32. Sal

The guards were never expectingus.

That much is absolutely clear.

We wipe them out in about ten seconds. I hate to admit it, but Liam's plan isn't a terrible one.

And it fucking worked.

What none of us expected, however, is to see two women hop out of an extremely beat up Ford F-150.

One of whom is the woman that I love more than anything in the world.

Gia.

She looks terrifyingly thin.

God. Has she been eating? What the fuck has the Irish fuck been trying to feed her? I'm about to round on him to yell at him, but I can't tear my gaze away from her.

I hear Liam dismount his ATV, and Elio follows.

"Gia," Elio calls. "Are you hurt?"

She snaps back in Italian. She says she's okay. She's not hurt. She's fine and she would appreciate not being treated like a child.

All I can do is watch her perfect lips wrap around each word.

I want to run to her so badly. I want to gather her in my arms. I want to kiss her and make sure that she never, ever has to worry about anything ever again.

The whole world feels frozen around us.

Until gunshots once again break out, and we hear shouting coming up the road.

"Fuck," Elio says, ducking down. "We need to split up. Irish, you come with me. Grab the girl and let's go. Sal, take Gia and get the fuck out of here," he shouts. "We'll meet back at the airstrip."

The airstrip is about ten miles back down the road.

I don't question him. I just obey.

I grab Gia by the waist, hauling her up on the ATV. I seat her in front of me. I put the helmet on her head, not bothering to be delicate about it.

The ATV roars to life, and I hit the throttle.

We scream away. While the trail flies by us, my mind is swirling through all of the dozens of things that I want to say.

There aren't enough words in my mind to describe how I feel right now.

Seeing Gia alive? Whole? Fine? It's a huge relief. When I first saw her pop out of that truck, I had never been more relieved in my entire life.

I've also never been angrier.

She looks like hell. She got kidnapped. Twice. By two different, very dangerous, people.

I want to tell her how I feel about her. I want to tell her everything…

The ATV jerks, tossing us both sideways. I hold Gia, trying to keep us both on the stupid thing.

"Fuck," I mutter.

It's blown a tire.

I hit the brake before it can throw both of us off, and I grab Gia. She pulls off the helmet. "Stop manhandling me, asshole!"

"Come with me," I say, grabbing her hand.

"Sal…"

But she doesn't take her hand away from mine.

Vaguely, I remember that we passed some horse stalls down the road. I pray that we're close enough to get there…

I smell them before I see them. "Bingo," I mutter.

Gia tenses. "You can't be serious."

"Why?"

"I'm not supposed to ride a horse when I'm…"

She pauses.

She looks up at me.

I know what she's about to say, but she doesn't say it.

Fine.

"You can ride a horse while pregnant, Gia," I murmur to her. "You were a champion equestrian in high school. Remember?"

Her eyes widen, but I don't take the bait, instead, I grab her and pull her forward. "It's the only way out."

Gia looks at me for a minute longer, then nods.

Twenty minutes later and we're riding a horse down the trail toward the airstrip, where Elio and the jet are waiting. The threat of retaliation from Benicio Souza is very real. He's luckily out of town right now, so the challenge is not the man itself, but the three hundred or so men in his private militia that he's left behind.

And the fact that he appears to have some kind of burning grudge against Liam and the Irish that surpasses even my dislike of the Irish.

The urgency is there. But as long as there's no one actively pursuing us, we can afford to be slow and steady and careful.

This all factors into the horse I chose, the pace we set, and how firmly I have my hand wrapped around Gia's waist.

I went for a chestnut horse. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it seemed the calmest one of the bunch, which is pretty fucking important at the moment. I'm well aware that a fall for Gia could risk both of them, so I try not to push the horse past anything faster than a trot.

We also don't have a saddle. And the sketchiest halter that I've ever seen.

But the horse can take a trail that the ATV couldn't. The horse, also, is apparently a very intelligent creature, and seems to know the way east.

The way back to the airstrip.

"So how do you know how to ride a horse," Gia asks.

"It's the one thing Caterina and I wanted to learn how to do. That was different than Marco and Dino," I clarify.

"The girl I was with is Dino's baby mamma," Gia murmurs.

"No shit?"

"No," she whispers.

We lapse into silence. I can't hear anything behind us, other than the jungle creaking and moving through its' day. I assume that Liam and Elio can take care of the people coming from wherever they were keeping her.

But Gia is with me.

And even though this is very, very wrong, it's hard for me to not feel like it's very, very right.

"I know about the baby, Gia," I finally say.

In front of me, she twitches. My arm tightens around her waist.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Don't ask me that," she whispers. "Please Sal. Don't ask me…"

"Are you going to go back to him?"

"Who?"

"Liam."

"I don't… I don't know," Gia says.

I've never once in my life heard Gia sound so unsure.

"Do you care about him?"

"No," she answers quickly.

"So then why did you do it?"

"Because, Sal, I had to," Gia says.

The horse flicks its ears back, like it's listening to our conversation.

"Explain to me how you had to," I grit out.

"He fucking kidnapped me. I wasn't going to escape Greenland on my own. And, if Elio came for me, he was going to start a war. Against the Irish, who have the most foot soldiers out of any of the gangs we know," she barks at me. "I wasn't going to have you die just because I was stupid enough to get kidnapped!"

"You weren't worried about me…"

"Yes I fucking was, Sal!"

The genuine fear in her voice echoes, falling off of the leaves of the forest around us like rain.

"I was terrified. If there was a war, do you think that everyone I love would have made it out okay? Do you think that you and your brothers, and your sister, and my brother, and our nieces and nephews, all would have fucking survived? I've lost my parents. I've lost aunts and uncles and cousins. I can't and I won't fucking lose you, Sal. Not like that. Not in some kind of a war that's being fought over me, and absolutely not when it's well within my power to prevent it. So you can just fuck right off with all your dramatic bullshit, okay?"

