"You have no idea the kind of wrath you're going to bring down on your newly formed family."
"You're part of the family, Gunner."
"James. My name is James."
"Never to me. I don't know him."
"You're meeting him. This is me, Avery. Gunner was a facade."
Avery blanched and he knew he needed to hurt her, needed to twist the knife, sink it so deep she'd ache if she even started to think about him.
Gunner cocked his head, smirked when he told her, "Your family couldn't beat mine-in the end, it wasn't you or Dare who took out Powell. You needed me. Your own father couldn't do it."
Chapter Eleven.
Avery blinked at him in disbelief for only a second at his callousness at Darius's death. Before she could think, she'd slapped him, twice, hard across his cheek. It didn't wipe the smug, satisfied look off his face, the one that said he knew he'd driven the knife deep.
The one that said he didn't care. But if he had to try this hard, he must care. Must be feeling threatened.
God, she hoped she wasn't wrong, but exhaustion and fear overwhelmed her.
Kidnapping him had been a mistake. She saw that now. Never before had the saying if you love someone, set them free seemed more clear. She grabbed the files, turned away from him and walked out, but not before hearing his soft chuckle behind her.
He thinks he's won. And he's right.
"Told you it wouldn't be easy, sweetheart," Jem said as he ate his lo mein with chopsticks. "You didn't cry in front of him, did you?"
She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips angrily and shook her head.
He tipped the carton toward her. "Want some?"
"Jesus, Jem, how can you eat now, after what he said?"
"Have to keep up my strength to beat some sense into him," he told her. "He didn't mean that."
"How can you tell?"
"Because I'm not Darius's kid. He's playing dirty. Mike told you this would happen."
She turned to stare through the two-way glass, the way she'd been for the past couple of days, refusing to cover her eyes or shut the sound off when things got bad. But everything Jem did to him seemed to make Gunner's resolve not to come back to their side strengthen.
"Let him go," she told Jem, her voice hoarse.
In turn, Jem dropped the container and his legs from the table and stood. "Are you kidding me? First of all, that's like signing our death warrants."
"Won't be the last time, I'm sure. If we're moving ahead with S8, we'll have to expect this. Although not from someone we thought was one of us."
Jem shoved a hand through his hair. "Sweetheart, love's made you blind and stupid. The goddamned way he looked at you when you walked into the room-how could you have missed that?"
He turned and rewound the tape, showed her the moment she hadn't seen, because she'd been too busy worrying about Gunner and how badly he was being hurt.
"He's in love with me," she whispered.
"Right. Now get back out there and make him fucking admit it. Because I can't do that lovey-dovey shit with him. Well, I could, but it might make you jealous."
She sputtered a laugh and it felt good. Maybe she did have Gunner where she needed him to be, in pain and lashing out because he was losing resolve. If he didn't care, he'd be sitting there, stoic, not allowing his emotions to poke through.
Jem caught her by the shoulders then, continuing the pep talk. "You've come this far. Don't back down now. We can't lose him to that man. You wouldn't have let Grace go back to Rip."
"Dare would never have let that happen."
Jem nodded. "I'll do the hard part."
"No. I'll have to do the hard part. He can handle the kind of pain you'll give him."
"But no man can deal with the kind of pain a woman can inflict," Jem finished.
"You're an asshole."
"An asshole who's right." He stared at Gunner through the two-way glass. "He's not going to know what hit him."
She waited another hour, turned the heat up in the room and watched him fall asleep. Then she turned the temperature back down, walked in quietly and poured freezing-cold water over his head to rouse him.
He woke immediately, blinking away the water, baring his teeth. Growling. He looked beautiful. Dangerously so.
"You are really pushing your luck."
"What are you going to do about it, Gunner?"
"I told you, my name is James."
"I'll never call you that."
"You will. And you'd better pray I'm not in front of you, making you say it, Avery."
"It was okay when I yelled your name in my bed, right?" she challenged.
"I don't remember. Guess it didn't mean that much to me."
"Oh bullshit, Gunner." She straddled his lap, pressing herself to his wet, bare chest. He might've been able to control a lot of his behavior, but he couldn't stop biology. His arousal pressed between her legs almost immediately. It was heady to know she still had that effect on him, despite his protests otherwise.
"What don't you get, chere? I was born to do this. Literally, born into this world. It's in my genes. I didn't need much training. Took to it like a duck to water, and I loved it."
"Really? Then why'd you stop?" she challenged.
"Extenuating circumstances."
