Page 45 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“First the Basante deal and now this,” I mused, scrubbing a hand over my stubbled jaw. I hadn’t shaved since the day of San Gennaro, and my beard was coming in thick. “Tore was right to hold you back from a massacre when I’m already in the fucking hot seat with the feds, but we do have to strike back.”

Marco, Chen, Adriano, Jaco, and Frankie were quiet as I thought on it, used to giving me my head. None of them, save Jaco and Frankie, had the knack or lust for leadership. Jaco was too hotheaded to be boss, and Frankie hated people too much to deal with them regularly. They were happy to defer to my leadership.

But I took a second to scan their faces, aware as ever that Mason Matlock, still hanging like dried meat in my airplane hangar, had told me there was a mole in my operation.

As much as I didn’t want to think it was one of the men I considered brothers, I knew better than to trust blindly.

“Addie, you feel like having a friendly talk with one of the bartenders at Father Patrick’s? See if we can’t get a beat on what’s going on down there.”

His grin was all big, jagged teeth, his brutish face utterly intimidating. It almost made me smile to think about his fierce love for his massive black mutt, Toro, and his obsession with cannoli, the cream somehow always finding its way onto his shirts.

This was the contrast of all my men, of Tore, and of me.

We were sinners of the highest order, driven to make money, end our rivals, and succeed at almost any cost.

But we were also men.

Men driven by lust and love and loyalty. By our dogs and cannoli and comradery.

This was what a woman like Elena Lombardi was incapable of understanding. That two opposites could coexist in one whole. That you didn’t have to be all or nothing, black or white, good or bad.

Such narrow-minded thinking should have repelled me, but I found myself thinking more and more about how I might change her mind. The idea of corrupting her was heady, as arousing mentally as it was physically.

What might she be like warmed with passion, alight with vengeful anger, so ruthless in her ambition she didn’t give a single fuck about the obstacles in her way.

For the first time since I’d been poisoned, my dick twitched with arousal.

“You’re distracted,” Frankie noted because he knew me better than the rest of my men, and he wasn’t afraid to speak up.

He was originally from Sicily and the very same Cosa Nostra we were currently feuding with, but I had no doubt he wasn’t the traitor. His family had made him seduce and defile a woman in order to bring down a rival family, and he’d ended up falling for her. Now, they lived together in the city and were safeguarded from their past bymyprotection.

“Thinking about the redhead with the legs?” Marco asked with a waggle of his thick brows. “Damn, but I couldn’t look at her the other night without getting a hard-on.”

I was up out of my seat baring my teeth at one of my best soldati before I could curb the impulse. “Stai zitto.” I told him to shut up. “Do not talk about her this way.”

He frowned, eyes darting around the small group of my six most trusted men. “Am I missing something?”

“He wants to fuck her,” Frankie surmised with a slow grin. “I fucking knew it! Lombardi women are your kryptonite, D.”

“I don’t want to fuck her,” I said calmly, tossing my hand as if the idea was garbage I was throwing in the bin. “She wouldn’t know the first thing about taking my cock.”

It was true, in a sense.

They didn’t need to know that I was more than mildly intrigued about teaching her how to please me and herself.

“Leave it to you to have two hot lawyers,” Jaco muttered around his cigarette. “I hope they’re more useful than just being pretty to look at.”

“They are. Yara’s never let us down, and even if Elena wasn’t driven like a fucking race car by the idea of success, she would do anything for her family, and Cosima asked her to take this on…” I trailed off as my mind snagged on the teeth of my words.

And there it was.

That simple.

An idea.

A way to be smarter than those Irish scum and bring them to heel without starting a full-fledged war with them or the pieces of shit di Carlos they seemed to be in bed with.

It stemmed from one basic principle.