had someone watching me, so you’d have to know this is consensual. You tried to have your men restrain me for my own good. My own good is not breaking my heart just when I’ve found it again.”

Luciano’s dark eyes rake over me. He doesn’t look the least bit displeased with his thugs’ handiwork. Whatever. I might fight a thousand men to be at Diletta’s side, but I’d also take that many beatings for her.

Her father doesn’t like the look of me. He still doesn’t even see me. His lips pull back in the same kind of disdainful sneer he’d use for a rat crawling over his shoe. “He’s no good for you.”

Diletta makes a noise of protest that turns into a sharp laugh. “I’m sorry, but you do realize how hypocritical that is. Mamma’s parents probably told her the same thing when she wanted to marry you, but she loved you anyway. She loved you so freaking hard. She didn’t love what you did, but she loved you as a man.”

“Love?”

I’m thinking the same thing.

The bikers behind us have no idea what’s being said unless one of them is fluent in Italian and I highly doubt it. As far as Luciano knows, I don’t understand a thing that’s being said right now either. It’s hard to keep the amazement from my face hearing Diletta utter that word.

“In time,” she whispers, fingers clenching into my side like she can hold onto me forever with hat simple act. “But I need that time, or it will never grow. I’m an adult. I appreciate your protection as my father and your love for me, but you have to let me make my own decisions.”

“He can’t protect you. I proved that.”

That’s the wrong thing to say. Diletta bares her teeth, going junkyard dog for me. I should be the one doing it for her, but even so much as a flinch and I know Luciano’s guard dogs will be all over me, tearing at my throat and that will get Raiden and the others involved.

“That’s what everyone has said,” Diletta sighs, exasperation painting her tone so clearly that even the non-Italian speakers have to understand. “What about the argument that I’m far more dangerous to him. I think today also proved that. It proved that if anything were to happen to me, you’d be here. You’d keep me safe. Gunner is just one man, but you have an entire army.” She pauses to let that sink in. “I need to know what’s happened at home. With the Rossi family.”

Luciano looks to his men then dismisses them with an upturned palm. They shuffle back, a horde of black, a good fifteen feet. The conversation is just for him and Diletta.

“They’ve moved on. It’s been five years. They’ve had new enemies crop up. Distractions. A turf war over a new rising family in Sicily. They’re giving them hell and back with their ports. This kid is no older than twenty and he’s making a mess of everything for them.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

Luciano steps close. I want to charge in front of his daughter, shielding her with my body, but I don’t move. He caresses her cheek lovingly, regret all over his face. “I can’t help but hide my glee. I made peace with them for the sake of all the innocent people who would have been caught between us and hurt, but I’ve never forgiven them for what they did to you.”

“They did nothing. Keeping the peace for the sake of the public who would have been collateral damage was the right thing to do.” We didn’t know if her father knew who I was. We both assumed that he had to know the truth but seeing him stare right at me and there be nothing, isn’t something we discussed. Diletta takes control, making a decision for both of us. “The man who saved me… what ever happened to him? I always wanted to find him and thank him, even though I knew I never could.”

“He’s dead.” To his credit, there actually is some sorrow in Luciano’s voice. “I gave him money so he could start over since he’d always have a price on his head. Either someone got to him, or it was just an accident, but he died a week later in a car crash in Germany.”

Diletta bows her head. I’m thankful for all the years of practice I have controlling my face.

After fleeing Italy, I had to make sure I covered my tracks. I left a trail that even a child could follow, heading straight to Austria and then on to Germany, making sure to make all the sloppy mistakes. I knew enough from my former life about faking a death. Find a morgue, look for any unclaimed bodies. Once that was done, renting a car, putting the body in, and ensuring that it drove into a wall at a speed fast enough to wreck the thing completely was pretty straightforward. Of course, I tampered with the scene, ensuring the vehicle burned so hot that the corpse was nothing more than ash. There were no dental records on file for me, and no family for DNA match, that’s if there’d been anything that could have been tested left.

I’d disappeared.

Rocco Lombardo was dead, and some months later Donal Gunnigan was born.

I still feel bad about that unclaimed man. I think about him more than I should, wondering who he was. He was a person with someone out there, surely. I just hope they find peace.

“I’ll repeat, I don’t like him for you,” Luciano growls, bringing me back. “You deserve better. He’s a thug. He’s unworthy. He’s violent. People don’t change. They just transform themselves.”

Luciano doesn’t have to know who I am for that to be true. Although, he’s going on the persona of the fake ID I assumed after landing here, tracing Diletta’s steps right to Hart. I didn’t just buy paperwork. I bought full background. It wasn’t criminal, but there are enough gaps that if anyone looked, they could assume anything. Assumptions that would only be solidified, given that I’m part of a motorcycle club now.

“I don’t believe that, but even if I did, I’d say that he was a good man all along, trying to make the best of not-so-great circumstances. If you harm him or attempt to separate us, even though I love you more than the world itself, I’ll never forgive you. I need you to trust me.”

