Page 182 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“I would never,” I said, fighting back my smile because fuck, she was captivating.

“Make a choice, Dante. I’m not going to hide out of sight or stay one step behind you. I’m your woman? Then I’ll always stand beside you. I know you think that’s what you want, but that isn’t the world you rule in. Are you really prepared to make me a part of your life in every way?”

“Are you ready to be part of it? There is no going back once you’re Made, Lena.”

“Can women be Made?” Her eyes were wide, not with shock, but with intrigue.

I snorted. “This is the 21stcentury, there are female capos though not many of them. The Cosa Nostra even have a Donna who rules with an iron fist in Chicago.”

“Then Make me, or whatever,” she demanded.

“This is a serious commitment, Elena,” I said, a growling edge to my words because she didn’t seem to understand. “Just being associated with me put you in danger in New York. Gideone di Carlo, a man known as ‘The Butcher,’ approached you. Thomas Kelly abducted you.”

“Please,” she waved her hand through the air in that Italian way and I realized we were speaking Italian again, her voice fluid and lilting. Only two days in her homeland and Elena was already forgetting her diastase for her country. “Seamus abducted me. Don’t kid yourself and think you are the first man to put me in danger. Seamus was ground zero. I grew up knowingexactlywhat the Camorra does in the shadows. You don’t have to shield me from shit, Edward Dante. I’m a big girl. A smart girl. I can make my own decisions and the most important one I’ve ever made in my life was getting on that damn plane with you. I left everything to be yours! So do it. Make me yours and never let me go.”

The edge of desperation in her voice tore through me. I approached her the way I would a startled mustang, gently, hands up and open. “Lena, I won’t leave you. Ever. Even if you stay out of my business.”

She glared at me with those stormy eyes, shifting and swirling like gray clouds into angry formations. “Prove it.”

“I won’t have you goad me into ruining your reputation,” I barked, finally losing my cool.

There was too much.

Marco, Bambi, the di Carlos.

Rocco, Mirabella Ianni, the entire fucking Camorra.

I lost it.

“Fuck my sterling reputation,” she snapped, the flames of my rage catching on her edges and igniting her entire body. “I worked so hard for that, and it got me nowhere. Unhappy and alone. I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. No one but you and the family we love.”

“What about the law? You want law enforcement agencies around the world to know you’re an associate of one of the most notorious mafiosos in America?” I demanded, plucking a lemon from the tree and fisting it tight in my palm. The fruit exploded, pulp running down my fingers. “There goes your legal career.”

“Mafiosos have lawyers,” she retorted mulishly, crossing her arms and bracing her feet like a soldier about to do battle.

My fighter.

Lottatrice mia.

Even angry, I had to admire her. “If you’re at my side, Elena, those bullets people sling at me could end upin you. You want to risk your life to be with me, huh?”

“I’m willing to take a life-altering risk for a life-altering reward,” she told me steadily, her flames cooling to ice-cold surety. “I don’t know what love means to you, but to me, it means loving someone no matter what baggage they come with for as long as they’ll let you love them and as hard as you possibly can. The only risk I fear is one where I lose you. You fell in love with a fighter, Dante. Let mefightwith you.”

We stared at each other under the dappled gold light filtering through the lemon tree branches, the breeze whistling through the leaves, the long grass swaying around our ankles. I could hear both our breaths, harsh and fast with passion.

I wanted to throttle that beautiful long neck for thinking she could get out of loving me alive. I wanted to beg God or whoever might be in charge of fate not to take her from me the way They’d taken my mother. I had seen too clearly what happened to her after being caught up in Noel’s dark world.

I couldn’t fucking bear it if that happened to Elena.

She read my face, eyes tracking every minute expression until finally, she softened, the starch leaking from her mouth on a sigh. She came to me, wrapping her arms around my torso, pressing her cheek to my chest, on top of the cross necklace beneath my shirt, on top of my erratically thudding heart.

“I’m not your mother,” she murmured. “I was born in this world. I might not have liked it as a girl, but now I know it was for a reason. It was so when I grew up and met you, I’d be ready to face the reality of life loving a mafia Don. Iknowwhat to expect, Dante. The assassination attempts in the middle of the night, car chases across Staten Island, kidnappings. I know, and I’m ready. Because between all of the chaos, there’s you. And to me, there’s nothing better in this world thanyou.”

I stared down at her as she held me tight, her face tipped up so her mercurial gray eyes could meet mine. There was so much honesty in her expression. Her heart flayed open and exposed for me.

How many more times would I make her prostrate herself until she proved to me she wanted this?

Wantedme.