Page 188 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Dante, it was a long time ago,” I whispered into that clogged air. “You don’t have to be so angry for me. I’m fine.”

“Fine,” he spit, eyes darting to me with unrestrained fury. “You’refine. Elena, you’ve been living like a fucking ascetic for years because thiscazzo di Merdarobbed you of whatever joy you might have been able to scrounge up in your childhood. Is it his voice you hear in your head telling you that you’ll never be worthy of love? That you won’t ever be better than your sister, good enough to warrant true love and actual respect from a man?”

He was shaking, physically trembling with the force of his rage. I didn’t know what to do sitting there, watching him come apart at the seams with emotion stronger than I’d ever seen before.

“Jail isn’t enough for thisbrutto figlio di putanna,” he growled so harshly it must have hurt his throat. “He deserved to be killed slowly, death by a thousand fucking paper cuts. I’ll take his eyes and his balls, his fingernails, then each section of his fingers, knuckle by knuckle, finger by fucking finger. I’ll pour acid in his wounds until he can’t scream anymore, and then, because he won’t need it ever again, I’ll rip out his goddamn motherfucking throat.”

“I don’t need you to do that,” I told him calmly, trying to use the coolness of my voice to offset the heat in his.

I wanted to soothe him, but there was no comforting a cornered beast, and my history had done just that, caging him in bars of iron wrath.

“You do!” he shouted, startling me even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. “Don’t you fucking see, Lena? You do need me to do this for you so that you’ll finally understand what this man tried to make you blind to.”

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived in Sorrento until Dante stopped at a hairpin turn descending from the Sorrentine Peninsula to the ocean at its feet. He gunned the car passed a trio of Vespas and parked in a tiny space before a stone balustrade overlooking the sea.

He got out of the car and stalked around the hood to my door, opening it and tugging me out before I could gather my senses. After practically dragging me to the stone wall, he lifted me up and crowded me, stepping between my legs to take my face in his hands.

His expression was wretched, a battlefield after war, battle torn and weary, filled with a bitter rage.

It made something in my heart sing a strange song.

“You need me to kill this man to prove to you that you are worthy of love. You are worthy of passion. You are worthy of respect. In all my life of hardships, Elena Lombardi, you are the truest thing that has ever been worth fighting for. You deserve the loyalty and love you give to everyone but yourself, and now I know, thisfiglio di canemade you feel like a beggar when you are a motherfucking queen.”

Tears clogged my throat and blurred his face. “I don’t know if killing him will make that all go away.”

“It’s a start,” he promised, his hands so gentle on my cheeks even though the rest of his body still quaked with bottled-up fury. “All your life, men have hurt you. I didn’t understand until now. Seamus, Christopher, Daniel. None of them showed you how goddamn tragically beautiful you are, Elena. But I will. I’ll prove it to you every single day until I die,mi senti?”

Do you hear me?

I did.

His words scalded my ears, scoured down my throat, and burned in my gut likegrappa. I felt them, saw them, heard them in every way language could be understood.

He grabbed my hand and pressed it hard over his madly beating heart. “This beats foryou. It bleedsfor you. I am yours. Your sword, your champion, your lover, and your home. You don’t understand this yet, but I will never hurt you, Elena. I only ever hurt for you because fuck me, you’ve been through too much already. I will only ever hurt those who hurt you because I love you, and I won’t let anyone else ever get away with putting pain in your heart without consequences.Mi senti?”

Do you hear me?

“Yes,” I said through the silent tears that ruined my makeup. “I hear you, Dante.”

“I love you, Elena,” he said, the words like four punches straight to my chest, breaking through the cage of my ribs to directly impact with my tender, eager heart. “Mi senti?”

“Ti sento,” I promised him, licking the tears from my mouth. “I hear you.”

“You believe me?”

A sob wedged in my throat and moved painfully in my mouth where it exploded from my lips and fell between us, wet and ugly. “Yes,” I hiccoughed, clutching at his chest with one hand and his hand on my cheek with the other. At that moment, I couldn’t fathom him ever letting me go. “I believe you.”

He stared at me like some avenging angel, mad with powerful, vengeful rage, but slowly, breath by breath, he softened until he finally sagged against me, forehead to forehead.

“Cuore mia, my heart breaks for you,” he whispered raggedly before kissing the tears from my cheeks. “I won’t let yours break again.”

“Okay,” I whispered through my strangled throat. “Okay, Dante.”

“Thank you for telling me. I know it was hard.”

“It wasn’t, actually,” I confessed. “I feel better than I have in years. I’ll have to fire my therapist if we ever get back to New York.”

He laughed because he knew I wanted him to. “Mia bella lottatrice,” he murmured like a prayer across my lips before he kissed me.