Page 149 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I was counting on both to lend themselves to my case.

“The di Carlo brothers are fighting with the deceased Don’sconsiglierefor leadership of the family in the States. We used that to cleave the outfit in half. There only has to be minimal bloodshed. The vast majority of the action will take place in cyberspace.” I gestured to Frankie, who smiled cruelly. “We will attack their accounts, make it seem as if one party is stealing money for themselves. As if the other is siphoning funds to mount an attack on the other. It’s easily done.”

It wasn’t.

Only a man as talented in the dark web as Frankie could make such a plan work, but confidence and ease were key to making the plan seem like a shoo-in success for these lazy, entitled fuckers.

“And here?” Paulie demanded. “You got a plan for Napoli?”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Rocco interjected, his jowls quivering and flushed as anger overtook his better sense. “You come in here like some hotshot when you’ve been gone six years and don’t know a thing about Napoli today? We’re doing just fine here without the Salvatores. Anyone who says different is a lying bastard. Now, you want sanctuary here because you fucked up in New York? I could see fit to grant you that out of the goodness of my fucking heart. But if you want more than a vacation in this town, you remember who is Don here now.Me. As for this half-baked plan? We can talk about it the moment you agree to wed Mirabella Ianni and not one fucking second sooner. You get me, Dante?”

In his lap, Elena stiffened, her eyes flashing like light on the edge of a sharp blade.

“As for Elena,” he continued in a lower register, one hand creeping over her thigh to stroke at the line of her muscle beneath the skirt. “You wanna have her stay with me for a while, I might rethink your options.”

I was the only one who saw the gathering of energy in her long, slim form. She was a woman and a slight one at that, unintimidating despite her height. They never would have suspected what would come next, and honestly, if I’d been a smarter man, I would have stopped her before she could show them the biting edge of her anger.

But I couldn’t resist watching the glory of the moment unravel as Elena Lombardi smoothly pulled the gun from between her thighs and leveled it with two steady hands around the grip at Rocco, right on the plump underbelly of his chin.

Right where he’d leveled a gun at me on the airport tarmac.

Around her, the capos sat frozen for one long second, utterly shocked by her masculine audacity.

“It was so pleasant to meet you, Rocco,” she murmured in low, liquid Italian, her blood-red mouth brushing his cheek as she spoke intimately to him. “Do not ruin it by insulting my people, mmm? I belong with my man as much as he belongs with me. No one will take him from me, not God or the devil himself. Not even you, the mightycapo dei capiof Napoli.”

Rocco stared up at her for an interminable moment, his eyes hot and cold with desire and wrath. He was shocked by his own arousal—to want such a bold woman seemingly went against his nature. He didn’t know, as I did, that he wanted her the way a leech wants a host, to suck her power straight from the source until he was plump with it.

“You dare to talk to me like that?” he asked gruffly, not as authoritatively as he might have liked.

I maintained my slightly slouched posture in my chair because some of the more astute capos were staring at me, but beneath the table, one hand dipped into my pocket around the folding knife I always kept on my person. Rocco had taken my gun, but he’d been too stupid to search for anything else.

“I dare many things,” she admitted in a husky drawl as she drew the gun down his neck, past his chest, to the seat of his pants where she tapped at the bulge there. “Most of which, Don Abruzzi, I do not think you’d like.”

“Try me,” he bit back, his grin feral with rabid lust.

This wasn’t a game he’d played with an attractive woman before, and the perverseness of his nature made her all the more appealing. I knew he was already imagining how he could break her. What she might look like with tears in her eyes as he beat her or fucked her.

A growl built in my chest, fingers tightening around my knife. But Frankie caught my eye and stilled me with a subtle jerk of his chin.

The three of us would be dead if I acted on my jealousy and rage, and that would ruin everything.

“Abruzzi,” Pietro Cavalli snapped, the oldest man at the table taking umbrage with the entire situation. “Release Frankie Amato’s woman and let us get back to business.”

Rocco licked his lips as he took one long last look at Elena’s mouth, then patted her hip to release her from his lap. “Go with the women. I want to speak with your husband and his capo a moment more. But, beautiful, I am very glad you have come to my home. I promise to be a warm host.”

Elena didn’t hesitate. She stood from his lap without ceremony and walked through the doors Mirabella had disappeared through minutes before.

She didn’t even look over her shoulder at me as she went.

It wasn’t only Rocco, the stinkingbastardo, who was aroused by Elena’s display of power, but it was easier for me to move on from it than the slightly panting Neapolitan Don.

Because I knew that the moment we left this place, Elena would be mine to do with as I pleased.

As she pleased.

And suddenly, the idea of her trailing a gun down my body was hotly erotic.

“You heard me, Dante?” Rocco demanded. “I won’t have you thinking you’re the boss when you got no say here, understood?”