Five
Life comes full circle and knocks you on your ass. All you can do is say thank you for this shitstorm and push through
M y brothers don’t know what the fuck set me off.
Neither of them knew Gabriella back when we were together.
They might’ve seen her once or twice, but I doubt they’d remember her.
Back then, I was a fuckboy, so I don’t expect them to remember the only woman I ever truly loved.
So I’m not surprised that they don’t get it, because they don’t know how things were.
Don’t know how they ended. Don’t know what, I just figured the fuck out.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Now it all makes sense. Every call she made.
Every damn message she sent after that day.
I didn’t want to deal with it then—couldn’t.
But now? My chest feels like it’s caving in under the weight of everything I missed, everything I didn’t want to face.
Regret claws at me, hot and relentless, but it rides shotgun with something else: rage.
I regret not going after her.
I regret choosing my dick over her.
I regret every goddamn action and reaction.
But none of that erases the fury burning through me, because even with all that regret… she still kept my kids from me. Her words from that day come back, clear as fucking day.
“I came to talk to you about something.”
“This could have cost you and your club more than you know…”
Holy shit.
Fuck.
Shit.
Back then, I didn’t understand. I wasn’t in the right headspace.
Didn’t want to be. My head and heart were in a war I had no strategy for.
I buried it. Buried her. Told myself she wasn’t my old lady—just a girl I used to fuck with.
Just a girlfriend. No club ties. No reason to care.
I was a dumb fuck, a prick, a careless, clueless asshole who didn’t recognize what he had in her.
But now?
Now I know better.
She was warning me. And I didn’t fucking listen.
When she started reaching out months later, I ignored everything—calls, voicemails, texts.
Brushed it all off. I told myself she was chasing closure, trying to tie up loose ends.
But the truth? I didn’t want to deal with the pain sitting heavy in my chest. I convinced myself we had nothing left to say that mattered.
And I changed my number when even hearing her voice or seeing her name became too much.
Cold. Final. Like that would make it all disappear.
Dick move? Yeah. But I was drowning.
Heather was pregnant. That had to be my focus. She needed me. We lost the first one, and when she got pregnant again, everything else got buried. Gabriella, the pain, the confusion—it all got shoved deep.
And no, it wasn’t love with Heather. Never was. We don’t lie to each other about that. We’ve got respect, and we raised our kid like a team. But every fucking decision I made back then, I made for that child. For the one we lost. For the one we got.
So maybe I’m being irrational right now. Maybe I’m reacting like a goddamn maniac.
I don’t give a fuck.
Because those are my fucking kids . Looking at them, no way you wouldn’t see it. They’re mine. Same jawline. Same eyes. Same damn fire. A little tanner, sure, but otherwise, it’s like staring at a reflection of me and my brothers.
And she kept them from me. For seventeen fucking years.
Rationality can go fuck itself.
My pulse spikes again, heart slamming against my ribs. I focus on keeping my breathing steady. Every muscle in my body is locked up, tight as hell. It’s taking everything in me not to launch across this table and shake the truth out of her. Yell. Scream. Demand answers for the years I lost.
I want this meeting over so I can... fuck, I don’t even know. Rage? Drink? Break something? I just know I need answers. And she’s gonna give them to me.
Gabriella sits across from me, looking like ice in human form. I search her face—nothing. No emotion. No guilt. Not even hate. Just cold, unreadable detachment. Those eyes used to hold so much love when they looked at me. Now? Nothing but steel.
What. The. Fuck?
“So... that gentleman was your president finding out he has seventeen-year-old sons,” she mutters. That’s when Axel finally gets it, but Nitro's response is different, like he had figured it out already. Either way, hearing her say it has them both losing their shit, just like I did.
Good. Let them fucking feel it. I’m not the only one carrying this bombshell anymore.
The room erupts—shouting, cursing, fury echoing off the walls. The only reason they haven’t dragged Gabriella’s ass out by her hair is because of those boys. And... the little detail she never shared. The name she kept buried.
Barone.
She’s a motherfucking Barone.
That alone is why she’s not bleeding on my floor right now, because we’ve all heard the stories. And now? I’ve got two Barone-blooded kids sitting at my table with their mother, who lied to me, to my brothers, to my club .
But I have to get my shit together. The business still stands. The contract’s still living.
