Page 6 of Gunner

“You bleed like everyone else does, yeah?”

I glance at my arm, at the droplets on the floor. “Looks red to me,” I mumble after a pause.

He nods and then he’s gone. He closes the door behind him again. I can hear his steps retreating down the hall, past the other members’ rooms. His and Raiden’s are on the opposite side of the old warehouse Zale had converted. The place is huge and as Prez and VP, they get the largest rooms with ensuite bathrooms.

I never had to move out after I gave the VP position over. I was always fine with my small room down here. There are a few rooms left empty, a few saved just for families should they need them in times of crisis, but most of the other smaller ones are taken. Even if guys have a house in town or on the outskirts, they have a room saved for them here too unless they specifically say they don’t want it.

I stare at the line of stitches in my arm. Should have just fucking crazy glued it together. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.

It’s the general consensus here that I don’t feel a thing, but I do, and he knows it. I’m just built differently than most people, and then my life did the rest for me. I feel, but I don’t let it through. I don’t let it show. I can’t… relate and even if I could, the stone-cold borderline psychopath act is too good a cover to blow.

In the past, filtering shit out kept me sane and being a scary motherfucker kept me alive.

Old habits don’t get a chance to die when you’re still living your past.

Chapter 3

Diletta

Weekends are hard. Even when I fill them with activities, I’m still lonely. Five and a half years without seeing your family, your homeland, and everything you love will do that.

Hart’s main street has that quaint, resort town mashed up with old money feel. Half the buildings are stone and brick and the ones that are newer constructions were designed to look old. They all have those fancy windows at the front, jammed full of clothes, shoes, outdoorsy equipment, teas, books, journals, and paper supplies. There’s even one just for hats, and not the ballcap kind. The retro stores are the brightest, but the bookstore on the far end has the best window display, beating out even the candy and ice cream store, since someone painted giant books and fairytale characters all over it. Even the grocery store on the main street looks more like a castle with granite stacked stones climbing halfway up the front and huge, old-fashioned pillars.

Sundays are slower paced in Hart, but it’s afternoon now, the late May weather is lovely, and people are out. They amble down the sidewalks. Couples hand in hand, families with small kids, groups of teenagers laughing and talking too loudly. There are a few singles, but they’re definitely the minority—an older woman shuffling along pulling a wire shopping basket filled with groceries, a man in a suit who looks frazzled. A few people with earbuds jog here and there. The traffic on the roads is actuallyquite heavy and there’s everything from scooters to skateboards to bikes going by.

I’m heading to a garden store at the end of the street, just past the butcher’s shop. It’s overpriced, but they always carry a good selection of seeds. Nothing I couldn’t get online if I wanted to, but supporting local feels better.

Plus, this is my life now. This town.

Part of the street ends before the garden store starts. There are steel posts which block traffic, and the pavement turns to cobblestone. In the summer, this is Hart’s hotspot for music, festivals, and farmers’ markets. One big pub and a smaller restaurant both have patio areas that extend onto the cobblestone, but they’re roped off and fenced off. The coffee shop I stride past smells like heaven. Nothing that would even come close to home, but even a subpar espresso still brings tears to my eyes.

It’s been less than twenty-four hours since there was someone in my backyard.

My heart picks up now, thundering dangerously as adrenaline dumps into my veins. I’m not worried that someone from my past has found me. My father dealt with the Rossi family already and if they were coming for me, he would have moved me faster than they could get here.

Long story short, I was kidnapped. Me, a mafia princess, daughter of a notorious drug lord. To avoid an all-out war after my father found out what had been done, Adolfo Rossi offered a truce. He said he would punish his son for his unsanctioned actions, and he gave my father territory that he’d wanted for a very long time, plus access to a second major port.

There’s no possible way that Romeo Rossi would risk the wrath of his father a second time, but just in case the unhinged, spoiled brat and the world’s most underserving Capo, ever changed his mind, my father hid me and gave me another life far away from Italy. The rules were clear. No contact with home unless it was an absolute emergency. I was no longer Diletta Cosmo. I became Haley Black, with airtight fake ID from a driver’s license and social security card to my teaching degree.

Whoever was out there was probably just some creep. Even if it was someone trying to case the place to break in, I have nothing to steal. Was it someone looking for what they thought was an easy target? Has someone been stalking me?

I’m fairly confident that my past training has given me the skills to deal with them either way. The fact that they panicked and jumped the fence, leaving their blood behind, tells me that they’re not a professional. Even if they were, I could still hold my own.

That’s rich, coming from someone who was kidnapped not once, but twice.

Seven men is a different story.

I took down three, but the other four grabbed me. One latched around my arms while a second bound my hands behind my back and a third grabbed my feet. It was the fourth who stuck a needle into the side of my neck. At least the first three probably caught concussions, balls that likely would never be the same, and the last definitely had to have needed multiple surgeries after I shot out his left kneecap.

The second kidnapping days later, I didn’t fight, even though I was blindfolded.

You have no reason to trust me, but I’m your only option. Stay quiet. I’m getting you out of here.

I’ll never forget the timber of that deep, gravelly whisper. He never spoke in more than that the night we spent hiding before he returned me to my father. I wasn’t blindfolded the entire time, but my savior wore all black, including an eyeless mask over his face like a bank robber. Every inch of his skin was covered. He gave nothing away.

I know that my father knows who he is, because my faceless hero explained everything to him after he brought me home. I also have zero doubt that he’s the one Rossi is still hunting. No one from the outside could have penetrated so deep into their defenses and went straight to the heart of Romeo Rossi’s house. No one but an inside man. One of their own. A traitor.

My papa gave me a small fortune when he sent me here, out of sight and out of mind, far, far away from Italy. I imagine he gave the man who saved me twice or three times that amount as repayment for my life. People talk about honor amongst thieves, but they have no idea how serious a blood debt is.

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