Page 36 of Gunner

“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 ofthat, 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.”

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