Chapter 30
Gunner. I have to go to him.
The recognition crystallizes with perfect clarity. The leotard, the dance, all of it building toward the drive south to Miami, to La Sirena, to the man who owns me whether I'm ready to admit it or not.
I start the truck, turn it around, head back north. I need to tell Papa, pack only what matters, drive to La Sirena before I lose my nerve. Before the adrenaline fades and I remember all the reasons this is dangerous.
But when I turn onto our street, my heart stops.
There's a black truck parked at the curb outside our cottage.
I stop in the middle of the street, my heart slamming hard enough to taste copper, the beat of it loud in my fingertips where they grip the steering wheel.
A figure on the porch, just having knocked. Waiting at the door with the patience of a man who's driven a long way for this moment.
Gunner.
He's here. The man who runs security for Miami's most dangerous family is on my father's porch in soft clothes I've never seen.
Clean jeans that fit him perfectly, a cotton button-down with sleeves rolled to his forearms, no tactical vest, no visible weapons.
He looks like a man who's been cared for, fed, made to sleep by people who love him.
His face is clean-shaven, his edges somehow softer without losing their danger.
The Delgado family must have put him back together after the operation, forced him to stop punishing himself long enough to heal.
The front door opens. Nicolas appears in his soft shirt, the cast visible on his arm. My father, broken by Gunner's world, facing the man who broke him.
Gunner speaks first, his voice carrying across the yard: "Mr. Gilles. I'd like to ask your permission to marry your daughter."
My whole body goes hot, then cold, then hot again. The man who commands Miami's underworld is asking my painter father for permission. The words are formal but underneath them runs something rawer. Desperation, maybe, or hope.
Nicolas doesn't answer immediately. He waits with painter's stillness, the cast catching late sun, forcing Gunner to do better than formal. Making him earn what he's asking for.
"I took your daughter on the wrong theory," Gunner continues, his voice flat with hard truth.
"The morning I came to your cottage, I'd been building a case against a man named Hallstein for nine years.
There was a breach at La Sirena, at the Delgado compound.
You were the only civilian on the property.
I read your visit as reconnaissance. I read you as a scout for Hallstein. "
He pauses, and I see his shoulders tense before he pushes through the harder part: "I had it wrong from day one.
You were never the scout. You're a painter.
I knew it by day fourteen of the captivity.
But I kept your daughter anyway. I didn't tell you because there was no honest way to say it until now. "
The final piece lands heaviest: "I'm the reason those men were in your living room. The reason your ribs broke and your arm broke. The reason your daughter knelt in your blood and worried you would die. I was wrong from the beginning. I'm sorry, Mr. Gilles."
Nicolas takes this in with the same stillness he uses when studying a painting, seeing all the layers at once. "I see."
Not absolution. Just acknowledgment of truth received. The cast on his arm catches the light as he shifts slightly.
"So, sir, do I have your permission? I don't deserve her, but I'm asking anyway."
Then, quieter but certain: "Yes."
My father seeing what I'm only beginning to understand. That Gunner's honesty matters more than his crimes.
"Good. Because I would've taken her anyway," Gunner says.
I hear those words through my open window. I don't deserve her. I'm asking anyway. I'm moving before I've decided to. Even after everything, every warning, every smart reason to drive away, my body knows where it belongs.
I open the truck door, leave my ballet flats behind on the floor, cross the hot street barefoot. The pavement burns the soles of my feet but I don't care. I need to reach him. Need to touch him. Need to close this distance that's been killing us both.
Gunner turns, sensing my arrival. Our eyes meet, and I see everything in his. The week of hell, the operation completed, the family who put him back together, the fear that I'll reject him again.
I don't speak. There are no words for what I need to say.
He pulls me against him in the doorway, his arms coming around me like I'm something he might lose if he doesn't hold tight enough. My face finds his shoulder, breathing in cotton and cedar soap and underneath it, the scent that's purely him. Dangerous and mine.
Then the kiss.
Not the brief touch from five weeks ago in his kitchen.
This is long, sustained, desperate, everything we couldn't say in words poured into the connection of our mouths.