“What do you propose that I should do then? Let you throw your life away for a man who will never know how to love anyone?”

It takes all my control to remember that I’m not supposed to be able to understand what’s being said right now. I can’t make my displeasure known in any way other than setting my hand on Diletta’s lower back because I sense her distress and want to steady her.

“I’m not throwing my life away,” Diletta breathes, hurt seeping into her words. “I’ll love him. I’ll teach him how. Just like you showed me how when the world said you weren’t capable.”

She floors me, fighting and silencing all the brutal arguments I’ve had with myself for years, but especially since she found out I was real.

“You loved Mamma and she loved you. Your love was real. I know that it hasn’t stopped just because she died. You still feel the pain of not having her with you every second of the day.”

“You can’t mean that what you feel for this man is this deep. Your mother and I had years. We had a family. We made our own history together,” Luciano protests, but his voice shakes with emotion.

“I want that same opportunity to make my own choices,” Diletta pleads. “I don’t believe it’s a mistake, but even if it is, Gunner would never hurt me. What hurt me most was watching him be taken and beaten. I thought about it differently before I had someone who I cared about, but each man out there has someone who cares about him. Or they did, at one time. I want you to stop, Papa. I want you to get out of it.”

I don’t know who is more surprised. Luciano, or me.

“You know that if I did, someone else would take my place,” he reasons and he’s not wrong. “My father passed this empire down to me. Taught me the old way. You think things would go that way if I left that hole empty?”

“Train someone. You must have a successor in mind, knowing I was never going to take over for you?”

“Should I ask for resume submissions?”

“No, Papa.” Diletta smiles for the first time. I get a flash of hope—the most dangerous and shitty emotion in the universe—that maybe this will be okay. “I’m just asking you to think about what you want for the future. Everything else aside, what would make you happy?”

“My plans were to do this until I die then leave the assets and cash to you in various bank accounts that it would be easy for you to access.”

“Papa. No” Diletta crosses to him and throws her arms around his neck. “I want you with me. I want you to enjoy your grandchildren. I’m not- I don’t… I don’t know. But one day, I want kids. I want them to have a happy life without having to look over my shoulder worried that someone you’ve angered will take it out on my family. Just because this is in your blood, doesn’t mean that it has to be your destiny for the rest of your life. You do have the power to choose.”

She’s pleading with her father and I’m standing here watching them, at least on the outside, my shrewd gaze missing nothing, a thug of all thugs, but inside, I’m melting the fuck down. This is too much for my sore brain. It’s too much for a fully functioning brain.

How can Diletta think about a future with a family and normal shit after today is beyond me. But the moment I heard her say those words, I knew that’s what I wanted to. I wanted it all.

By the time Diletta steps back and rejoins me, her father is already giving me foul looks and threatening me in English.

He goes through the whole list of what he’ll do to me if I ever hurt his daughter. I nod hard, because we’re in total agreement there.

“You’re goddamn lucky that she saved you,” Luciano seethes before snapping his fingers at his men. They circle around him, but not before he kisses Diletta on the cheek.

“Don’t stay away so long this time,” she implores. “Think about what I said. There’s always something more out there, even if you think you’ve already done everything. Plus, I miss you, Papa.”

“I miss you more than anything,” he responds in Italian, the look of longing on his face so intense that it nearly breaks me. I know what a gift he’s giving me and there’s no doubt that so does he. He switches back to English. “I’m choosing her happiness. I’m giving her what she wants because seeing her miserable would destroy me.”

“It would destroy me too. Everything I have is hers. My life. My future. Anything she ever asks for, there’s nothing on this earth that’s too great.”

Luciano gives me another fierce onceover. He’s used to men cowering at a simple glance. Seeing as I’m an outlaw biker and not some random civilian, it’s not going to happen. Gunner isn’t afraid and Ronan surely isn’t. I don’t break that hard gaze until Luciano finally whirls, rejoins his men, and setting off towards his private jet.

“I know I’m damn lucky you saved me,” I whisper under my breath, wrapping my arms around Diletta and dropping a kiss on her hair. Amazingly, she leans into me like I’m her safe place.

She waits until her father is on the plane, all his goons up there with him, and the door shut. I’m not sure about the rest of his soldiers, or where his ghost is. I don’t like being watched, but keeping Diletta safe is always going to be my first priority.

She lifts a hand and waves, then leads me back to the car. Before the roar of bikes fills the air, she brushes a kiss over my lips and peppers my cheek with a hot path until she reaches my ear. “I’m damn lucky that you saved me first.”

I turn into her touch, my voice low in her ear. “You didn’t tell him.”

“I might. In time. I didn’t, mostly because I didn’t have to. Whatever happened, you did it so convincingly that even he believed it was real. I believe that you’re safe here. You can take a breath.” Her hand grazes my chest and then settles right above my heart. “We can take one together.”