Chapter 18
ROCCO
Rocco’s chest felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside because Luna was right, and that somehow made everything worse.
Gunner wasn’t standing in that storm cellar looking for revenge or blood for the sake of violence.
He looked like a man clawing at the remains of something he lost years ago—brotherhood.
“You replaced your platoon with her.” The accusation still echoed through the cabin while rain hammered the roof hard enough to shake the walls.
Rocco stared at the man he used to trust with his life and barely recognized him anymore, but pieces of him were still there, and they were enough to hurt him.
“No,” Rocco said again quietly. “I didn’t replace any of you. I buried you, and I grieved every single one of you.”
Gunner’s expression twisted violently. “Yeah,” he whispered.
“You did, but then, you moved on.” The pain in those words hit harder than any threat so far, because part of Rocco understood it.
He understood what it would feel like waking up alone after surviving hell while everybody else moved on without him.
Christ. What if their positions had been reversed?
Would he have gone insane, too? That thought turned his stomach.
Luna’s hand stayed pressed lightly against the center of his back as she tried to keep him steady and grounded.
Gunner seemed to notice every second of it. His eyes darkened immediately.
“She calms you down,” he murmured.
Rocco’s jaw tightened. “Leave her out of this.”
“But she’s the whole point of all of this now.
” Gunner tilted his head slowly. “Isn’t she?
” Tony shifted subtly near the living room doorway, and Luca stayed locked near the side wall, watching carefully.
Jonesy looked ready to step in if this exploded, and honestly, Rocco didn’t know if anybody could stop it from happening.
Because Gunner kept circling closer and closer to the one thing Rocco would absolutely kill to protect—Luna.
Gunner climbed another step out of the cellar slowly, and nobody raised a weapon at him—not yet.
Rocco realized with sick certainty that none of them wanted this ending with Gunner’s death unless they absolutely had no choice—not even him.
Which was the real problem, because Gunner seemed to know it too.
“You still can’t pull the trigger on me, can you?” Gunner asked softly.
Rocco’s grip tightened around his gun. “Try me.” The words came out rough, but didn’t seem to be convincing enough.
A sad smile spread slowly across Gunner’s face.
“You’re still my brother,” he whispered.
Rocco inhaled sharply through his nose and felt old memories crashing into him hard enough to make his head pound.
Flashes of Gunner covering him during firefights, and dragging him behind cover once after shrapnel tore through the street beside them.
Even Gunner, when he was laughing like the world couldn’t touch them.
All those memories were followed by years of silence, until now.
“Why did you pretend to be dead all this time?” he asked. “Why didn’t you contact me?” Rocco asked suddenly. The words surprised him, and Gunner froze halfway out of the cellar.
“What?” he asked.
“You survived.” Rocco’s voice roughened. “Why the hell didn’t you come find me?” The question cracked through the tension differently than anger had, because underneath all this rage, Rocco genuinely wanted the answer.
Gunner looked stunned for a second, and then bitter. “You think I didn’t try to contact you?” The cabin went still.
Rocco frowned immediately. “Yes,” he breathed. “I would have noticed if you had.”
Gunner laughed harshly. “Hospital records said you got discharged after psych evaluations.” His eyes darkened.
“Then you disappeared.” Rocco’s stomach dropped, because he had disappeared down a bottle of booze.
He was drinking and fighting anyone he could get his hands on.
He avoided everyone, just trying to survive his own damn head.
“I looked for you,” Gunner continued quietly. “For months.” Pain twisted through Rocco’s chest so violently that it nearly took his breath.
“But then, you gave up,” Rocco said. “Because I was a lost cause.”
“No,” Luna said softly. Everybody looked toward her as she stepped out from behind Rocco slowly despite his immediate tension.
“Trauma isolated both of you,” she said carefully. “You’re blaming each other for surviving differently.” Gunner stared at her strangely after that, and it wasn’t hostile this time. He seemed curious about what she was saying.
“You really believe that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed. Thunder cracked violently overhead as rain lashed against the windows harder, and for one dangerous second, the rage in the room eased slightly. It was enough for grief to finally breathe underneath it.
Rocco lowered his gun an inch without meaning to, and Gunner noticed immediately.
“So did she save you?” he asked quietly.
Rocco looked toward Luna, at the woman standing in the middle of chaos, trying to hold broken men together with nothing but stubbornness and heart.
Yeah, she had saved him—more than she even realized.
“She gave me peace,” he admitted. The honesty of it made Luna’s breath hitch softly behind him. Gunner looked wrecked hearing it, and suddenly, Rocco saw the truth clearly for the first time. Gunner didn’t know how to live after the war—not without his unit.
“You could’ve come home too,” Rocco said quietly.
Gunner’s eyes flashed instantly. “There was no home left for me to come back to.” The words came out cracked around the edges—raw and real.
Luna looked heartbroken. Tony looked uncomfortable as hell, and even Luca’s expression softened slightly, because every man in that room understood exactly what Gunner was going through on one level or another.
War changed people permanently; some learned how to live afterward, and some didn’t.
Gunner got left behind emotionally long before anyone realized he was physically alive.
“You need help,” Luna said gently.
That shattered everything that they were working on, and Gunner laughed. “I don’t need a fucking therapist,” he growled. Rocco’s stomach tightened immediately because the shift happened quickly. Gunner’s expression hardened again while something dangerous flickered behind his eyes.
“You think this is fixable?” he asked.
“Nobody’s beyond help,” Luna answered carefully. That seemed to be the wrong answer, and Rocco knew it immediately, because Gunner suddenly looked furious.
