Page 223 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Scream,” I suggested pleasantly. “I’ll shoot you through the mouth before you can get a single note out of that fat throat.”

“You want to pretend you’re some good guy, Dante?” he snapped, his viciousness coming out in the flush of his face and the gruff hatred in his voice. “You’re no better than me. We’re fuckingcamorristi. We fight each other to get to the top, and we kill those we count as enemies. You’re a murderer and a villain just the same as me.”

“Never said I wasn’t.”

He hesitated, scowling at his inability to rile me. “You got that slut wife of Frankie’s in your bed, don’t you? She make you come here and do this? She got her hands so tight around your balls you—”

I pulled the trigger.

A bullet wedged in his hand where it lay palm down on the desk, clean through the center. The exact same place I loved to plant a kiss on Elena’s hand.

His scream was delayed by his shock, and before he could get more than a note out, I was lunging across the desk, slapping a hand over his gaping maw and my gun to his temple.

I seethed, my breath as hot as fire against his face. “You don’t talk about her. In fact, you shut your mouth unless I ask you a goddamn question, or I’ll kill you right now.”

He warbled against my palm, his face contorted with pain.

There was a jar filled with pens and utensils on the desk. Carefully, I moved my hand from Rocco’s face and plucked a letter opener from the cup.

“Now, tell me who the hell you were plotting with on the phone?”

He glared at me, one small, black eye twitching.

I sighed.

The letter opened went down through the bullet wound in his hand, embedding itself in the wood beneath it.

He howled, but I cut off the noise by shoving my gun in his mouth.

“Who. The. Hell. Were. You. Talking. To?” I growled.

He mumbled something around the gun, but I didn’t remove it.

“I can’t hear you,” I told him calmly.

He tried again, this time louder.

It was pathetic really. Acamorristashould be strong and resilient, unafraid. Death was nothing to us because it was such a frequent bedfellow. It could find us through any means because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, we insulted the wrong man, or our boss got on the wrong side of another capo or rival family. Rocco’s sniveling lack of resolve made me sick.

“I was speaking withla Cosa Nostra,” he mumbled around the gun when I took it slightly out of his mouth. “Agostino di Carlo.”

Fury flashed through me like a flood.

“You were working with the wannabe capo of the New York Cosa Nostra,” I repeated quietly, the words so heavy they fell between us like stones.

“Heisthe capo now. Killed theconsiglieretwo days ago and won the title.”

“Why would you go against your people?” It was almost unheard of for a mafioso to switch clans let alone mafia affiliations entirely. Usually, turncoats like that became dispensable to either side.

“The bastards in Sicily were encroaching on Campania,” he growled, referring to the Camorra territory. “Agostino promised to rein them back in.”

“Sei debole,” I told him flatly.

You are weak.

“Oh, there she is,” Rocco almost purred as his eyes darted from me to the door. “Ciao puttana.”

I pistol whipped him across the face, but he only laughed.