Page 225 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I brought my Berreta to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Elena made a noise of distress for the first time behind me as his brains blew out the back of his skull across the wall, his prized Titian painting splattered with gray matter.

When I turned to Elena, it was with mild apprehension.

She’d seen me kill in the basement of that house in Brooklyn. Watched me drill three rounds into her father’s head. Witnessed me burn out a man’s eyeball with a blowtorch and a spoon.

But this was different.

This was mafia brutality. An execution not self-defense.

She stared at me with wide eyes, pale as silver dollars in the low light, her eyebrows cut high into her smooth forehead.

“Stai bene, lottatrice?” I asked her softly, moving forward as if toward an anxious colt.

She shivered then rolled back her shoulders, snagging my hand in a tight grip to drag me closer. When I stepped against her, she lunged to her toes and pressed her mouth so hard to mine, I could feel her teeth beneath the cushion of her lips.

When she pulled away, her eyes were dark again, hot like the sky during a summer storm. “You once told me, sometimes the only honor to be had is in revenge.” Her eyes darted quickly over my shoulder to the dead capo and then returned to mine with even greater conviction. “Thank you for killing the man who made my family suffer for so long.”

She kissed me again, this time soft and sensual, sucking my lips, rolling her tongue over mine in a languid glide that made my blood heat. When she pulled away, she cupped my neck, her thumbs on both pulse points.

“I hope you know that since I met you, you’ve been the hero I never knew I needed.”

Her words rocked through me, satisfying some entrenched white knight complex I’d buried deep in the ground of my soul.

I was a bad man with good intentions, but people only ever saw what they wanted to see, and a capo was a villain.

Even Cosima had seen me as one when all I’d wanted to be was her hero.

My whole life, I’d strived for that just as Elena had, to be good and strong, to protect those I loved at all costs, even if my morals didn’t take a traditional bent.

I’d been the hero no one wanted.

Until, now.

And fuck me, it felt good.

So, I kissed my wife again, pouring my love for her into her mouth like water into a vase, hoping to fill her to the brim with it.

And despite everything, I thought it was a fitting wedding night for two villains in love.

We were already on the plane somewhere over the Atlantic when I started to get that feeling.

The one that tightens your entire chest and floods it with acid.

The past twenty-four hours had gone off without a hitch. Rocco and his top capos were killed, Damiano and his best men had swooped in to take their place seamlessly, showing up at their various operations as if they had always worked there. One of Damiano’s men had been shot, but he’d survive, and Damiano was excited in a feral, gleeful way that Napoli was his to rule.

He was filled with ideas and savage with the aggression of a young alpha just come into his own.

Dante and I agreed it would be interesting to see how he fared.

By the time we boarded the private jet to take us to Costa Rica, I was exhausted. I’d help orchestrate a fake wedding, gotten married myself, been in a boat chase of all things, and then shot another man in the chest all in the span of a day and a half.

It was a lot for anyone to handle and I fell asleep standing up while we were waiting to climb the stairs to the plane. Dante had seen me sway, dropped his carry-on to the ground, and caught me before I could go down. He swung me up into his arms and carried me easily up the steps, ignoring my protests. I was only put down in the bedroom at the back of the aircraft and then tucked into bed securely, his face annoyed as if he should have thought to secure shackles to the bed so he could force me to sleep.

It was sweet in Dante’s domineering way.

I’d opened my mouth to argue with him as he pushed my hair from my face, but I fell asleep before I could figure out what to say.