Stephanie Tyler - Unbreakable

“You’re living here now?” Gunner asked.

“I’m on vacation,” Drew Landon told him. Landon was the son of a small-time smuggler who’d taken over his father’s business and grown it to epic proportions. He was ruthless and brilliant.

He was a killer, although he made others do his dirty work.

“It’s done?”

“You have to ask?” Gunner handed him the small bag he’d swum with fastened to his waist.

“Yes.”

Gunner looked at his watch. “Three, two, o—”

By the time he’d finished one, the explosion rang out across the ocean. Plumes of smoke rose above the water, although it was impossible to see the burning wreckage of the yacht from here.

Landon nodded, satisfied. “Not sorry to see the asshole go.”

“You’ll leave them alone.”

It was a statement, not a question, and it made Landon bristle. “Is this about them or you?”

“I made the decision, but there’s no reason they should pay for that.”

“They killed Powell.”

Gunner stared Landon down. “I killed my father. Make no mistake about that.”

“You’re a cold fuck, James. Always were.”

“That’s what you like best about me.”

“I was hoping you hadn’t gone soft.” Landon stared at the burning boat in the distance. “You didn’t even give them a chance to get on the life rafts.”

The luxury yacht was named El Coyote, which made Gunner’s job of wiring the boat to blow, with its four passengers trapped inside, not as chilling. Human traffickers didn’t deserve an easy death. “Didn’t think they deserved that.”

Landon stared at him like he was trying to figure something out. When he didn’t, he looked inside the bag Gunner had handed him and rifled through its contents with a nod.

“Welcome back. This one was to get you warmed up.”

“Done. What’s next?” But Gunner knew the drill—jobs interspersed with bouts of drinking, fucking and trying to forget. He’d done it for so long it was like riding a bike. The sick part was that it felt natural. And that’s what scared him the most. The facade of Gunner, the karma he’d adopted had felt good—right, even—but it never felt natural. It was always a game of pretend.

This is you trying to convince yourself that you’re bad, Josie chided in his ear. She wasn’t with him all the time like that, just when he thought about going over to the dark side. And this was about as dark as it got.

He was bad. Look at where he came from.

“Some people are lucky enough to be born into their destiny—you were one of them. Stop trying to throw it all away.” His father’s final words to him before dropping him off at Landon’s place.

Gunner had never asked why before. At first, it was because he hadn’t been allowed to and then because it hadn’t really mattered. It would only make him feel worse, and his goal was not to feel at all.

But this time, he needed to know. He was in it for good. “Why did I kill him?”

“Would you feel better if I said it was because he was a bad man dealing in human trafficking?”

Gunner stared him down. When they’d first met, Gunner was five foot nine and lanky. Within a year, he’d grown taller than Landon. Broader, stronger, at least physically.

It was at that point he’d learned the most important lesson of all. Physical strength was no match for mental strength.

“Fine,” Landon relented. “He screwed me. And if I let that go with a simple warning, I’ll get walked on. You know this business.”

Gunner did. A don’t fuck with me message was the only way. “I want to know the reasons behind every job.”

“I don’t have a partner for a reason.”

“You’ve got one now,” Gunner told him. “If we’re getting into bed, I’m getting in all the goddamned way.”

Landon reached out and touched Gunner’s bare chest. He fixed the necklace after laying his palm over Gunner’s heart. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. You’d better not be screwing with me.”

“I’ve been waiting too.” Waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for everything to be taken away from him. The time was here. And Landon hadn’t answered his question about S8. “They won’t come after me. I made sure of it.”

“You’ll do what I say. Just because I tell you why doesn’t mean you get to say no.” Landon smiled a little. “I’ll leave your precious Section 8 alone as long as they do the same.”

Could Gunner assure him of that? No. But he’d do everything in his power to make sure he and Landon remained off the grid. Even Powell didn’t know much about Landon beyond his last name. The man was a legend, a ghost in a Keyser Soze kind of way. Ever changing.

The fact that Gunner had lived after seeing his face and leaving his payroll made him something of a legend in these circles too. A lot of people thought that James Connor-Powell didn’t exist.

Gunner didn’t let them ever think differently.

“Keep in mind, if you go missing again, I’ll hunt you down. And you’d better pray I find you captured and not running.”

“Understood.”

“I know you hate me, James, but this is who you are. This is your legacy. Embrace it, the way your parents did. You do realize that the only time you get into trouble is when you fight what’s natural to you, right? When you try to break away from your roots, innocent people die.”

Gunner looked down to see the blood running down his hand. He’d probably cut it along the hull of the ship, had been lucky not to attract sharks to him.

He glanced up at Landon. Any more sharks, at least.

He looked back down, watched the blood drip off his fingers onto the sand.

Blood and sand.

That’s all it would be from now on. Blood and sand.

Being inside Gunner’s shop was like taking a bullet every time Avery walked inside. It hurt worse knowing this would be the last time.

Back at the hotel, her suitcase was packed, her ticket booked to some island resort where she could drink and sun and lose herself. Follow her own advice to the others.

