Page 272 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Which was why Dante eventually agreed with my plan to parlay with Gideone di Carlo, the new Don of the Cosa Nostra.

If we wanted to adopt Rora, it was the only way to do it.

Technically, Gideone had legal rights to be her guardian as he was her only surviving blood relative. If we wanted to make her ours, we needed him to surrender those rights.

Surprisingly, Gideone had reached out to me after the massacre at Bambi’s house. The crime was all over the news, throwing Dante and me into the spotlight again in a way I could have done without. Thankfully, it was obvious because of Bambi’s restraining order against Agostino and her records at the hospital proving his abuse that he was to blame for the circumstances of Jacopo’s and Bambi’s deaths.

We were free from blame legally, but not morally.

All three of us had been shell-shocked by that night.

Dante couldn’t sleep most nights for the guilt he felt about not realizing their situation sooner, for not pressing Jacopo about his strange behavior or forcing Bambi and Aurora to live at his place.

Aurora, of course, was the most deeply affected by it. She couldn’t stand to be away from Dante or me at all, so we had to work our lives around one of us being with her at all times for the first month she lived with us. She didn’t trust strangers, and she didn’t want to go back to school where she felt exposed and vulnerable. Sometimes, at home, when I couldn’t find her, she was hiding in a cabinet in the kitchen or the bathroom. She told me it made her feel safe.

She broke my heart every single day.

Thankfully, we took her to see the best childhood psychologist in Manhattan, an old friend of Dante’s from his days at Cambridge, and within four months of bi-weekly therapy, Aurora was starting to be more like her old self again. She’d even agreed to have a sleepover at Mama’s house last weekend.

It was a process, and I knew it would be a long one.

I hadn’t had the same childhood trauma, but I’d had my own, and it had taken me twenty-seven years to get over the brunt of it.

I hoped that the love and affection of the rest of her family would go a long way to healing her much more quickly than I had.

Which brought us back to the little café Yara had first taken me to nearly a year ago to tell me her own mafia story.

I was close with the shop owners now, Andrea and his wife, Guilia, and they greeted us with big smiles and kisses as we turned up that Friday morning to meet with Giuseppe.

“I still don’t like that he had your number at all,” Dante grumped as we accepted our little white cups of thick espresso from Andrea and moved to one of the three tiny iron tables on the sidewalk.

I rolled my eyes because we had been over this one hundred times. “It was my work number, Capo, which has since been terminated because I don’t work for Fields, Harding & Griffith anymore.”

He didn’t say anything, his silence churlish.

Again, I couldn’t blame him.

We’d healed a lot in the past six months, but losing two of his dearest friends had made Dante moodier than usual. He was such an alpha, such a protector that it killed him believing he had let Bambi and Jaco down.

“Hey.” I reached across the table to grab his hand and pressed a kiss to its center the way he did with me. “Ti amo, Capo. Everything is going to be okay.”

“Sorry to interrupt.”

I looked up and over to see Gideone di Carlo standing a few feet away. I’d forgotten how handsome he was and also how unlike his deceased brother he looked. I’d been worried about seeing the ghost of Agostino, how it might trigger the feeling of that gun in my mouth again, of the terror I felt fighting for my life.

He was dark-haired and green-eyed, broad and burly, while his brother had been fair-haired and dark-eyed, tall but lean. And there in the swampy depths of those green eyes was something almost human.

There had been nothing human about Agostino.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, standing up to gesture to the chair across from us. “Please sit down.”

Eyes on Dante, who was coiled like a predator about to pounce, Gideone took the offered seat, keeping almost a yard of space between himself and the table.

This was how two alpha lions met without violence. Lots of space and a woman between them.

“Let’s get straight to it,” Dante declared, pulling papers out of the bag he had at his feet. “We want to adopt Aurora. Technically, you have a right to object to that as her blood uncle. We’re hoping you have some decency in you where your brother did not and sign your rights away.”

Gideone blinked at him.