His hand cradles my jaw where the bruise blooms deep, his thumb gentle over the damage his world caused.
Our mouths relearn each other, tongues meeting with hunger.
His teeth catch my lower lip and I moan into his mouth, my hands fisting in his shirt.
The kiss says I'm here and I'm sorry and you're mine and I'm never letting you go again all at once.
And my body remembers all of it. How he felt inside me, how he made me scream his name, how he looked at me like I was worth burning the world for.
When we finally pull back, foreheads touching, both breathing hard, I realize Nicolas has already closed the door behind us. Gone to his studio to paint, leaving us the cottage for whatever comes next.
Gunner picks me up. I weigh nothing in his arms, never have.
He carries me to the couch. The portrait above it watches us, me at nineteen in the garden, the painting that lured him to me all those weeks ago.
He sets me sideways across his lap, my legs folded over his thighs, his arms securing me against his chest. The heat of him burns through my leotard, making me hyperaware of every point where our bodies touch.
My nipples harden against the thin fabric and I know he can feel them through his shirt.
We don't move, just breathe together, our bodies remembering their rhythm. His chest rises and falls against mine, our hearts gradually finding the same beat.
"I was about to drive to Miami," I tell him, my voice rough from the dance, from not speaking, from wanting. "To you. To La Sirena."
"Marisol made me come." His voice rumbles against my neck where his face is pressed.
"The Delgado princess who commands Miami's underworld literally shoved me out the door by the shoulders.
Would've come anyway, but she shoved. Called me a coward and a cabrón and an embarrassment to the family in one breath, then told me if I didn't go claim you properly she'd do it for me and I wouldn't like her terms."
I rest my head on his shoulder. "I thought she hated me," I say into his shirt.
He shakes his head, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"She's never hated you. She was scared of what you could do to me.
" His thumb traces lazy circles on my thigh, and the weight of his hand grounds me in a way nothing else can.
"She's right to be scared. You're the first person who's ever really had a say over me.
The first one who could break me and I'd thank you for it. "
The statement is so blunt, so unvarnished, it takes my breath away.
"I don't want to break you," I say.
He leans in, lips at my ear. "You already did. You just don't know it yet."
I close my eyes and listen to his heart beating under my ear, slow and steady and undeniably alive.
I picture Marisol, fierce and beautiful and terrifying, standing at the edge of her empire with her arms crossed, daring anyone to take what's hers.
I think about how hard it must have been for her to let Gunner go.
And I feel, for the first time, that I'm not just an outsider in this family. I'm someone who matters.
My hand finds his face, palm against his cheek that's smooth from shaving.
"I'm done pretending to be small," I tell him, my voice dry and certain, the voice I found in his apartment all those weeks ago. "Miami's calling me back to who I really am. The cottage is Papa's place, not my only life."
He doesn't answer with words. His hand presses against my cheek, breathing against my hair that must smell like sweat from the dance. Then, in a voice I've never heard from him. Not operational, not controlled, just raw and broken open:
"Be mine, Daphne. Officially. In front of God and both our families. Be my wife."
The yes is so obvious it's already in my mouth before he finishes asking. "Yes."
The word lands between us, simple and complete and irrevocable.
Then Gunner breaks.
I see it coming in his eyes first. Nine years of holding himself apart, of being the monster everyone said he was, finally cracking because someone said yes to him.
Not just to sharing his bed or his world, but to taking his name, to choosing him forever.
His breath catches once, sharp and sudden like he's been punched.
Then again, harder, his chest heaving. The third time cracks into a sound I've never heard from him.
Deep, wracking sobs that shake his whole body.
His face goes to my neck, his arms tightening around me like I'm the only thing holding him above water.
His tears are hot against my skin, soaking into my leotard, and his body shakes with the force of what's pouring out of him.
He cries like someone who hasn't cried in decades, maybe never.
Not the controlled tears of a man maintaining dignity, but complete surrender to everything he's been holding back.
Five minutes of his chest heaving against mine, tears and probably snot soaking my leotard, his hands fisting in the fabric at my back so hard I hear threads pop.