Her flight left in two hours and there was no turning back. No reason to, especially now, she thought from where she stood in the center of the room, close to the table where Gunner had tattooed her.

She’d thought about calling Grace. Grace, of all people, knew what Gunner must’ve grown up with. Gunner’s father had taken her in, adopted her and then attempted to destroy her, just because he wanted to see if she could survive.

But she’d tried to talk to him and Gunner hadn’t wanted to listen. If Grace couldn’t have convinced him to stay, to save him from his past, Avery probably shouldn’t have thought she could’ve been the one to do it either.

But she had. Still did.

And you let him go. Again.

“It was for the best,” she said firmly, her hand rubbing the soft leather of his favorite tattoo chair. “It was the right thing to do.”

But a small voice inside her kept telling her she was very wrong.

She loved it here. The closer she’d gotten to Gunner, the more she understood just how much of himself he’d poured into this place. It was apparent in everything, the photos of his art, framed. The meticulous attention to detail in order to make the place look sleek and modern and still inviting. A place that could combine his love of tattooing with a place where he felt comfortable and secure.

It made her sad at just how wired the place was. She hadn’t thought anything of it before, because she’d needed the security measures. She’d thought it was simply a part of his job as a mercenary to have such a wicked system in place.

But all of this ran so much deeper.

She let her fingers trail over the steel breakfast table that somehow never seemed cold or imposing, but rather, masculine, always filled with food. A place to gather.

Gunner had truly left a home—his home—behind. And there was only one reason she could think of that would make a man like Gunner, who wasn’t scared of anyone, do that.

Someone hadn’t just threatened Gunner—they’d threatened S8, and maybe her specifically.

She thought about what Billie said about knowing Gunner was in love with her. If she chose to believe that, she’d know that he would go to the absolute ends of the earth to protect the people he loved.

She hoped it was the truth. Because the alternative, that Gunner had run from her, rejected her because he didn’t want anything to do with S8 or worse—her—was an unbearable thought.

It looked so empty with his things in storage, but she wouldn’t let just anyone touch them, never mind throw them out.

One last look. She’d allow herself that before she left.

He can re-create this somewhere else, she reassured herself. She’d thought about taking a picture, but the reminder would hurt too much. It was the way things had been, not the way they were.

But a not so small part of her had been hoping he’d walk through the front door, telling her he’d made a mistake. That he’d reconsidered.

A knock on the door literally made her start. She turned toward it, had pulled the shade up from the glass to throw more light in, the way he’d liked it. She saw the man from down the street who owned the flower shop.

You’re a moron, she told herself, and waved to Alfred.

“For you, doll-face,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes when she opened the door. “I haven’t seen Gunner around in a while, but I knew I was right about you two being right for each other.”

He motioned to the flowers as he said that last part—could they really be from Gunner? “Thanks, Alfred.”

“No problem. The delivery guy left these behind. Didn’t want to leave them overnight.”

He deposited the beautiful orchid plant in her hands. “Good night, Jolie Blonde.”

She’d gotten rid of the dark hair this morning, gone back to her original blonde color but decided she’d keep it short. It suited her, framed her face.

Of course, the last time she’d looked in the mirror, she’d looked so haunted she’d been forced to turn away from her own reflection. She locked the door with one hand, the other balancing the glass vase, and then walked toward the middle of the shop.

And then she froze. She was inside what could be called one of the safest structures, built to withstand bombs and bullets. From the outside.

But the vase she held in her hands . . . there was nothing in this building that could protect her from that.

She’d accepted the flowers because she knew the man. None of this made sense.

She wasn’t trained in explosives, not until Key had given her the down-and-dirty crash course. She knew things to watch out for—tripwires and the like—knew how to check her room after having been out. They were all vulnerable with Gunner gone, no matter how much he’d wanted the opposite to be true.

The locks had been changed and security-updated. She hadn’t thought a flower delivery would kill her. She stared inside the glass, muted by cellophane wrapping, and she froze in place. Half fear, half survival.

She was alone, holding a bomb that would blow up the second she put it down.

Holding a bomb that was set to blow in ten minutes no matter what, with a note that wasn’t inside an envelope, allowing her easily to read what was written in Gunner’s own handwriting.

Never forget.

Smoke rose from the fire on the half-decimated yacht and covered the beach, thanks to the strong crosswinds. It got in his eyes and throat, and even after Landon left him there, telling him he was a crazy son of a bitch, Gunner stayed.

He inhaled deeply and he was right back in that place again, disoriented, in pain . . . If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the chanting.

He wanted to give up, but he wasn’t built like that, even though he was dying. Everything was hazy when he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw were dark eyes, dark hair. He tried to focus on the face to see if he recognized it, reached out to make contact.

He hadn’t realized he had a woman’s arm in a death grip. She was a stranger, and she didn’t struggle, looked unconcerned and somehow concerned for him at the same time.

“Am I dead?” he asked in a raw voice because he really couldn’t tell. He was floating, suspended weightlessly, suspected that if he was alive, he’d be in excruciating pain.