Page 6 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I wanted it for thestatus.

My therapist told me there was a name for what I had, that furious drive for perfection that had marked my entire life.

Kodawari, the Japanese word for the relentless pursuit of perfection.

I didn’t so much want tobeperfect—which I was aware enough to know was an impossibility—as I wanted toseemperfect.

I’d been close, once.

As little as a year ago, I’d had my job at one of the top five law firms in the city and a gorgeous brownstone with my fiancé, a man both beautiful and successful in his own right.

We were going to get married, adopt a baby.

Adopt, because life saw fit to deal me another tragic blow and take my fertility from me early.

Still, it would have been a picture-perfect life.

My Daniel Sinclair and I.

After the life I’d been born into and excruciatingly endured in Naples, I’d deserved it.

Somehow, now, the brownstone was considerably less lovely when I was the only one living in the rambling, big home. Somehow, the job was a lot less satisfying without my companion at my side encouraging me in my climb up the legal profession ladder.

And it was all because of one person.

Quite simply, the bane of my entire life.

My other sister, Giselle.

Fury savaged my insides, blazing along the familiar path it always ran through my system, obliterating everything else until I was scorched earth, incapable of harboring any other emotion.

“Elena?” Dante’s voice pulled me back. “My comment was merely an observation, not an insult. I apologize if I caused offense.”

I brushed away the idea with a casual wave of my hand and smiled, knowing it was thin and transparent on my face despite my best efforts.

“Please, call me Ms. Lombardi. Cosima is my sister, but she’s also my best friend. Any comparison to her is a compliment in my eyes,” I explained breezily. “But that’s beside the point right now, Mr. Salvatore. What is important right now is the fact that you are being charged on three accounts of RICO, and today, we are fighting to get you out on bail. They’re going to argue you are a flight risk and that with your underground connections, you could easily find a way to leave the country. This is our one chance to keep you out of prison until and if you are eventually tried and found guilty. You really should have listened to our advice and dressed a little more saint and a little less sinner.”

A smooth smile spread across his face, crinkling his eyes and alerting me to the fact he had square white teeth behind those ruddy lips.

It annoyed me that I found him so attractive.

No, it did more than that.

It felt like blasphemy after the oath I’d made to avoid beautiful men in the wake of my fiancé leaving me. Sacrilegious that I might ever find a mafia man, once the tormenters of my youth, even marginally desirable.

“As a six-foot-five, two hundred and thirty-pound Italianate-looking man, did I ever have a chance of appearing in any way less than I do now? In my experience, it is riskier to assume a person’s ignorance than it is to play into their desires. The world, Ms. Lombardi,wantsme to be their villain. So, I will give them one they can truly sink their teeth into.” He punctuated his tidy speech with a wink.

This time, it was Yara who let out a thin chuckle, much to my surprise. “Of course, I should have known you would want to play that angle.”

He inclined his head with gracious solemnity, but there was mischief in his ink-dark eyes.

“You’re assuming the public loves a bad boy more than a good man,” I argued. It was my job to look at both sides, but also because I’d always been inclined to play the Devil’s advocate. “You expect the public to cheer for a murderer?”

His eyes narrowed, jaw clenching as he studied me again for one long interminable moment. “I expect the public to fall for an anti-hero. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.” He leaned forward, his body so big it seemed he took up the entirety of the roomy car. I could smell him, something bright and sharp that mellowed into sweet warmth like lemons heated by the Italian sun. “Can you tell me, Elena, that you’ve never been drawn in by a bad boy?”

I arched a brow at him.

I’d had all of two lovers in my twenty-seven years of life.