Page 221 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

She didn’t even really belongherein Italy.

Elena was a city girl in Chanel suits and bold lipstick. I wanted to give that back to her, and I knew I’d die trying to right enough wrongs to do so, even if it was without me.

“What happens now?” she asked, so trusting when four months ago, she had been so closed off no one could reach her without a fight.

I pulled away enough to look into those gray eyes and say, “Now, we begin our bloody honeymoon.”

We went in the early hours of the morning just before the sun is a thought on the horizon, a smudge of burnt orange lining the horizon. We’d stayed in the cave for another hour because I had to take her again, this time with her arms free so she could touch me too. Instead of theporti di Napoli, we pulled into a private dock owned by Damiano and then took a waiting Fiat toVilla Rosa. Rocco would never dare wage a full-scale effort against the home, as fortified as it was, so we felt safe to reconvene and arm ourselves for battle.

Frankie took out Pietro Cavalli at his mistress’s house in Ravello, killing him clean through the head when he went to open the window, having staked out a neighboring unit’s balcony for just that moment.

Nico took out Paulie Gotti. He paid off the woman tending the front desk, opened the coffin-like lid on the tanning machine, and shot Paulie three times in the gut.

Damiano took out Martinelli on the back patio by old-fashioned strangulation.

There was more.

Nine staunch supporters and higher-ups in Rocco’s organization were all killed to end his reign of tyranny and poor economic success in the Neapolitan Camorra to make room for the return of the Salvatores.

Elena and I went after Rocco himself.

She demanded she be allowed to come with me, and I didn’t want to refuse my bride on her wedding night even though the idea of endangering her still made me sick. The truth was, since I’d told her about women becoming Made just as men did, I’d noticed the mad glint in her eye that implied she wanted that.

Not because she was inherently violent, but because she wanted to be with me and mine more than she wanted anything else. We had become her family, but she wanted to be a part of the Family too.

I would never let her take another life if I could help it.

Her father’s life had been more than enough, even if she wasn’t certain who between us had delivered the killing blow.

It wasn’t that I had some fucked-up Madonna-whore complex where I wouldn’t want her anymore if she became too sinful. It was both simpler and more profound than that.

I didn’t want to corrupt her totally. I didn’t want to eradicate those things I loved about her and those things that made herElena. Her love of justice and her thoughtfulness around morality. I needed those qualities from her as much as she did, and I wouldn’t see them ground to dust under the heel of my violent life.

So, we drove in the Lambo together, a gun on my console beside the gear shift and one in her hand loosely resting on the other side of mine. We both wore black, and it shocked me how goddamn sexy she looked in the absence of color.

And we had a plan.

Rocco’s villa downtown was ridiculously easy to breach. The walls abutted neighboring estates on both sides so whatever security he had in place was accessible at three points. We parked the car in an alley offSpaccanapoliStreet and walked to the neighbor’s house on the left of Rocco’s. The streets were empty but for a drunk man sleeping sprawled across the stoop of an apartment building down the block. No one noticed when we quietly broke into the front door using a lock pick, and no one asleep in the home stirred as we carefully took the stairs up, up to the fourth floor.

Nico knew the house well because he was sleeping with the daughter of the merchant who owned it. He’d told us about the window at the top of the stairs that opened onto a rooftop garden beside Rocco’s own terrace.

A guard was watching that vulnerability, and he was somewhat alert, which meant Rocco was nervous.

Knowing that made me smile as I gestured for Elena to stay down before leaping over the wall and landing with a soft thud against the armed man. We rolled to the ground, and before he could get his bearings, I knocked him out with a clean punch to the temple. His head bounced against the ground, then he lay still.

“Vieni,” I whispered to her.

Come.

She dropped over the wall easily, graceful even in her sneaking.

I led her through the garden, keeping my eye on a guard by the door to the house, half-hidden behind a planted palm.

Elena kicked a pebble that rolled across the tile and then knocked against a planter.

Cazzo.

The guard pushed off the wall, gun raised, eyes sweeping through the jungle of plants. I pushed Elena down with one hand, then lowered to my belly beside her, rolling slightly onto my side to raise my weapon at the right angle.