Page 276 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

So, I waited two weeks and told him on his fortieth birthday.

“Svegliati, cuore mio,” I murmured as I got back into bed that morning, straddling his prone hips so I could press a kiss to his face. “Wake up, my love.”

“Mmm, I’m an old man now,” he grumbled without opening his eyes. “I need my rest.”

I laughed against his stubbled cheek. “Too old to open presents?”

Immediately, those olive-black eyes I adored snapped open. “I could wake up for presents.”

I rolled my eyes as if I wasn’t almost jumping out of my skin with excitement. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Well, where is it,lottatrice? Or…” He waggled his brows and sat up to push his face into the valley between my breasts. “Are you my present?”

I screeched with laughter as he held my breasts together and motorboated me. “Okay, enough! I’m going to have to sit over there if you can’t take control yourself.”

“That might be best,” he admitted, eyes sparkling like an entire universe built just for me.

I scooted over to the other side of the bed and retrieved the small box I’d wrapped. He took it eagerly, making love bubble up in my chest. He was a killer, a mafia Don, the scariest man I’d ever known. But to me, he was just this, boyish and charming and so handsome it hurt.

He frowned when he opened it to reveal a key.

“Grazie?” he asked.

Thank you?

“It opens something in the house,” I told him, getting out of bed and grabbing my robe in case Rora was already awake. “I wonder if you can find it.”

His eyes lit with the challenge, and he took my hand to practically drag me out of the room. I laughed as he searched, trying to open drawers in the office and the kitchen.

When he got to the second floor, my stomach erupted with butterflies.

I held my breath as he tried to open the door to my old room, the one I’d first stayed in when he’d blackmailed me into moving in.

It didn’t open.

Dante turned to look at me with raised brows before he slid the key into the lock and turned.

I followed him as he stepped inside, then came to an abrupt stop when he did. I slid between his body and the wall so I could look at his face as he took in what I’d done with the room.

It was a nursery now.

The walls were the same light gray like we were inside a cloud and the furniture made to match the theme. The cribs were white with thick cushions, the rocking chair in the corner a dark gray boucle, the carpet beneath that a silvery blue. Giselle had even come over to paint clouds on the ceiling, a beautifully detailed mural of a twilight sky dotted with fat clouds and the first twinkling stars that came out at night.

It was like being on the inside of a tiny universe.

But I wasn’t arrested by the room.

I was fascinated by the look on my husband’s face.

He was a big man, a brutish one in build and sometimes, in action, but nothing about him was intimidating at that moment, nothing spoke of violence or harshness in any form.

The planes of his strong face were soaked in the dawn sunlight pouring in through the windows, highlighting the soft, open set of his mouth as if he had opened it to say something but had immediately forgotten the words. His brows were heavy, almost compressed as if in confusion, but it was his eyes that stole what breath was left in my lungs.

Because they were lacquered with tears that brimmed precariously in the troughs of his lower lids, catching in his thick lashes.

“Elena,” he called roughly, clearing his throat but otherwise still as a statue.

“Yes, Capo.”