Page 79 of Beautiful Savage
I try to tell Marisol all this, but my tongue and throat are mutinying, words lining up and tripping over themselves before I get a single syllable out. I want to tell her I'm not going to waste a second, that as soon as I can walk again without using two walls as crutches, I'm going to Daphne's cottage and pounding on the door until she opens it, and I don't care if all of La Sirena is watching.
"Little Shark…"
"Don't Little Shark me." She stands, hands on hips. "She's family now. Yours, which makes her ours. And we don't leave family wondering if we're coming back." Her expression softens slightly. "You killed for her. Now go live for her."
I stand, the blanket falling. My body still aches but the hollowness is worse. The absence of her, the wrongness of being here while she's there. I nod once at Marisol, the brotherhood acknowledgment that needs no words.
She nods back. "Shower. Eat what Sera left. Then go get your girl."
By three o'clock I'm clean, fed, pulling out of the loading dock in my truck. Not the Suburban but my personal vehicle. The dossier fired at twelve-thirty, the switch re-armed for this Tuesday, one week after the deadline the cottage assault stole from us. It's already been live for two and a half hours, nine years of evidence finally public, and I wasn't here to see it land.
I-95 stretches north toward Pristine, toward the cottage where she waits. Every mile closes the distance between us, and my body knows it. My cock stirs at just the thought of seeing her, of having her close enough to touch again. The memory of her hand burns fresh. Not just the contact but the exact pressure, the way her fingers splayed across my thigh, four points of heat through denim and her thumb pressing harder than the rest.
My cock goes fully hard at the memory. I shift in the seat, adjusting myself, but it only makes it worse. That touch was deliberate. Chosen. A woman claiming what she wanted despite everything that had happened.
The speedometer creeps higher without permission. Seventy-five. Eighty. My foot pressing the accelerator like my body's trying to close the distance faster than physics allows. I force myself to ease off. Getting pulled over now would cost me minutes I can't spare. Minutes away from her.
My thigh throbs with phantom heat, and I press my palm against the spot, trying to hold the memory in my skin.
30 - Daphne
Gunner. I have to go to him.
The recognition crystallizes with perfect clarity. The leotard, the dance, all of it building toward the drive south to Miami, to La Sirena, to the man who owns me whether I'm ready to admit it or not.
I start the truck, turn it around, head back north. I need to tell Papa, pack only what matters, drive to La Sirena before I lose my nerve. Before the adrenaline fades and I remember all the reasons this is dangerous.
But when I turn onto our street, my heart stops.
There's a black truck parked at the curb outside our cottage.
I stop in the middle of the street, my heart slamming hard enough to taste copper, the beat of it loud in my fingertips where they grip the steering wheel.
A figure on the porch, just having knocked. Waiting at the door with the patience of a man who's driven a long way for this moment.
Gunner.
He's here. The man who runs security for Miami's most dangerous family is on my father's porch in soft clothes I've never seen. Clean jeans that fit him perfectly, a cotton button-down with sleeves rolled to his forearms, no tactical vest, no visible weapons. He looks like a man who's been cared for, fed, made to sleep by people who love him. His face is clean-shaven, his edges somehow softer without losing their danger. The Delgado family must have put him back together after theoperation, forced him to stop punishing himself long enough to heal.
The front door opens. Nicolas appears in his soft shirt, the cast visible on his arm. My father, broken by Gunner's world, facing the man who broke him.
Gunner speaks first, his voice carrying across the yard: "Mr.Gilles. I'd like to ask your permission to marry your daughter."
My whole body goes hot, then cold, then hot again. The man who commands Miami's underworld is asking my painter father for permission. The words are formal but underneath them runs something rawer. Desperation, maybe, or hope.
Nicolas doesn't answer immediately. He waits with painter's stillness, the cast catching late sun, forcing Gunner to do better than formal. Making him earn what he's asking for.
"I took your daughter on the wrong theory," Gunner continues, his voice flat with hard truth. "The morning I came to your cottage, I'd been building a case against a man named Hallstein for nine years. There was a breach at La Sirena, at the Delgado compound. You were the only civilian on the property. I read your visit as reconnaissance. I read you as a scout for Hallstein."
He pauses, and I see his shoulders tense before he pushes through the harder part: "I had it wrong from day one. You were never the scout. You're a painter. I knew it by day fourteen of the captivity. But I kept your daughter anyway. I didn't tell you because there was no honest way to say it until now."
The final piece lands heaviest: "I'm the reason those men were in your living room. The reason your ribs broke and your arm broke. The reason your daughter knelt in your blood and worried you would die. I was wrong from the beginning. I'm sorry, Mr.Gilles."
Nicolas takes this in with the same stillness he uses when studying a painting, seeing all the layers at once. "I see."
Not absolution. Just acknowledgment of truth received. The cast on his arm catches the light as he shifts slightly.
"So, sir, do I have your permission? I don't deserve her, but I'm asking anyway."
