Page 206 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Which was why I was taking the choice from her.

I thought of her upstairs in a guest room asleep beside her sister. She hadn’t thought anything of it when Cosima suggested the girls’ night, even though she made sure to fuck me in the lemon grove before she disappeared for the night. She had no idea I’d suggested the idea to Cosima so we could adhere to Italian tradition.

The groom should never see the bride the night before the wedding.

“The moment you think you know Elena, she surprises you with more,” I told Frankie. “Think about how much she’s changed since we first met her. I shouldn’t say changed, really, because it was already all there beneath the ice and scar tissue. No matter how angry she might be with me, she’ll do what needs to be done when we return home.”

“Cosima did the same thing to me,” Alexander confessed, staring into the bowl of his glass as if memories were playing out on a screen there. “I never knew what love was until her.”

“And Elena will never know it again without me,” I asserted. “That’s why I’m doing this. It might not have happened tomorrow or this year or even the next, but the truth is, none of that fucking matters. Elena became mine the day she got on the plane, and I am never going to give her back.”

I told myself that again and again because honestly, I wasn’t sure how my fighter was going to take the second half of the plan I’d put in place.

She was independent and strong-willed, and she was also the kind of woman who had been planning the events of her entire life since she was a little girl.

This was definitely not something she could have predicted.

But there was no other option.

If I wanted to stay alive and keep her out of jail, Elena Lombardi would have to become my wife.

The Sunday before Christmas dawned bright and cold, a wind rushing in off the bay that rattled the lemon trees and swirled the garbage in the streets of Naples like snow in a globe. I got ready for the wedding alone in the room I shared with Dante, my lover gone long before I woke up to ready himself for the day.

There was a lot to be done if we were going to pull this thing off.

I strapped my thigh holster to my leg under the red wrap dress I wore, secure in the fact I knew how to yield the weapon if I needed to. I took extra time getting ready, making my lips as red as my dress, curling my hair until it fell in a mess of Chianti-colored waves around my breasts. It was a bold color to wear to a wedding, but I wanted Rocco to see me in the crowd.

I wanted him to think he was safe.

My sink was stained with dye from the night before that I carefully rinsed out before I went downstairs to meet Tore.

He was dressed in a beautifully tailored suit looking every inch the mafia boss as he extended his arm for me to take. When I did, his other hand found my forearm and squeezed.

“I am sorry you had to find out about Caprice and me this way.” His eyes were as golden as the gilt scrolling on the shrine to Apollo in theDuomo di Napoli. As golden as his daughter’s. “I want you to understand, I have loved your mother for most of my life, and I do not see that changing.”

“Have you told her that?” I wondered.

His lips thinned. “She knows. She says there is too much water under this bridge.”

“Bridges exist to straddle the void,” I countered. “Maybe you just need to build a new one.”

There was a ghost of a smile in his short beard. “I have your approval then.”

“If you need it,” I offered, then shrugged. “Though I won’t ask for yours with Dante.”

“You don’t need it,” he assured.

I raised an eyebrow, inferring that I felt the same about him. “Maybe a few months ago, I would have judged you and Mama more harshly, but I’m in no place to do so now. If Dante wanted to drag me into the bowels of hell, I’d go with him gladly. Love makes animals of us all, all instinct and heart with no capacity for reason. I won’t judge you for loving her or the things you’ve done in service of that love, just as I wouldn’t judge a wolf for slaughtering sheep or a bear for protecting its cubs. It’s just in our nature.”

“Eloquently said.” He patted my hand, then led me out the doors to his waiting Maserati.

“Are you ready for today?” he queried once we were settled into the low yellow car I remembered from my childhood, and the engine roared into wakefulness.

“I’ll end the day as Dante’s mistress, or we all end it free. Either way, I’ll go down fighting.”

He grinned as he gunned the car, speeding down the driveway with a roar of the engine like a trumpet announcing our call to war.

“In bocca al lupo a tutti noi,” he called over the cacophony.