Page 187 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Nothing,” I assured.

Too quickly, too cheaply.

“Do I need to pull over this car and force you to tell me what’s causing that haunted look in your eyes?” he demanded.

“No,” I responded, almost mulishly, annoyed that he was so perceptive.

“Then tell me, now. And, Lena, if you even think about lying to me or passing whatever it is off as non-trivial, I will not be responsible for my reaction,capisci?”

I sighed, but it released none of my tension. I couldn’t look at him as I started to speak, my eyes pinned to the blurred scenery, the rose gold coin of the sun descending into the cerulean sea.

“When I was young, I was with a man named Christopher. I guess you could say he was my boyfriend because even when I was thirteen, and everything really started between us, that’s what I called him. My boyfriend.” I never called anyone that again after him. It was why Daniel had always been my partner, why I now thought of Dante as my man. Boyfriend had been tarnished with so many other things in that man’s wake. “He was Seamus’s friend from theUniversita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. We all grew up with him around the house, and he was kind to us all. He took a special interest in me when I took English tutoring with him. He said he liked my mind and the way I looked, that my red hair reminded him of home.”

My sigh fogged up the window, obscuring the beauty beyond it.

Beside me, Dante emanated a dark, pulsating energy as if he was an imploding star about to transform into a black hole.

“We started to date secretly when I was thirteen, but we came out to my parents three years later. I wasn’t that young, and it wasn’t that unheard of in Naples for a sixteen-year-old to have a relationship with an older man.” This was true. It was a staple of our culture, specifically ofla mafiaand its propensity for arranged marriages. “Seamus and Mama were happy for me.”

“He raped you,” Dante ground out, his voice savaged by fury.

I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat. “Not at first, not for a long time. He started to take a fancy to Giselle. I think he was a pedophile, really, and I was getting old for him by the time I turned eighteen. He started to see her secretly behind all of our backs. I guess he didn’t want me to be suspicious so he told me nasty things about her, how she was less than me, how she was always trying to make me out to be sometroia. I was surprised when I found them together one day behind the house kissing in the shade of a Cyprus tree.”

I could still remember the hot knife of betrayal sliding into my back.

“It didn’t occur to me that Giselle wasn’t very willing. She was young and guileless. She didn’t know how to say no to him. Cosima found out somehow and sent Giselle to Paris to study so she was free of him.”

“But not you,” Dante concluded.

I shot him a look, noting how white his knuckles were around the wheel, how fast the car took each curving corner.

I didn’t tell him to slow down. The air was filled with an anger so hot it felt as if we had already wrecked the car, the frame on fire and filling rapidly with acrid smoke.

“Not me,” I agreed, staring down at my hands. “He asked Mama if I could move in with him, and she agreed. He was still the love of my life even though he’d wanted Giselle. I was so desperate for love and attention that I didn’t care I was in second place. But he was angry after she left, and he started to take that out on me. He used me for a few months, so hard I had bruises but always where only he could see.”

“How did you get away?” His teeth clipped as he snapped the words between them.

“He asked me to bring him a beer one day. Some imported Englishmerdahe brought with him everywhere. He’d already fucked me once that day and told me he was the only one who would ever love me, who would ever accept me for being the pathetic bitch we both knew I was.”

I shrugged, but the words were an echo my mind never forgot.

“I guess something just clicked because I don’t even remember what I was thinking. I broke the beer bottle against the edge of the table and held it up to his neck. I told him I was leaving, and if he followed, I’d tell Mama about how he hurt me, and I’d tell the police. He threatened me, but I think he believed I’d come back at some point, that he’d succeeded in brainwashing me.”

“You didn’t go back.”

“No. Two weeks later, Cosima told me she had the money to send Mama and me to America. I avoided him until then, and then we just took off. I didn’t see him again for four years.”

“Where is he now?” he asked, his voice a silk ribbon, but lethal, a noose and a trap.

“Relax, Dante, he showed up in New York almost two years ago looking for Giselle. I found him assaulting her and beat him up pretty soundly.” I couldn’t help the smugness in my voice. “That’s why I’d been taking self-defense classes for years, just in case my wildest dreams came true and I ever got to face him again. He’s in jail now, serving time for aggravated assault and stalking. He won’t get out for years.”

Silence descended between us.

It felt like I should say more, maybe apologize for keeping it from him, but my pride rebelled against the idea. I didn’t owe him every secret of my past, every mark and bruise I’d ever gotten relived just so I could share it with him.

The quiet was so thick it vibrated the space around us.

His breath was too slow, too controlled through his massive chest. The face I loved for his expressiveness, the creases cut into the skin beside his eyes and mouth that showed his thirty-five years beautifully had turned to unmarked stone.