Page 278 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

Our babies were always meant to be ours, but like their dad and mum, they were stubborn, and they took their time coming to us.

I didn’t care about the heartaches we’d endured to get to this point. Dante had taught me that every single decision in your life was leading to something, was leading to exactly where you needed to be at the moment.

And this moment, for us, was a miracle.

“Good luck topping this birthday present next year,cuore mia,” Dante quipped after we’d both composed ourselves and just sat quietly rocking back and forth in our babies’ room.

I laughed a little wetly as I tipped my head back to look up at his handsome face and scratch my nails down his bristly jaw. “I had to try to top yours when you made Rora our daughter legally, but I think this one might take the cake.”

“I’m okay with that. More than okay.” He dipped down to kiss me, our lips salty from tears, his soft and firm as they parted my mouth for his tongue. He kissed me sweetly, but thoroughly, until I ached for him. “Do you know how much I love you,lottatrice mia?”

“Yes,” I said because I did.

Because Dante proved to me every single day that I was worthy of love, and he showed me just how much he had of that to give not only to me but also to Aurora and our entire family.

“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked him.

His face creased into that small, closed-mouth smile that was just for me. It wasn’t his flashy grin or showstopper smile, just this intimate little curl that he only gave to me.

“Yes,” he echoed. “Enough to change your entire life for me.”

“I changed it for the best thing that ever happened to me,” I corrected. “It wasn’t as horrible as you make it sound.”

“I would live with the guilt if everything hadn’t worked out as well as it did,” he admitted as he palmed my still-flat belly. “Ghorbani & Lombardi has been massively successful, so I didn’t completely ruin your dreams of being a lawyer.”

I laughed. “Not at all. I never thought I’d be famous for representing criminals and mobsters, but I can’t complain. Most of them are good men.”

This was true.

I never took a case if I truly felt the person a harmful criminal, but most of the time, I had no problem taking on clients in the mafia or other gangs. I’d recently represented the Prez of The Fallen MC in New York on trial for manslaughter and got him off on self-defense.

Maybe I wasn’t the hero I’d always thought I’d be in the courtroom, but I represented the kind of people I’d come to know and love. The kind of person I’d become. The anti-hero. And that was infinitely more interesting than anything I could have dreamed up in my youth.

“They’ll be proud to have such a gladiator for a mother,” he told me, splaying his big hand entirely over the width of my belly. “Just like Rora is.”

“She will be over the moon about the babies.”

“Certo, she might not leave your side again.”

I hoped not.

We still took Rora to therapy six years on from her mother’s death, which helped, but we’d also given her a cell phone so she could keep in touch with us all the time. It helped alleviate her worries, and it was a simple fix.

Often, she would just text us one word. A word herzioSebastian had taught her.

Insieme.

Together.

The same word that had banded my siblings and me together as kids.

“I was thinking Chiara or Georgina for girls,” I suggested, thinking of Dante’s mother and Bambi. “And maybe Amadeo or Jacopo for boys.”

If it was possible, Dante’s eyes grew even warmer on my face. “Bellissima. Those are perfect.”

“For the record, capo, you have nothing to feel guilty for, ever. You gave me the only two things I ever really wanted.” I threaded our fingers together on my belly. “True love and a family.”

“Cheesy,” he teased, and then he kissed me.