Page 202 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

It is a privilege to know you intimately. It is an honor to know you and I won’t ever take that for granted.

Tu sei la mia regina. You are my queen.

My heart burned and twisted like warped metal in the fire. It was pure agony to think of everything Dante and I had been through and wonder if it was tainted by this new information. But I leaned into it, diving deeper, because I knew I would hate myself if I let go of this man without a fight.

He’d fought for me, too.

From the moment he’d met me, he’d fought to scale my icy walls, to break down my barriers not only so that he could know me, love me, but so that I could learn to love myself.

He’d killed for me, become a fugitive to save me from my father, and he’d given me his family so I’d have love and protection, a community, when I hadn’t allowed myself to have one before.

I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face.

It was possible I’d overreacted.

But it was shocking and disheartening to feel like the only idiot with their head in the sand. To imagine everyone talking about Tore and Caprice, about Dante and Cosima behind my back.

That wasn’t really Dante’s fault, though.

Of course, Cosima would want to tell me herself, and she hadn’t been able to until now, even though she’d had plenty of time before I took Dante’s case to fess up. I understood, even if I didn’t like it, that before then, I had no real reason to know because Dante and Tore were nothing to me.

No reason beyond the fact that I was Cosima’s sister.

I wanted that to be enough, but when had it ever been?

Giselle was my sister, and she’d cheated on me with my ex-partner.

Sebastian was my brother, and he’d only just confessed his longtime love for not only a married woman but also a man.

Caprice was my mother, but she’d never told me about Salvatore.

We were as fractured as a windshield after a crash, only held together by a sheer feat of engineering that was the Italian family ideal. Stay together at all costs. Pretend to be happy when your neighbors ask how you are, even if your life at home is nightmarish.

It was pathetic.

Until now—until these two secrets that had exploded in my face and threatened to eviscerate my soul—Dante hadn’t lied to me. He’d let me see exactly who he was, what he did, and who he wanted.

Me.

It was impossible to think back to our time in New York without seeing how he had set his sights on me, hunting me down with single minded determination until I was his.

Because he so clearly wanted to be mine.

I felt shaky, every nerve flayed and raw as I took a scalpel to myself and dissected why this had hurt so badly, why it had felt for a moment like I was dying.

I’d always felt I wasn’t good enough.

Maybe I was born with that inside me, but Christopher watered it for years then Daniel, unwittingly, cultivated it when he left me so callously for my little sister. My self-loathing and doubt had grown into something monstrous, blocking out all other light.

Until Dante.

I don’t want to be loved.

Let me love you anyway.

There were tears on my cheeks and the imprint of agony inside my chest, but I dragged in a deep breath of stale church air and felt a little better.

My knees cracked loudly as I stood, anonnaglaring at me as if I disturbed her purposely. I ignored her glare as I made my way into the separate chamber that housed the ruins of the old temple to Apollo. My skin sizzled as I stepped into the hallowed space, my soul connecting with the pagan god where it hadn’t with the Christian deity.