I snort. "Dramatic bullshit?"

"Yes, Sal. That's what it's called when you're not being practical or logical or…"

"How the fuck is it practical to say that the woman I… that you are going to marry another man!"

"You don't get any say in that…"

"Gia. You are carrying my goddamn baby!"

"And if I didn't want to have the baby then I wouldn't!"

"Of course, but you are! And if you have the baby and you let another man raise him, don't you think that it's not fair to me? To rob me of the chance to be a father? A hus…" I stop at that.

We won't get to that.

Gia doesn't respond.

The horse continues to clop down the trail.

Neither one of talks as the trail eventually widens back into the road. There's no one on it.

"Are the other two Elio and Dino?"

I shake my head. "Elio and Liam." She must not have heard Elio yelling orders earlier.

Gia tenses.

"Liam was the one who came to get Elio and me. You were taken from his custody, and he didn't have the resources to come get you. He showed up at Elio's house…"

"And you were there?"

"Yes," I confirm, aware that if she's in front of me she can't see me nod. "Caterina brought me back."

"Did she have the twins?"

"Yes."

"And everyone's okay?"

"The twins have a set of lungs on them like you would not believe."

Gia gives the tiniest chuckle at that. "That was me. Our mom joked that I screamed loud enough for the two of us and Elio was the silence I lacked."

"They're fine, Gia. Luna misses you."

She tenses again. "Fuck me, Sal. Why did you have to say that?"

"Because it's true."

"But when you stay stuff like that…"

"What, Gia? It reminds you that people love you? That they care about you and miss you? That you're more than just someone who's useful?"

"No," Gia mutters. "It just makes me feel like shit."

I stop.

We manage to get to the air strip without incident. The horse, luckily, seems to know the way home, and after Gia and I slide down off of its back, it gives us a little shake of its head and plods back the way it came.

Gia still isn't speaking to me.

The plane is open, and we hop on. Minutes later, Elio, Liam, and the woman get on. Gia immediately whisks the woman into the airplane's back room, locking all of us out.

We stare at the door while the pilot boots the plane up.

Elio turns to Liam. "What can we expect now that we've taken her back."

"I think the bigger issue is probably the other woman, who looks suspiciously like Marisol, Benicio's daughter."

"Fuck me," I say, looking at the door.

Liam shrugs. "An eye for an eye. Isn't that how it works?"

The plane's engines roar, and we start to taxi down the runway.

Elio sighs. "But since we're all in this together now, it seems appropriate to make a truce, no?"

Liam nods. "The enemy of my enemy," he sticks his hand out. Elio shakes it.

I don't bother.

The plane climbs in the sky, and I settle back in my seat.

We have Gia.

I can figure the rest out.

* * *

Back at Elio's house,both women shower. Caterina cries. Luna is thrilled to have her Zia back.

Finally, Gia retires to the room we used to share together. When I go in to bring her some food, I find that she's dead asleep in the bed.

I would love to watch her, but that would be too fucking weird, even for me.

So, instead, I leave.

There's a shape huddled next to the door. I turn to address it as I step forward.

"She's sleeping," I say, coming out of the room.

Liam's lurking outside. He leans against the wall like some kind of parody of a Marlboro man.

I shut the door, clearly closing him out of the room that holds the mother of my child.

And my unborn child.

"She loves you, you know," Liam whispers.

I look over at him.

"When I saw you two looking at each other in the forest, I knew. I think I knew long before that, if I'm bein' honest with you," Liam says slowly.

"And are we honest with each other?"

He looks me up and down. "You love her too, don't you?"

Honesty. "Yes," I say clearly. "More than anything in the world."

He nods.

"She wouldn't tell me about the baby. She just… kept throwing up her guts. Over and over. Every day. When I took her to my doctor in Dublin, he said something was… a condition she had. He knew it right away though," Liam adds. "Something to do with extra bad morning sickness."

My eyes shut. "You don't have to make me feel terrible for not being there for her. I already feel like shit," I snap.

"I'm no' tryin' to do that, Sal."

It's the first time he's said my name.

Liam sighs and peels himself off of the wall. "I need to marry to solidify my title as the leader of the gang. It's in the rules of the organization. Signed, sealed, delivered."

I glance up at him.

He makes it sound like he hasn't married Gia…

Yet.

"I need to marry. But I'll no' have a wife who hates me. Call me an idiot if ye must, but like fuck am I going to marry another man's bride," Liam says with a little shrug of his shoulders.

"Irish…"

"And I'll be havin' you use my name," he says, glaring at me.

I shake my head. "Liam."

"I'm no' a bad man, Sal. And I'm certainly no' going to stand in the way of what is between you two."

"Why?"

The question has multiple layers. Why not stand between us? Why not take what you want in order to run your organization? Why back off now?

"Part of it? Whatever's going on between you is white hot, and if I'm in the middle of it, I'm gonna just end up burned," he says with a wry grin.

Liam claps a hand on my back. "When she wakes, make it right," he murmurs.

"If you think I can make Gia do anything, then you're fucking crazier than I am."

He laughs. "Gia won't be forced. But I've a feeling that you can offer her something no man can. And that, my friend, is going to lure her more than anything I could ever offer."

With that, Liam MacAntyre walks out of the hall. I hear him say goodbye to Elio.

Beyond that, I don't fucking care.

I turn to the door.

My hand shakes when it's on the handle. I turn it, the door squeaking lightly on its hinges.

I take one deep breath. I push the door open.

Gia is everything.

She's my queen.

She's my future.

She's the love of my life.

If I have to spend every day for the rest of my life making that future happen for us, I will.

And that future starts now.

As long asI can convince her.