“No,” Gunner snapped. “Don’t do that.”
Luna stiffened. “Do what?”
“Look at me like I’m broken,” he said. The room went dead silent, because underneath all the rage and obsession and violence, there it was—shame.
Gunner’s breathing roughened visibly now. “You look at him like he survived,” he said bitterly. “But you look at me like I’m damaged.”
Luna’s face fell immediately. “That’s not what I—”
“Yes, it is,” Gunner shouted, causing her to jump.
Rocco saw it then—Gunner was unraveling, fast and dangerous. Gunner’s grip tightened on his weapon while years of untreated trauma and isolation cracked wide open in real time, and every instinct inside Rocco screamed the same thing—this was about to go very, very bad.
Rocco knew the exact second the situation turned deadly because Gunner’s eyes changed. That was all it took. One second, there was pain in them—grief, even, and the next, rage was there tangled up with years of abandonment and trauma.
“You look at him like he survived,” Gunner said again, voice rough and uneven. “You look at me like I’m damaged.”
Luna opened her mouth immediately. “That isn’t what I meant—”
“Stop trying to fix me!” he shouted. The roar of his voice felt as though it shook the cabin.
Rocco reacted instantly, stepping fully in front of Luna while raising his gun and pointing it at Gunner.
His old friend flinched at the movement—not because he was afraid of Rocco, but because his actions hurt him.
It was like the betrayal hurt more than the gunshot wound ever would.
“I knew that you’d choose her,” he whispered brokenly.
“Gunner,” Rocco said carefully. Tony shifted closer to the wall as Luca’s expression hardened.
Jonesy looked ready to tackle someone, if necessary, but Rocco barely noticed any of them, because all his focus was locked onto Gunner.
And the terrifying thing was that he still knew him well enough to recognize the signs that Gunner wasn’t thinking clearly anymore. He was spiraling.
“You need to put the gun down,” Rocco said quietly.
Gunner laughed harshly. “Or what?” Rocco swallowed hard because this was the nightmare scenario.
Not Gunner attacking, but Gunner unraveling.
The man had combat training, untreated trauma, isolation, obsession, and now emotional collapse, crashing together all at once. One wrong move and somebody was dying.
Thunder exploded overhead violently, and the lights flickered again from the failing generator.
For half a second, the cabin plunged nearly black, and Gunner moved.
Luna gasped behind Rocco as Gunner lunged fully out of the cellar entrance with his weapon raised.
Everything detonated around them, and Rocco reacted on instinct.
He slammed into Gunner hard enough to send both of them crashing into the kitchen table while gunfire exploded deafeningly through the cabin.
Pain burst across Rocco’s shoulder as they hit the floor violently, Gunner snarling beneath him like a feral animal while they fought for control of the weapon.
“Rocco!” Luna shouted. He barely heard her because his training took over completely. He needed to neutralize the threat.
Gunner slammed his head into Rocco’s jaw hard enough to make stars burst across his vision.
“YOU LEFT ME!” Gunner roared. The gun fired again, and the shot tore into the ceiling inches away.
Tony grabbed Gunner’s arm as Luca caught the back of Rocco’s shirt, trying to pull them apart.
Everything became chaos, and underneath it all—there was only grief.
Raw, ugly grief pouring out of Gunner like poison.
“You were supposed to come back!” he screamed. Rocco finally got his hand around the weapon fully and ripped it sideways just as Gunner swung wildly at him again.
Then suddenly, Luna’s voice cut through everything. “STOP!” Everybody froze—even Gunner. Luna stood near the shattered kitchen island, breathing hard, tears streaking down her face while she stared at both of them. She wasn’t afraid. No, she looked heartbroken.
“That’s enough,” she whispered shakily. Rocco’s chest heaved violently while Gunner went still beneath him, and for one terrible second, nobody moved. Gunner looked up at Luna slowly, then toward Rocco, and something inside him finally cracked wide open. Not rage this time, but devastation.
“You were all I had,” he whispered. The words gutted Rocco instantly, because he believed him. God help him, he believed every damn word. Rocco loosened his grip slightly without meaning to, and Gunner seemed to notice immediately.
So did Tony. “Roc,” Tony warned sharply. But Gunner wasn’t ready to fight him anymore. He just looked tired—destroyed even.
“You know what they did after the attack?” Gunner asked quietly.
Rocco’s stomach twisted. “No.”
“They buried us before checking to see if we were still alive,” Gunner whispered.
Silence crashed through the cabin. Luca went pale, and Jonesy muttered a stunned curse.
And suddenly, every missing piece slammed together violently inside Rocco’s head.
Gunner survived. He was wounded and buried under the bodies of his brothers.
He was left there—forgotten. Rocco physically recoiled because the horror of it nearly stopped his breathing.
“I tried to get out,” Gunner whispered. “Nobody came.” Luna covered her mouth shakily, and Rocco felt sick, because this wasn’t just trauma anymore; this was institutional failure. A human being discarded by war, and now all that pain sat bleeding through the cabin floor between them.
Rocco’s vision blurred suddenly, not from pain, but from guilt—pure crushing guilt. “I didn’t know,” he whispered hoarsely.
Gunner laughed weakly beneath him. “Yeah.” His eyes finally met Rocco’s again. “That’s the problem.”
The front cabin window exploded inward, and glass shattered everywhere.
Everybody hit the floor instinctively as a red laser sight cut through the darkness straight across the room.
Rocco’s blood went ice cold because Gunner wasn’t alone after all.
Someone else was with him. The question now was, who?