Page 207 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Good luck to us all.

The church was packed to the gills with smartly dressed Neapolitans. Everyone wore black as if it was a funeral and not a celebration, but the women dripped with jewels to show their affluential connections in the mafia, and the men wore sunglasses even though it was a cool, overcast morning and the light inside the church itself was dim.

Tore and I waited in the receiving line to greet the father of the bride, in this case, the uncle.

“Elena,” Rocco said, ignoring Tore even though it was extraordinarily rude and therefore dangerous to do so. “You look exquisite today.”

“Thank you,” I demurred, holding on to Frankie’s arm as if I couldn’t bear to be separated from him.

The truth was, he’d met us at the church with a distinctly distracted aura and wasn’t playing the part of my doting husband very well.

“You will come to the party at my villa after,” Rocco asserted, still holding the hand he’d raised to kiss.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” I gave his palm a squeeze before firmly pulling away from his sweaty grasp. “Frankie and I are taking something of a second honeymoon while we’re here, so we might not stay long.”

Rocco’s beady eyes narrowed.

I smiled placidly at him.

He was smart enough to know Dante wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed being maneuvered into corners, but he wasn’t smart enough to guess at how he might strike back at him.

“You’ll sit behind me during the ceremony,” he announced. “So I can keep an eye on all of you.”

“Va bene,” I agreed easily. “It will be nice to have a front row seat.”

Reluctantly, Rocco gestured for us to move on so he could greet the other attendees in the line. I let out a little breath of relief when we passed into the cool church, my hand clammy on Frankie’s suited arm.

“Tranquilo,Elena,” Frankie soothed in a low murmur as we walked down the flower-studded aisle to the second pew from the front. “Everything will work out.”

I nodded, but my stomach was twisted into so many knots I doubted I’d ever be able to untangle my nerves.

Tore reached over to my lap and grabbed my twisting hands, taking one in his own. He had large hands, the same shape as Sebastian’s.

It comforted me more than I thought it would.

We waited as everyone settled into their seats, and finally, a hush fell over the proceedings.

From an antechamber to the left of the altar, shoes clicked across the marble floor.

A moment later, the groom appeared flanked by his best man, Damiano Vitale, and the priest. He looked ridiculously handsome clad entirely in his requisite black, but the starkness made his skin startlingly pale.

I doubted anyone would notice because a moment later, there was a clamor outside the doors to the church, and then they swung open to reveal the bride escorted by Rocco himself.

She was a vision of frothing lace, the train extending four feet behind her, a traditional handmade veil draped over her head to partially obscure her face and torso. There was a murmur of approval from the guests at her beauty as organ music played powerfully in the background, her steps timed perfectly to the march.

It seemed to take her ages to reach the altar, but maybe that was my own perception, mottled by the way my heart beat too fast and hard in my chest, mocking the rhythm of the wedding song.

When I was a girl, I’d imagined something like this for my wedding. This was long before Seamus and the mafia taught me to hate my own country. Before Christopher made me hate myself enough to think I deserved a small, civil ceremony or just a common-law relationship like I had with Sinclair.

I dreamed of lace and silk, feminine and almost old-fashioned, like the brides in the magazines Mama had from her youth. I wanted everything traditional, from theMillefogliewedding cake to my future husband buying me my bouquet, a custom most modern brides eschewed.

I hadn’t believed in those dreams in so long, they seemed dusty and antiquated when I thought of them then.

Or maybe it was because if I ever married Dante, that wasn’t the kind of wedding we’d have. We had hardly been together long enough to have conversations about such things, but in my heart of hearts, I imagined us eloping to some beautiful foreign land, just the two of us.

Not because I didn’t love my family, but because our relationship was the center of my new universe, the spoke on which my life revolved.

Loving Dante had made me realize how self-centered I’d been, mired in my own bitterness and misery until I didn’t even know how unpleasant I was to be around half the time. He reminded me that life was worth living and love was worth giving.