"Like what? Falling in love?"
He scowled. "Who the hell told you that? I don't fall in love, sweetheart. I like pretty women and lots of sex. If they want to marry me, why the hell not?"
"Then why have three of them left you?"
"Because I can't help it if they think they can change me. What you see is what you get. I thought you realized that, honey, when you let me leave you in the hotel. You let me go," he said hoarsely, and her heart ached.
She'd been right-letting him leave that night had been something she should never have done. The fact that he'd actually admit it gave her more hope than anything, but she didn't show it, simply asked, "What did you expect me to do? Chain you to the bed?"
His gaze told her that he'd hoped she would've tried, but he refused to say anything.
"Forcing you to stay wasn't the answer."
He cocked his head. "What makes this the answer now?"
"Because you keep trying to kill us. Or else you're letting us think you are to try to make me hate you especially."
He started to say something but shut his mouth. She waited for him to deny it. Own it. Something.
Instead, he stared past her shoulder, straight ahead at the wall. She thought about how narrow her escape from the bomb had been. That if the flowers had hit the floor or the ceiling before she'd gotten herself into the steel panic room, she wouldn't be here.
She'd barely gotten the door shut behind her. She hadn't heard as much as she'd felt the vibrations of the bomb. And after finding Billie Jean, she'd been in shock, shivered for hours, unable to come down from the high that kept her alive.
"You want to think you know me. You all do. But that's not who I'm meant to be."
"What are you?"
He brought his gaze back to hers. "I'm a man who kills for a living. I take out bad men for another bad man. It's a dirty business, but it pays well. And I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not."
"We're so alike. You have to know that. We both ran from everything we knew and started over," she told him. "You started again with me. You still can."
"It's too hard," he ground out. "Don't you get it? I've done this before-started over."
"And you got a lot of good things from it."
"That's the problem. It was good. And every time I have to give it up, it's like ripping my goddamned heart out. I won't do it again."
"So you'll just rip mine out instead," she said softly.
"Avery, come on. Just fucking let me go." He jangled the chains.
"And you'll disappear."
"That's the general idea."
She played with the key she wore around her neck. Gunner watched it and she wondered if he'd try to overpower her. If he'd hurt her.
Hasn't he already? "I don't want to let you go. I won't let you go again. Letting you leave my hotel room was a mistake, one I won't make again."
Gunner's eyes flashed. There was anger there, but maybe, just maybe, she spotted a slight bit of relief before he turned away. "You going to keep me tied up forever?"
"If that's what it takes."
"You have no idea what you're doing."
"Then tell me," she implored. "You know, S8 can help."
"Is that what this is about-S8?" His tone was angry. "S8 nearly got me killed. You and your team fucked me over good. I was in it before I knew what happened. So don't talk to me about taking one for the team."
"We're more than that and you know it."
"I know that I like to work alone. I'm built that way."
She grabbed the folder. "All these jobs you've done are just for you?"
"Yes."
"What about Drew Landon?" she asked. "He had nothing to do with this?"
He grimaced.
"He's pulling your strings and you're letting him. And I don't know why." She would push him now, because she did know. "You're not man enough to stand up to him, to tell him no. Does he scare you that much, Gunner? Are you that weak?"
After those words, everything became one big blur.
Gunner wasn't sure what made him angrier-the fact that he was scared of Landon hurting her, or the fact that he'd taken the least weak way out he knew. Avery's face blanched when she realized what was happening, as if she knew she'd gone too far, miscalculated.
It was probably his one and only chance to escape, once he knocked her out and beat the shit out of Jem.
He'd been working on the cuffs for two days. Getting Avery close enough to get a paper clip off the file to fall to the floor had been easier than he'd thought. A gift she hadn't known she'd given him.
And even though he could've gotten out of the cuffs half an hour ago instead of admitting shit better off kept to himself, he hadn't. Now he moved fast, his limbs protesting after being held in one position for too long. Didn't matter, because he wasn't losing the upper hand.
She tried to run from him, but he had her around the waist, then pinned to the steel table close to the double-paned window, aware that the cameras-and Jem-would see all of this. He didn't have much time before the man came in.
His body covered hers, one of her legs curling around his waist. He had to give her credit for trying to control a situation she'd very much lost control of. His hand splayed over her throat even as he pinned her tightly to him.
"You need to forget this. Forget me," he growled, hating the desperation in his voice.
"I'll chase you to the ends of the earth," she told him. Pushed up so her face was so close to his and he leaned in.