Page 151 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Only, Elena wasn’t among them.

Mirabella sat at a small, scarred wood table peeling potatoes with a woman I recognized as her elderly aunt and another younger girl barely out of adolescence.

“Oh,” she said, her mouth a round expression of shock.

I tipped my chin at her, irritated as I’d always been that she was terrified of me simply because of my size and position. Growing up, I’d only ever been kind to Mirabella, if slightly disinterested. She was pretty, with breasts that ripened before the rest of her could catch up, but I’d always found her meek and uninteresting.

“Mira, where is Elena?”

She blinked.

I bit off the end of a sigh. “It’s been a long day. A longfewdays. Please, tell me where Signora Lombardi went off to.”

“The bathroom,” the younger girl said boldly, shooting an annoyed look at Mirabella as if she too found her slightly pathetic. “She needed to touch up her lipstick.”

“Thank you,” I said, even though I was impatient to find my woman and get the hell out of there.

“D-Dante?” Mirabella cried softly as I moved to the door to the hallway.

I hesitated but didn’t turn around.

“I-I don’t want to marry you either,” she had the guts to tell me.

So, I took the time to turn around and catch her wide, frightened gaze. “I can’t say I’m surprised when you can hardly look at me without fainting.”

The younger girl snorted, and Mira’s aunt cuffed her lightly on the back of the head.

“Are you in love with her?” Mira had the surprising audacity to ask. When I didn’t answer, she nodded slightly and looked down at the half-peeled lump of starch in her hand. “Rocco isn’t as dumb as you think he is. Be careful.”

“And you? You can’t have been careful if you remain unmarried all these years later, and Rocco is determined to fob you off on a foreigner he doesn’t even like.”

She flinched slightly, staring at that damned potato like it held the answers to all of life’s questions. “I was meant to be married, but it… it didn’t work out. Now, my uncle is ashamed to have a spinster niece with no prospects. We all have our crosses to bear.”

“You won’t be one of mine,” I promised her without waiting for a response, pushing out the other swinging door into the hall.

I wasn’t willing to leave Elena alone in this viper’s den for any longer than necessary.

My shoes clacked against the burgundy ceramic tile as I stalked down the hall, peering into open archways and behind half-closed doors.

No Elena.

Finally, there was a single locked door at the end of the hall before the stairs. I knew she was behind the wood barricade the way a seer knew what lay behind the opaqueness of a crystal ball. I could feel her.

Without preamble, I pulled the folded knife from my pocket, jerked it open with a flick of my wrist and angled the blade between the door and the wood frame. A moment later, the blade found the edge of the latch mechanism and the door popped open with one thin voiced creak.

Elena didn’t flinch as I appeared in the frame.

Her eyes were pinned on mine in the reflection of the massive, ornate gilded mirror over the sink basin. They were a dense, quilted gray like rolling storm clouds, sparking with crackling lightning that threatened to eviscerate.

Even filled with wrath, Elena was pure beauty.

“Were you going to tell me you were engaged?” she asked in a low, seething voice that slunk toward me like elongating shadows.

I leaned against the doorjamb insolently and crossed my arms as I contemplated the curved edge of my knife. “And you? You’ve never spoken with me about Daniel Sinclair.”

There was a sharp sound as she sucked air between her teeth. I watched as the long line of her body coiled tight with controlled rage.

I settled in, excited about the prospect of watching her rage burst free of its cage.