I reach out, placing a firm hand on Axel’s and Nitro’s shoulders. They’re coiled like I am—ready to go to war. But now they get it. Now they see why I snapped.
I raise my hand, calming the room.
We do not start a war we can’t finish. Not tonight.
Gabriella tsks.
My eyes snap to the boys. They reach for their weapons again.
Oh, hell no.
“What the fuck is this shit? My sons are armed?” My voice cuts through the tension like a blade. “Gabriella, this meeting doesn’t move another inch until you explain that shit. I’ll sever this deal before you can blink. Test me, bitch .”
The venom in my voice is damn near nuclear. I’m vibrating with rage, my control hanging by a thread. Axel and Nitro move in beside me, flanking me like the soldiers they are.
Gabriella speaks in Italian—sharp, clipped. The boys back down, reluctantly holstering their weapons, but not before shooting us a glare that says they’d rather be shooting bullets.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
She meets my gaze, and for a second, I swear she looks... bored like explaining anything to me is an inconvenience.
“My sons are armed because they’re mine,” she says, her voice cool and cutting. “Where I go, they go. What I do, they do. They’re trained, disciplined, and deadly. They protect me. You don’t have to like it, but you will respect it.”
She pauses, letting that sit, then adds with a sharp look, “And let’s not forget—you were a gun-toting president-in-the-making at a younger age than they are now. Don’t be a hypocrite, Talon.”
Her words hit their mark.
I want to argue. I want to rip into her.
But she’s not wrong.
And that pisses me off more than anything.
With my eyes locked on her, I realize something bone-deep—this isn’t the shy, sweet girl I fell for eighteen years ago. I don’t know the woman sitting across from me now. But what I do know? She’s not my Gabby anymore.
And I fucking hate it.
She wants me to snap. I can feel my trigger finger twitch. Anger’s crawling under my skin, coiling tight and ready to explode. Rational thought took a nosedive when I realized who she and those boys were to me.
And yeah, I was a dick back then. I own that. But this? This cold indifference, this ice in her eyes like I’m a stranger who means nothing? It’s too damn much.
Those are my kids. Our kids. Seventeen years, and I didn’t know they even existed. And she sits here, dropping bombs and acting like my rage is out of line? Maybe it is. Maybe I’m irrational. I don’t give a fuck.
She’s in my house now. And in here, she’s under my rule.
I stare her down—Barone or not. She was wrong, and she knows it. My attention jerks away when one of the boys speaks. He stands beside her, his stare cutting through me like a blade. And all I see is hatred.
My flesh and blood fucking hates me.
“Look, I get it. You’re pissed, but you need to check yourself. My mamma tried to tell you, and your sorry ass, about us for months. You’re the one who changed your number,” he hisses, raising a brow at me.
He glares at me like I’m the scum under his shoe.
“It’s a fact that when we were born, she called the club more than once and was told you’d call back, but you never did.
The first time she called, she was told you were out on a run and would be gone for a few days.
Then next, you were at another club and would be for a while. Then she… It doesn’t matter.”
He pauses. Then spits it out like poison.
“What does matter is this. Not long after one of her calls, your ol’ lady called her back, leaving a message on my mamma’s phone.
The puttana told my mamma that you already have an ol’ lady and a kid on the way.
And I quote, ‘ Some bitch trying to trick Talon into claiming her would not happen . She said, ‘ You could give two shits about some bastards some slut was trying to pawn off on you .’ According to my uncle and grandfather, my mamma was a wreck for a long time. You sure as fuck can’t blame her for wanting to give up.
To give up on letting the father of her children know they existed when he didn’t give a shit to find out why she kept trying to contact him. ”
He shakes his head, fury bleeding into every word. “No, I’m sorry. My mamma didn’t give up after your ol’ lady's call. SHE FUCKING TRIED A-FUCKING-GAIN. Do you know what happened? Hmm, Dad ?”
I glance at Gabriella. Her face is blank. Cold. Like she isn’t feeling what I am. Feeling like this conversation isn’t tearing her open from the inside. Like it’s not killing her, like it’s killing me.
His voice cuts back in. “They didn’t take a message.
They told her to stop calling. That last call destroyed her.
She wanted you to know. She needed you to know.
She did everything to tell you. And you threw her away like she was nothing.
You ignored her like she was nothing . That realization changed her. She was a fucking wreck for years .”