Page 279 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

And I didn’t care if it was cheesy because it was the truth.

Most of my life, I thought success meant money and a career, that rigid structure and adherence to societal guidelines would make me happy and beloved.

The truth was, the only thing that brought me peace was chaos.

A lot of people would have said loving Dante condemned me to hell. The truth was, loving him saved my life. Because he reminded me what it was like to be alive.

What really mattered.

I pressed our tangled hands to my belly, tucked my chin into his neck to breathe in his lemon grove and ocean brine scent, and enjoyed this moment of tranquility before our new brand of chaos was born.

Watching Elena Lombardi give birth to the children we created together after years of trying and failing was the single most incredible experience of my life.

My woman was a fighter, so even when the babies took twenty-eight hours to enter the world, she didn’t complain. In fact, she took every moment as a gift, her face suffused with gratitude that she could ever have this experience with them and with me. I fed her ice chips, stroked back her sweaty hair, and let her hold my hand to the point of breaking.

Because I felt the same way.

Nothing about this was anything less than perfect.

I’d done a lot in my forty years on the planet.

Gone to the best schools, reinvented myself three times into three very different men, and until then, the greatest thing I’d ever done was love Elena Lombardi.

When those tiny little humans entered the world, screaming at the top of their lungs like the fighters they were born to be, that became the single best accomplishment of my life.

Creating them and giving Elena her dreams of motherhood.

She looked at those dark heads of hair, into those red, scrunched little faces as if the entire universe was embedded in every pore. There was so much awe in her tear-glazed eyes, so much wonder. A blind woman discovering sight, a mute her voice. It was an expression of waiting finally relieved, a miracle she had been waiting for all her life finally actualized in her arms.

In the perfect forms of a tiny boy and girl.

“Ciao, mio piccolo capo e mia piccola donna,” she whispered in a threadbare voice worn with the weight of her emotions. One knuckle reached up to feather against our baby boy’s flushed, silken cheek, and she gasped at the sensation of feeling our son under her hand. “Welcome to this mad, bad world, little bosses. We are so grateful to have you.”

A sob wrapped firm fingers around my throat and throttled me. Instead of trying to find meager words to explain the tumult of emotions rioting through me, I leaned against the side of the bed and carefully wound one arm around my woman, the other gently cupping the head of our newborn son, the fingers extended to brush our daughter’s petal-soft cheek.

“They are so beautiful,” Elena breathed, dazed and awed. “How did we create such perfection?”

My laugh was almost a bark of disbelief. “Lottatrice, you just gave birth to twins, and you look like a goddess. It is no wonder to anyone but you.”

“I’m not perfect,” she murmured as she stared at our children nestled in her arms. “I stopped trying to be a long time ago, and look what it got me.”

She tipped her head up, a sweet, exhausted smile on her face. There was so much love in her eyes, I couldn’t look at her without feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

“A man better than I could have ever dreamed of,” she told me. “And three children when I thought for years I wouldn’t have any.”

I kissed her soft mouth, tasting her joy straight from the source.

A moment later, the door creaked open, and Tore, Mama, and Rora appeared.

“Someone wanted to see their siblings,” Tore explained, holding Mama’s hand as they moved into the room.

“Come meet them,” I encouraged, opening my arm for my thirteen-year-old daughter who stepped into me, leaning over with an expression of awe that almost rivaled her mother’s.

“They’re so beautiful,” she breathed. “And we have one of each.”

Elena and I laughed.

“What do we call them?” she asked as she softly reached out to run a finger over the boy’s silken cheek.