Section 23
Retaliation
Gia
My body registers warmth first. The mattress. The faint weight of Diablo pressed against my calves. The slow, even rhythm of breathing beside me.
Lucky.
Still on his side of the bed. Rigid even in sleep, like rest is something he negotiates instead of accepts.
I turn my head carefully.
The light is coming in through the high window, thin and gray, touching the edges of him. His hair is mussed, curls doing whatever they want without supervision. His face is softer in sleep, lines unguarded.
Unarmored.
The shock of seeing him without the helmet, the way my brain refused to categorize him properly… I feel the echo of that dissonance again now.
He doesn’t look like violence.
He looks like someone who learned how to survive it.
I shift to sit up.
The movement must register on some instinctual level, because he exhales and turns just enough that his back faces me.
And that’s when I see it.
At first, my mind tries to explain it away.
Shadow, maybe.
Bad light.
Then understanding settles—slow and cold and absolute.
The patches of skin visible where his t-shirt has ridden up are a map of damage.
Not scars you get from fights. Not neat lines or old wounds stitched clean.
This is something else.
The skin is uneven, pale in some places, darker in others, textured in a way flesh should never have to be. Old burns. Shrapnel paths. Trauma that didn’t ask permission and didn’t leave politely.
Survival.
My breath catches—just enough that I have to press my lips together to keep from making a sound.
This is what he hides.
I don’t wake him.
I just sit there and look, my mind recalibrating everything I thought I knew.
The way he flinches sometimes when he sits too fast.
The careful way he leans instead of stretching.
Every movement I’d dismissed as habit suddenly becomes adaptation.
This man has been blown apart and stitched back together and somehow still says yes, boss without bitterness. Somehow still jokes. Somehow still kneels to pet my dog like the world hasn’t already taken enough from him.
You don’t come back from this unchanged.
You just decide what parts of yourself you’ll let the world see.
He shifts again, closer to waking.
I lie back down immediately, heart steady but heavy, staring at the ceiling like nothing has happened.
When he finally stirs, it’s slow.
Careful.
He freezes the second he realizes he’s not alone.
“Morning,” he says quietly.
“Morning.”
A pause.
“So…” he begins, the silence rapidly surpassing awkward and heading into downright uncomfortable territory.
So, we slept in the same bed. So, this is more intimate than seeing each other naked—this is seeing each other completely bare.
Unmasked. But he doesn’t get to say any of that, because Diablo rolls around like a cement mixer demanding attention.
“I should… This guy probably wants a walk, don’t you bud?” he says in that horrible baby voice. This man is an enigma, and I welcome the get out of jail free-card offered to us by my dog.
“Mm. Yes. Good.”
He stands carefully, reaching for the helmet resting on the chair.
Armor first.
I know now what kind of man stands beside me.
And I know exactly how dangerous it is to mistake quiet survival for fragility.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed.
The day is already waiting.
And so is war.
I shower quickly, efficiently. Long enough to wash the night off my skin, short enough that I can pretend I slept like a normal person and not beside a man whose back rewrote my understanding of resilience.
By the time I’m dressed again, the building feels awake.
Red doesn’t sleep so much as hover, always alert, always listening. Even closed—servers running, cameras blinking, the skeleton crew moving with quiet purpose.
I pour coffee.
The machine gurgles ominously, like it resents being asked to work this early.
I take a sip.
It tastes like despair filtered through burnt plastic.
I grimace and take another sip anyway, because caffeine is not optional, before shutting the office door behind me.
I pull up the security feeds on my tablet, scrolling through camera angles with practiced ease. Alley clear. Street quiet. No unfamiliar vehicles lingering longer than they should.
For the moment, the city is behaving.
The door opens behind me.
Lucky strides in with Diablo at his side, leash looped loosely around his wrist. He’s helmeted, jacket zipped, posture loose in the way that suggests he’s already done two mental laps of the perimeter.
“Hey boss,” he says cheerfully.
Diablo trots over and plants himself by my knee.
“Morning,” I reply, absent-mindedly scratching my dog behind the ear.
Lucky hesitates, then lifts the helmet off.
He does it casually—deliberately casual—like he’s trying not to make it A Thing?.
It is trust pretending to be routine.
I pretend not to notice my body reacting anyway.
He reaches for the coffee pot.
“Oh good,” he says. “I’m starving.”
He pours himself a mug and takes one confident sip.
Immediately freezes.
His face does something deeply unpleasant.
“…What the hell is this?”
“It’s coffee,” I say.
“That’s not coffee,” he says hoarsely. “That’s a crime.”
He swallows, visibly battling it.
“I’ve been in active warzones with better brew,” he continues. “I feel like it’s still on my tongue. It’s haunting me.”
He sticks his tongue out and drags it against his sleeve like that might help.
“Stop that,” I say. “You’re going to ruin your jacket.”
“I don’t care,” he says. “It’s inside me now.”
Despite myself, a laugh slips out.
Just a breath of one.
He looks up instantly, eyes bright. Damn, they’re so blue. It’s like getting slapped in the face by a cartoon. Wrong. Yet, somehow, fundamentally Lucky.
“There it is,” he says. “Morning victory.”
“Do not get used to it.”
“Too late. I’m emotionally attached.”
I turn back to the monitors before my mouth betrays me further.
The city still looks calm.
That’s when my phone rings.
I answer immediately and before I can get a simple greeting out there’s shouting on the other end.
I don’t react.
The words tumble out fast—names, locations, times—overlapping reports that don’t align neatly yet but form a shape I recognize too well.
“What happened?” I say evenly.
A pause.
“Shots fired. Two confirmed dead. One critical.”
My hand tightens around the phone.
That’s Bellini’s trash territory.
“That wasn’t authorized,” I say.
The line goes dead.
Before I can breathe, the phone rings again.
Then again.
Different voices. Same story.
Different locations. Same signature.
My screen fills with notifications—emergency pings, internal alerts, movement reports stacking faster than I can clear them.
I don’t need anyone to say his name.
I already know.
Lucky’s voice cuts in quietly. “Gia.”
I don’t look at him.
“Not now.”
A video call pops up, Lussari secure connection.
I accept.
“Talk,” I say.
Dante’s voice is controlled.
“It’s spreading,” he says. “Two hits. Maybe three. Sloppy.”
My jaw sets.
“Not mine.”
“I know,” he replies. “But the city doesn’t.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
“Bellini?” I ask.
A breath.
“He hasn’t moved,” Dante says. “Which means he wanted this.”
I open my eyes.
Across the room, Lucky stands still, helmet tucked under his arm, no humor left in his eyes at all.
Dante continues, “Whoever authorized it used your channels.”
I say nothing.
“You need to get ahead of this,” he adds. “Before the families decide you’ve lost control.”
The call ends.
Lucky doesn’t speak, he waits.
Smart.
Finally, I say, “Frank.”
It’s not a question.
Lucky exhales slowly through his nose.
I straighten, already reorganizing priorities in my head.
“Put on your helmet,” I say.
He moves instantly.
I grab my phone again, already dialing.
“They made chaos in my name,” I say. “Now I have to clean it.”
He nods once.
“Where do you want me?”
I don’t hesitate.
“Right beside me.”
And this time, he doesn’t joke.