He drew in a deep breath. Tightened his arms around her. “I should have known my father was watching, and he wouldn’t leave things alone. He might not be able to get to me, but he got to Jaimie’s mom. He killed her. Stabbed her sixteen times. He made sure she felt every single stab wound and took a long time to die. Jaimie found her. She was such a little thing, even then in her teens. It was heartbreaking and my fault. Had I killed him, Jaimie would still have her mother. I just—didn’t.”
Rory shook her head, but she didn’t interrupt him. She waited for him to continue. Instinctively, she knew there was more.
“I told you I spent a lot of time studying the birds and connecting with them, learning about them. It wasn’t just that it was a hobby, something to pass the time, but I felt an affinity with them, especially the raptors. I didn’t want to think I’d inherited anythingfrom my father, especially his ability to kill other human beings, but I always knew I was capable. When we were little kids, Marietta and I would talk about it, how we wanted him dead. She said she couldn’t do it. I knew I could.”
Rory stirred then. He didn’t allow her to lift her head away from his chest. That didn’t prevent her reaction. “Being able to kill another human being doesn’t make you like him, Gideon. He obviously took joy in seeing others in pain. He liked to torture men, women and children. Even animals. That’s not you. I can see inside of you. That was never you. You might kill when you need to, or when justice is involved, but you don’t torture for the sake of gaining pleasure the way he did. You aren’t anything like him.”
“I have predatory instincts.”
“Perhaps you do. I’ve sensed the hunter in you. That makes you good at your job. To do whatever it is you do, I would think you would need those instincts.”
“I hunted him and I killed him. My own father, Rory. I didn’t hesitate. He was celebrating with his buddies, and I killed them too. They were like him, torturing families because the rent wasn’t paid on time or some other misdemeanor. I think I might have gone a little crazy, because I went to the house of their boss. I was covered in blood. I still slipped past the guards and found him in his garden having coffee looking smug. He didn’t look so smug when I finished talking to him. I told him if he tried to come after me or any of the kids on the street with me, I’d take out his family and his men, that he’d never be able to find me. I made him believe me. I told him I just wanted to be left alone and then told him to clean up the mess so the cops wouldn’t be looking for me. He did.”
After a few moments, Rory stirred, and this time, he allowed her to tip her head back. Once again, her vivid green eyes collided with his.
“I imagine I would have done the same under the circumstances, Gideon.” She narrowed her gaze. “How did you manage to slip past his guards?”
His Rory. He should have known she would ask for those details, not how he killed. “I told you, when I was little and I wanted to get away from him, I would hide, or try to. In my mind, I disappear. I practiced disappearing in the shadows. If I was against a wall, I would tell myself I was part of the wall. Whatever was there. I started noticing that Marietta couldn’t always see me right away. Eventually, I got better and better at hiding myself from everyone. I knew it would be useful, and eventually, I practiced all the time. I still do, although I think it’s automatic now.”
Gideon had deliberately brought up his ability to cloak himself against walls, hoping to trigger Rory’s memory of when she was young and she’d saved Rose and Ivy from being captured or killed by hiding their presence. He could hide himself from others, but he couldn’t hide his team members. That talent was extraordinary. Whitney had something very special right in front of him when Rory was a child, and he hadn’t recognized it. Whitney had enhanced Gideon’s talent, but Gideon still wasn’t able to shield his teammates from enemies.
Rory’s lashes fluttered. Long and thick, each time Gideon looked at those lashes up close, where he could see the shade of red tipping the ends, his heart performed strange somersaults in his chest.
“Did he leave you alone?”
“He did. For a while.” He’d promised her the truth, but he didn’t want to look into her eyes any longer while he relayed any more of his sins to her. She saw too much of him. It was strange that she could see into those vulnerable places, when he was around his GhostWalker brothers and sisters, and had been most of his life, yet they hadn’t seen inside him—not the way she did.
Once more, he palmed the back of her head and urged her to lay her face against his chest. She didn’t fight his command. She laid her ear over his heart, but not before she pressed a kiss there first. His heart jumped. Clenched. He couldn’t lose her. He had to find a way to win her back.
“His name was Elio Barone, and he kept claiming more and more territory, which meant there was always a bloody war with other rival families, who weren’t nearly as brutal as he was. He ordered drive-by shootings in neighborhoods and would burn businesses to the ground to prove the other families couldn’t take care of their people. His enforcers had been trained by my father, and they were vile men. They used machetes to hack up families. They rammed big trucks into cars coming home from work or school.”
Deep inside him, that black shadow—which was so dense he sometimes thought it had taken over not just his soul but his entire being—darkened and spread again until he was choking on it. He felt his throat close, as it did so many times in his sleep when he awoke sweating and tangled in his sheets, unable to breathe.
He buried his face in Rory’s neck and inhaled her fresh, clean scent. She should have smelled like the bar, but her skin gave off a subtle fragrance of lavender and citrus, soothing him.
“I believe just meeting you, Rory, saved my life. Just knowing you’re in the world.”
Her fist bunched in his hair and then stroked caresses into his scalp. “Don’t say that, Gideon.”
For the first time, there was a small tremor in her voice. A hint of fear, of trepidation, and more knots in his gut formed and tightened. He could face bullets and torture. He wasn’t so certain he could face losing her again after the very real hope of having her back.
“I swore I’d give you the truth no matter what it cost me, Red.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about us.”
She whispered her confession against his heart, her breath warm through the material of his shirt. He felt the heat of her breath on his skin, branding his muscles and bones as if she could brand him.
“I feel like such a coward after hearing what you’ve been through, but...” She trailed off.
“We’ll talk about it,” Gideon said. “I should have talked about everything with you. I should have given you these things about me before I even tried to hook you in close. I was afraid you wouldn’t even take a chance with me. I’ve got so much violence inside. It comes easily to me, and you’re soft inside. I thought if you knew the real me, you’d run away so fast, I’d never be able to find you and explain.”
He kept her there on his lap, his arms tight, when he sensed she was thinking of pulling away from him. He needed her to stay when he told her what happened next. “Just settle for a couple more minutes, Rory. There’s so much more, but this is themorethat could have been prevented if I had just followed through and done what I should have. Sometimes I have an intuition or premonition, not even that exactly. It’s more of a very strong gut feeling that I need to take action. When I was a kid, because that feeling involved violence, I refused to act on it. I didn’t want to be anything like my father. I abhorred anything in me that had to do with violence, afraid it made me like him. That particular sensation was very strong and would trigger flashbacks of the horrific, brutal things I’d seen him do.”
“That would be natural, Gideon.”
He stroked her hair. He loved that mass of cherry-colored silk. The soft richness of it. The color. The wild, untamed riot of waves and curls that seemed to drive her crazy but made him want to slam her up against the nearest wall and claim her for his own.
“I suppose so, but back then, I rejected anything that in any wayconnected me to my father. I should have known Elio Barone would eventually come back into my life. He was a greedy man and lived for power. He had such a thirst to be the man everyone feared. Even as a kid, I knew that about him. I could read it when I spoke to him. He was evil. I saw it in his eyes. His soul was completely rotted through, just like my father’s was. Even back then, when I was a kid, I came to the conclusion that evil men surrounded themselves with evil men. They find others they can corrupt.”
