Page 170 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Umberto’s lips twisted tighter, a valiant effort to cap the bubbling emotions bursting inside him.

Elena sighed, leaning forward earnestly. “You don’t seem very attached to your sight, Signore Arno.”

Taking her cue, I sparked the torch in my hand, the hiss of flame loud in the quiet room.

Umberto swallowed thickly. “My sister deserves to be happy.”

“Yes,” my woman agreed easily. “Everyone does. Whether or not that’s feasible is another case entirely. Have you thought that perhaps Dante doesn’t want to marry your sister either?”

“So he can marry you?” he snarled in heavily accented English. “Some American whore?”

Elena didn’t say a word as I grabbed Umberto by the throat and squeezed, his face plumping, reddening like an overripe fruit on the vine about to burst.

“Say another word against her, and I’ll take your eyesandyour balls.”

He wheezed painfully after I abruptly released him and stepped back.

“This isn’t about me,” Elena continued calmly as if I hadn’t just strangled a man for insulting her, but I could see the way her thighs squeezed together, and I wondered with sudden heat if she liked my heathen aggression. “This is about Mirabella. You want her to be happy. Maybe, Dante can make that happen.”

Umberto scowled fiercely at her for a long moment before something in his twisted mouth softened just slightly. His eyes flickered to mine in a gesture that was all question marks and reluctant hope.

“Forsa,” I drawled,maybe. I grabbed the spoon from the floor and used the serrated edge to scrape some dried blood off my palm. “But thisbastardotried to kill me. I don’t take that lightly. He endangered you,lottatrice, and that means he needs to be punished properly.”

“So take his eyes,” Elena said with a little shrug, but there was that calculating gleam in her eyes.

I felt a surge of pride watching her, sitting prim like aprincipessawith the mind of a fighter, using her skills as a lawyer to manipulate this man into giving us what we wanted.

This was the magic of my woman. Her mind was just as arousing as her gorgeous body.

“Wait,” Umberto asked. “Cazzo. Fine. What did you have in mind?”

Elena looked up at me then, wickedness tucked between her full, smiling lips and trust shining from those gray eyes. “I’m sure Dante has a plan.”

At that moment, I didn’t think I’d ever felt such profound love and gratitude for another human being. It was heady to know that a woman as smart and capable, as careful and thoughtful as Elena trusted me wholeheartedly. I’d dragged her into the underworld, and instead of being resentful, regretful, even scared, she was boldly walking at my side, holding my hand in support and offering her love without judgment.

Fuck me.

I’d never been a lucky man.

A serial-killing psychopath for a father. My mother stolen too young. My own brother turned against me.

I had been fundamentally alone most of my life before Tore took me under his wing, but even then, he had his own kids and preoccupations.

I’d never had someone who was just wholly and happilymine.

For the first time ever, I wanted to eschew my duty and bury myself in her warmth. Fuck her for hours until she was swollen and soaked, every inch of her possessed by every inch of me.

Instead, I shot her a burning look that promised I’d fuck her into oblivion at the next chance and turned back to Umberto.

“I have the beginnings of a plan,” I agreed. “And if you don’t like it, you can find out what it’s like to be a man without balls.”

I was the kind of little girl who didn’t dream about the future so much as I planned for it. No one had ever told me I deserved the best or that anything close to that was attainable, but I’d had this deep-seated conviction that if I worked hard, anything could happen. I could get out of the stinking hell that was Naples, move to some civilized city like London, or Toronto, or New York, and become the kind of woman I read about in books and saw in magazines.

That seed was planted in the fertile soil of my heart, but no matter how I watered it and tended to it by achieving dream after dream—a long-term partner in Daniel, a job at a top law firm, a beautiful home I could be proud of—that seed didn’t sprout into more.

For years, I’d wondered if something was wrong with me. If I lacked the inherent ability to be satisfied with life. With myself. I was intrigued by everything I thought I wanted but satisfied with nothing. My happiness was a façade I grew to wear so well, I forgot the mechanics of what went on beneath the mask.

And now I knew.