Page 158 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“You don’t need to apologize,” he assured me, stroking one big, strong hand over my head and down my back. “Do you know how good it feels to have you vulnerable in my arms? To know it is a gift you only give to me?”

I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. “I always feel like a burden when I get emotional. It shouldn’t be anyone’s problem but my own.”

He made a pained noise in his throat, then ran his nose from my forehead down the bridge of my own until he reached my mouth where he spoke the words like a secret. “It is aprivilege, Elena, to know you intimately. To know what makes you hurt and what makes you blush. To know what your demons are so I can slay them for you when you don’t have the strength or watch you overcome your own nightmares because I love to watch my fighter conquer everything in her path. It is an honor to know you, and I won’t ever take that for granted.”

I laughed wetly. “How do you always know what to say? Seriously, did you take a class for that?”

“No,” Dante said solemnly, running his rough fingertips over my cheek to collect my tears. One by one, he brought his wet fingers to his mouth and kissed off my tears. “I just know what it’s like to be hated, to feel alone against the world, to feel like a villain. I told you before that we’re not so different.”

“No,” I agreed, rubbing my thumb along the hard cut of his stubbled jaw. “I think we see the world the same way.”

“In black and white?” he teased.

“And red,” I supplied with a smile that broke my face into two clean halves.

“Bene, because you’re about to meet your new family,” he told me after pressing a kiss to my forehead and levering me back into my seat.

“I’ve met Tore before,” I reminded him as he had reminded me earlier that day.

His smile was dark, an expression of ownership. “Yes, but he and our men here haven’t met you as you are now.”

“As yours?”

“Not just as my woman, but theirs. The woman,la Donna, they will be expected to lay down their lives for just as I would,” he said almost casually, factually, as if he wasn’t altering my entire world again. “You aren’t my lawyer anymore, Elena.Tu sei la mia regina.”

You are my queen.

Villa Rosawas nestled at the top of a hill an hour and twenty minutes outside of Naples inParco Regionale Monti Picentininear the small town of Sieti. Lush green mountains dominated the landscape, but the villa itself had a riot of carefully cultivated plants in beautiful bloom even though it was December. I held my breath in awe as we wound up the ribbon of asphalt leading to the house, the drive lined by towering cypress trees.

“It’s like something out of a dream,” I breathed, shocked by how beautiful I found the typical Italian scenery compared to the dingy Naples neighborhood I’d grown up in.

When the house came into view, I gasped a little. It was a traditionalcasali, a farmhouse big enough to host the landlord’s family and the families of the field hands. The large structure was made of off-white stone turned rose gold in the light of the setting sun, the tiled roof red as blood. The arched windows and doorways were covered in creeping bougainvillea and vines so that the structure seemed to have burst from the earth like a plant, something organic and timeless.

I loved it.

It felt like a home at the same time it felt like a palace.

And standing in front of it, in two long rows on either side of the colossal wood front door stood its occupants. I knew from reading books and binge-watchingDownton Abbeywith Beau that this was how 18thcentury servants used to greet their lord and lady on their return to the family estate. Twenty-five people, mostly armed men clothed in black even though it was warm, stood at attention as we pulled to a stop in the circular drive.

“Sei pronto?” Dante asked.

Are you ready?

No.

Not really.

How did one prepare to meet a group of criminals that would suddenly be responsible for keeping you safe? How didImeet men who I’d thought my entire life were the very scum of society and not feel ashamed for the way I’d judged them?

“Stop thinking,cuore mia,” Dante ordered, but there was a gentle humor in his voice as he pulled my gaze from the window to his face. “Embracela dolce vitaand enjoy these moments with me,va bene?”

He collected my hand and planted a kiss on my palm. Without thinking, I curled my fingers over it, protecting it.

“This is my home more than any place has ever been before. I spent almost every summer here as a boy with my mother, Alexander, and Tore, then I lived here for years after she died. It’s my sanctuary, and I hope it will be yours too.”

“I feel like all you ever do is give to me,” I told him quietly, forcing myself to communicate the tangled knot of emotion clogging my throat. “I was meant to help you, and now, you’re only here as a fugitive because of me.”

“Ferma,” he said,stop. “Having to leave the US was always a possibility I planned for, and quite frankly, I could have left Addie, Frankie, Marco, Chen, and Jacopo to save you back in Brooklyn, but I chose not to. We all make choices, Lena, don’t let them haunt you when what’s done is done.”