Page 17 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“I’m very interested in the right kind of men,” I corrected him in a throatier voice than usual, rough from my coughing fit. “Men of honor and substance. It’s not my fault they’re a rare breed.”

“I wonder if you’d give any man the chance to prove his worth?” Dante mused.

The words weren’t unkind, but they hurt all the same. Late at night lying in the big bed I’d once shared with him, I’d wondered if I hadn’t given Daniel a proper chance to be himself with me, to prove that whatever more he was could be beautiful to me.

I’d shut him down because I’d been afraid.

I could admit it now, after months of reluctant therapy.

His sexual proclivities had broken open old scar tissue from Christopher’s abuse in my youth, and like a coward, I’d let my fear rule me and ruin my relationship with the best man I’d ever known.

I didn’t say any of that to the mafioso sitting across from me as if we were at his house instead of mine. Something about his easy manner seemed to exacerbate every single one of my flaws. I felt naked and raw under that olive-black gaze, and I didn’t like it at all.

So, I tipped my chin and slanted him a cool look. “Nothing worth having is ever easy.”

An abrupt laugh erupted from his broad chest. “Oh yes, Elena, with this, I can agree.”

I plucked up a piece of silken sashimi and let it melt on my tongue before I set my chopsticks down and fixed him with a cool, professional look. “As long as you’re here, we should run through tomorrow’s proceedings. The probation officer will be at your address at ten in the morning to fit you with your ankle monitor and set up the system. Unless you have approval from their office to attend doctor’s appointments, church, therapy, or something equally pragmatic and important to your health, you will be restricted to your home.”

He shrugged one thick shoulder and took a long sip of his wine. I watched his throat contract as he swallowed, wondering at the density of muscles in his neck deepening over his shoulders. I was an avid runner who never missed a workout, so I knew he must have worked every day to maintain such an outrageously fit physique.

“It is okay to admire me.” His voice bumped into my thoughts, upending a flush that spilled like the wine in his glass all the way from my cheeks to my breasts. “You are a Lombardi woman, and as such, I’m certain you have a deep appreciation for beauty.”

“This is why I dislike Italian men. You’re so arrogant.”

“Is it arrogance if it is based in fact? Why fake humility? Would you rather I deceive you than speak the truth?” he countered calmly.

I felt as if I was being cross-examined at court, his eyes searching for cracks in my façade, his mind carefully calculating every word out of my mouth. It infuriated me that he thought he had the right to interrogate me. That he thought he had a right to know me.

No one did.

I was an island, and I liked it that way.

“First of all,Edward, I was not admiring your so-called beauty. You may make a certain type of woman swoon, but I prefer my men un-Made and considerably more sophisticated.”

“You have such hatred for the Camorra, yet your sisters both seem unaffected by this,” he mused, prodding at me in that way I was learning he had, trying to get into every nook and cranny of my being.

His words triggered my first horrific memory of the Camorra and their presence in our lives.

My siblings were too young to remember the depravity of our childhood with any kind of true clarity. Our trip to Puglia when the twins were only babes and Giselle a dreamy toddler was remembered only for the turbulent private plane we took to get there.

They didn’t remember, as I did, three years older than them, the horror that had led us to flee our home in Naples for the sun-beaten shores of the south.

I could still remember the taste of steel in my mouth, the feel of the gun heavy and cold on my tongue like some macabre phallus. How tears had burned the backs of my eyes like a lighter held to my optic nerves and how I’d refused to let them fall, holding my breath and clenching my fists until I was more stone than flesh.

I was six years old when Seamus and Mama returned home one day to find asoldatoin the local Camorra holding me against his body with his gun lodged in my mouth.

It wasn’t the first time Seamus had owed money, but it was the first time they’d threatened his children. Giselle was only four, the twins nearly three years old. For the first time in my memory, Mama had usurped Seamus’s will, and the next day, after cleaning out our savings to pay his debts, we’d moved to Puglia to stay with Mama’s cousins.

It didn’t last, of course, but our time spent on the island was one of the only happy eras of my childhood.

“You might be poetic about crime, but I’ve lived it enough to see the horrors,” I finally said, dragging my gaze back into the present and pinning him with my judgmental gaze. “You might have no problem beating a man or threatening his family if he goes against you, but I’ve been the daughter of that man, and I’ve been that child who was threatened. How you can see anything worth admiring in that, I have no clue.”

“You are substituting a part for the whole. The actions of one bad man do not extend to every other man in his community,” he argued.

I finished my wine, surprised by how quickly I’d downed the lovely vintage.

“Are you suggesting you aren’t a bad man,capo?” I asked sweetly.