7. Gemma #2
The contradiction is glaring. A gaping hole in the center of his deepest trauma.
He is conflating two completely different spaces. He is in the alley, kneeling in the rain, turning the body over. And he is sitting on the green couch in the living room, holding a phone cord, listening to the rain hit the glass.
Human memory is a fragile, reconstructive thing. It patches holes with whatever materials are lying around. He’s been carrying a nightmare that wasn't his to own.
The alley wasn't his reality. The phone was.
"You weren't in the alley," I say.
The words hang in the stagnant air.
Dante stops rocking. His chest hitches on a jagged inhale. He blinks, the unfocused glaze in his dark eyes fracturing slightly.
"I was there," he insists, his voice trembling with a desperate, defensive aggression. "I turned him over. The blood—"
"Was your father's blood," I interrupt gently.
I refuse to back down. I slide closer, closing the distance between us until my knees touch his boots.
I reach up and cup his bearded jaw. My hands are coated in grease and dirt, but I do not care.
I press my palms firmly against his skin.
"Matteo turned him over. Matteo got the blood on his hands. Matteo was the one in the rain."
"No," Dante growls, a deep, wounded sound tearing from the bottom of his throat. He tries to turn his head away, rejecting the reality.
I hold him in place. I force him to stay in the present. I force him to look at me.
"You were on the couch," I state with absolute conviction. "You were holding the phone. You heard Matteo break. That is your memory, Dante. The phone call. The living room. The helplessness."
The truth hits him. It is not a quiet realization. It is a catastrophic collapse of a fortress he spent two decades building.
The alley was horrible, but the alley was an action. It was a place where things were happening. Turning the body, pressing the wounds, fighting against the inevitable. It was a tactical scenario.
The living room was pure, agonizing paralysis. A boy trapped on a green couch, forced to listen to the end of his world.
That is the real wound. Not the blood in the rain. The absolute, paralyzing helplessness.
"I couldn't do anything," Dante whispers. The defensive aggression vanishes from his voice. He sounds young. He sounds broken. "Matteo was crying. My big brother was crying. And I was just sitting there."
The tears finally spill over his dark lashes. They cut clean tracks through the soot and dried blood on his cheeks.
I slide fully into his lap. I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling his head down to my shoulder. I bury my face in his dark hair. He does not resist. He wraps his huge arms around my waist and buries his face in the crook of my neck. He breaks.
The terrifying protector, the feral killer who just slaughtered four armed men without hesitation, sobs into my shoulder in the darkness of an abandoned hotel.
Mine. My broken, beautiful man.
I hold him fiercely. I run my hands down his broad, tattooed back, tracing the hard muscles that carry an entire mafia empire. I press my lips to his temple.
I understand it now. I understand the tactical detachment.
I understand the obsessive need to clear every room, check every exit, and eliminate every threat before it even manifests.
He built a titanium vault out of tactical awareness to ensure he would never, ever be that helpless sixteen-year-old boy on the couch again.
He adopted Matteo's trauma because carrying the horror of the alley was easier than carrying the shame of the living room.
It is the most profoundly tragic, fiercely loyal thing I have ever witnessed.
"You were a kid," I whisper against his skin. "You were a kid, Dante. You couldn't save him."
"I should have been there," he chokes out, his hands gripping the fabric of the henley I'm wearing like it is the only thing tethering him to the earth.
"If you were there, you might be dead too," I counter softly. "And then who would be here right now, saving me?"
His breath hitches against my collarbone.
"You are the guard now," I remind him, my voice steady, anchoring him firmly to the present moment. "You keep them safe. You keep me safe. You are not on that couch anymore."
I understand the grief of sudden, violent loss.
La Diosa was my entire world. My independence.
My livelihood. It was taken away in a storm of bullets.
The devastation of standing in that ruined street, staring at the shredded metal of my food truck, is burned into my mind forever.
The loss of identity is a physical ache.
Dante lost his family, his safety, and his childhood on that phone call.
We are both carrying the wreckage of the things we loved.
He slowly stops shaking. The ragged, jagged edge of his breathing smooths out. He inhales deeply, pulling the warm, familiar scent of my skin into his lungs to ground himself.
He pulls his head back, creating just enough space to look at me. His dark eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot, and exposed. His unyielding professional distance is permanently gone. The titanium walls he built are shattered on the floor. There is nothing left between us but raw, unshielded truth.
"You stayed," he murmurs, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble in the quiet corridor. He lifts a hand, tracing the curve of my cheek with a thumb that is coated in someone else's blood. "You saw what I am. You heard what I am. You stayed."
"Where else would I go?" I offer a small, broken smile. "Besides, I'm fairly certain if I tried to run, you would just throw me over your shoulder again."
A faint ghost of a smirk touches the corner of his bearded mouth. It is the first genuine expression of amusement I have seen from him since the alley where we met.
"I would," he agrees. The possessive fire flares back to life in his eyes, but it is no longer frantic. It is deeply rooted. Calm. Absolute. "You belong to me."
"I am currently covered in elevator grease, dust, and wearing ripped clothes," I point out, gesturing to the disaster of my outfit. "You sure you want to claim this mess?"
"I don't care.” He doesn't hesitate. He sweeps his thumb across my lower lip, his touch gentle for a man with hands built for violence. “Every piece. Every curve. All of it belongs to me."
His.
He leans in and presses his mouth to my forehead. It is not a sexual claim. It is a vow. A silent promise.
He pushes himself up from the wall, bringing me up with him effortlessly. He stands tall, the borrowed trauma no longer bowing his shoulders. The memory of the alley still exists, but the timeline is corrected. He knows where he was. He knows what he is.
He walks over and picks his weapon up from the concrete floor. He checks the chamber with a smooth, practiced motion. The lethal protector is back online, but the frantic hypervigilance is gone. He is focused. Lethal. Precise.
"They are waiting below," Dante states, his dark eyes scanning the shadows of the tenth-floor corridor. "They will realize the elevator is empty. They will start sweeping the floors upwards."
"So we go down," I confirm, stepping to his side.
He reaches out and grabs my hand. His fingers interlock with mine, a solid, firm grip that sends a possessive ache radiating through my chest.
"We go down," Dante agrees. "We clear the path. We survive this."
He leads the way through the dark corridor. The terror is gone. The Bellanti hitmen might be sweeping the lower floors with automatic weapons. The Costa family war might be raging across the city of Chicago. The safehouse might be compromised.
None of it matters.
I am walking in the dark with a man who just tore down his own psychological fortress for me. A man who will burn the city to ashes before he lets anyone touch me. A man who has finally stopped fighting the ghosts of his past and started fighting for the reality of our future.
The scent of gun oil, rain-soaked concrete, and black coffee surrounds me like an impenetrable shield.
We move toward the stairwell at the far end of the hall. The shadows lengthen. The danger intensifies. But my hand is locked in his, and I am exactly where I am meant to be.