Chapter 17 - Gabriel #2
“Will do what I tell them.” The certainty surprises even me, but it’s true. The infrastructure is there, waiting. “Logan’s already mobilizing security. We’ll have protocols in place before we arrive.”
She’s quiet for a moment, weighing something. Miami is where her investigation leads. I can see her thinking about it, trying to figure out how to be in my family’s house while pursuing whatever she’s pursuing.
“This changes things,” she says. “You going back. Being a Delgado again.”
“Yes.” No point denying it. The priest was the costume. This certainty, this readiness to do violence, this is what I was raised to be.
She studies my face. “Okay. We go to Miami.”
The relief nearly buckles my knees. “Gunner will be here in thirty minutes.”
She goes to the bedroom, my bedroom, our bedroom for exactly one night, and I hear her packing. Quick, efficient. The sound of someone who knows how to leave in a hurry.
I stand in my empty kitchen, looking at the mango bowl she bought, the spices she arranged, the wooden spoon she saved. Tomorrow this will all be memory. The rectory, the parish, Father Gabriel, all of it ending not with revelation but with geography.
When I turn around, Sera’s watching from the doorway. She’s seen the real thing now, not the priest playing at being dangerous, but the Delgado prince who grew up in rooms where violence was currency.
“Ready?” I ask.
She nods. No fear in her eyes. Just acceptance.
A car door slams outside.
I go to the window, pulling back the curtain just enough to see. A black SUV sits in the driveway, windows tinted dark as confession. But it isn’t the vehicle that makes my breath catch.
It’s the man unfolding himself from the driver’s side.
Gunner.
He hasn’t shrunk an inch. Six-foot-five of controlled violence stands in the golden evening light like a monument to what I’ve left behind.
His shaved head catches the sun, dark stubble barely visible.
The scar across his face — from left eyebrow to the bridge of his nose — tugs at his skin as he scans the property, a permanent reminder of the knife fight that should have killed him.
He wears all black, like always. A T-shirt stretched across a chest that has somehow gotten broader, as if he’s spent the last eight years turning himself into even more of a weapon.
Combat boots. A leather jacket despite the Florida heat.
His neck tattoos creep upward from his collar like dark vines reclaiming territory.
Sera comes to stand beside me. “That’s our ride?”
“That’s Gunner.”
She studies him through the glass. “He looks like he eats priests for breakfast.”
“He’s never been big on religion.”
Gunner’s pale gray eyes sweep the street, seeing things normal people miss. I’ve forgotten how unsettling those eyes are — like looking into smoke, bottomless, nothing you can read unless he wants you to.
“Let’s go,” I say, grabbing our bags.
Outside, the evening air is thick with coming rain.
Gunner stands by the SUV, massive arms crossed over his chest. The ink on his forearms shifts with muscle — military imagery mixed with skulls, and on his right forearm, the face of Saint Michael, patron of warriors.
His knuckles are a testament to violence — scarred, tattooed with symbols only people like us understand.
I stop a few feet away, Sera slightly behind me. Silence stretches between us like a minefield.
Gunner looks me over, taking in the jeans, the T-shirt, no collar. Those smoke-gray eyes catalog everything that has changed, everything that hasn’t.
“Gabriel.” His voice is gravel on steel.
“Gunner.”
I saw him a month ago, briefly, while I performed the last rites over a bleeding body, but we didn’t share a word. It’s been years since I heard him speak.
Another long moment passes. Then he reaches out one scarred hand. I take it. His grip is crushing, deliberate. A reminder.
“Still hit like you used to?” he asks.
“Harder.”
The corner of his mouth twitches — the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen from him. He releases my hand, gaze shifting to Sera.
“Her?”
“Sera.” I step aside slightly. “She’s with me.”
Gunner studies her with the same intensity he’s given me, looking for threats, for weaknesses. Sera doesn’t flinch under the scrutiny. She meets those pale eyes.
He nods once. “Car’s secure. Sweep completed. Route mapped.”
Six words. For Gunner, that’s practically poetry.
“You look good,” I say, the words awkward and insufficient.
Gunner’s expression doesn’t change. “You don’t.”
I almost laugh. There’s the Gunner I remember. No cushion to his words, no attempt at social niceties.
“Let’s go,” I say.
The Turnpike stretches north in the darkness, Miami’s glow starting to paint the horizon.
Gunner drives. Says nothing, which is his way. Sera and I sit in the back of the SUV, not touching but aware of every inch between us. The wrapped wooden spoon rests in her bag at her feet. Her hand keeps going to her chest, checking the ring underneath her shirt, the secret she’s still carrying.
While she was packing, I went back to the church one last time.
The nave was dark, just the sanctuary lamp’s red glow.
The pew where Sera had set my collar two nights ago, it was still there, white against the dark wood, untouched.
As if even the cleaning volunteers knew not to move it, sensing something had changed.
I picked it up, held it, waited to feel something. Guilt, maybe. Or calling.
Nothing came. Just cloth in my hand.
I folded it carefully and put it in my pocket. Not wearing it, not throwing it away. Just carrying it. The ambiguity feels right. I don’t know what I am yet. Not a priest. Not quite a Delgado. Something in between.
“You okay?” Sera asks quietly.
“I don’t know.”
She takes my hand. Simple, direct. Her thumb traces circles on my palm.
The city rises around us as we leave Homestead behind. First the outlet malls, then the suburbs, then the real Miami starting to wake up. Towers and lights and the complicated beauty of a city that never quite sleeps.
“Terrified and honest, remember,” she says, and somehow it calms me.