Page 55 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I almost didn’t hear the sound when it started up ten minutes after that, a faint whirring like a dentist’s drill, and then it took me too long to process why that sound would be emanating from my front stoop.

Moments later, there was a slight thud and then the sound of hard-heeled shoes against the wood floors in my hallway.

Frankie appeared in the doorway flanked by two men I recognized from the night of the San Gennaro party, a short, bearded man and a mammoth man with a face like a poorly chiseled block of granite. The tiny one held a drill in one hand, and Frankie tossed a small metallic object I recognized as a screw in his.

The bastards had taken my goddamn door off its hinges.

I gaped at them furiously, then exploded to my feet and stalked toward them with a finger pointed at them like a loaded gun. “Are youkiddingme? You better put that door back exactly where you found it, and if there isanydamage, yourstronzocapo is paying for it, do you understand me?”

Frankie nodded solemnly, but there was a wicked gleam in his dark eyes that had me stopping in my tracks a few feet from him. “Whatever you say,Donna Elena.”

The big thug took a step toward me. Panic sizzled through me, an electric shock that faintly excited me even as it terrified me. I held my hands up and backed away, but he continued forward with zero expression on his craggy face.

“Do not touch me,” I ordered him imperiously.

He didn’t stop advancing.

I looked over his shoulder at Frankie, who had lost the battle with his smile and was grinning madly at me.

“If he puts one hand on me, I swear to God, I’ll cut it off,” I promised them both.

The short wise guy laughed, then covered it with a cough.

“This is kidnapping!” I snapped as the big guy reached for me, and I realized I was running out of living room and was almost up against the kitchen counter.

Frankie shrugged one shoulder. “I gave you a choice. You just made the wrong decision.”

“You don’t want me anywhere near your precious capo,” I swore darkly. “I’ll kill him for putting my career at risk. I’m serious.”

“I have no doubt you are,” he agreed easily, almost jauntily, enjoying the entire situation way too much. “I’d actually love to see you try.”

Clearly, there was no reasoning with these mindless savages.

So, when the man with the face of a mobster from a classic Hollywood film reached for my wrist, I resorted to the only thing I had left.

My self-defense training.

I brought my captured wrist up as if I was holding a mirror in my palm, which twisted the man’s arm upside down. Then I grabbed his wrist with my opposite hand and wrenched it hard until a bone popped beneath the skin, and his grip loosened as he grunted in pain.

Before he could recover, I leaned back to grab a knife from the block on my kitchen counter and held it up between us.

I was panting hard, the blade shaking in my hand, but somehow my voice was sturdy when I said, “Touch me again, and I will cut you. Now, I’ll go with you but only to give Dante a piece of my mind. Excuse me while I grab my purse. You can get a head start of putting my door back exactly the way you found it.”

The three men all shared a quick look before Frankie tamed his feral grin enough to say, “You got five minutes.”

“I’ll take ten,” I bartered without waiting for him to answer as I dropped the knife and stalked from the room toward my bedroom.

“You don’t want Adriano’s dirty hand on your panties, you best pack a bag,” Frankie called after me.

I shuddered at the thought of those thugs going through my things, so I resolved to pack an extra pair of underwear in my purse just in case, but nothing more.

There was no way I was moving into Dante’s den of iniquity.

“Madonna Santa, that woman’s got balls,” one of the men I didn’t know hooted loudly enough for me to hear in the hallway.

“Wouldn’t want to be the boss,” the other one muttered.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Frankie laughed as the sound of their heavy footfalls sounded behind me, going back down the hall to fix my damn door. “I’m looking forward to the fireworks.”