Page 33 of Gunner

“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 hedoesn’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 withAdolfo 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. Icouldn’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.”

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