Page 71 of Gunner

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 mefor my own good. My own good isnotbreaking 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.”

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