Page 72 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“If being a bitch means being smart enough to know the truth and brave enough to speak it, I’ll count it as a compliment,” I told him calmly, peeling his fingers off the silk of my blouse, frowning at the oily print his grip left there. “And one day, Ethan, I have no doubt you’ll be needing a favor frommeso why don’t you go home to Daddy’s lush apartment and have some sweet dreams while you still can.”

I walked away from his gaping mouth and furious flush even though he stammered behind me and called out some choice curse words as if they’d have any effect on me. When your own family thought you were a bitch, it was difficult for anyone else’s knife to inflict the same kind of wound.

It shocked me to see Frankie just outside the glass doors to the bullpen, his mouth twisted up with rage, his eyes over my shoulder on the idiot that was no doubt still staring after me.

“He was giving you trouble,” he said, tone flat with fury.

I was momentarily surprised by that. Why should Frankie care if one of the associates was haranguing me? It happened literally every day, and I’d had much, much worse confrontations in my life. This was a blip, a nothing.

“It doesn’t matter,” I assured. “I’m used to his nonsense.”

Francesco Amato, Dante’s right-hand man, a sharp-minded, quick-fingered hacker, pinned me then with a gaze that reminded me all too much of the wet black eyes of the mafiosos in my past. For one fleeting second, I was terrified.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with nonsense,” he said firmly. “One thing rolls into another, and before you know it, you’ve let a pile of shit a mile wide accumulate at your back, and no matter how hard you run, you’ll never outpace it. No.” He leaned closer, conspiratorially. Naturally, I bent to meet him. “Someone gives you hell, Elena, you give it to ’em right back. You teach them that for every move against you, however slight, you’re ready to battle. So many of the wealthiest, most successful men you’ll ever see are bullies at heart, and there’s nothing a bully hates so much as pushback.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, mostly because I wasn’t sure I agreed. My family had called me a bully before for my cruelty to Giselle, and Lord knew, I was met with pushback for every word I’d ever spoken against her, even if it was warranted. It still didn’t stop the poison of hatred for her and self-loathing for myself seep through my bloodstream.

“Besides,” Frankie continued, cuffing my chin lightly the way I’d seen fathers do to sons, as if he was imparting life wisdom. “You’re with us, now. You think the Salvatoreborgataputs up with limp-dickedstronzilike thisbastardo?”

Before I could say anything, Frankie sauntered past me into the bullpen, his gait easy, hands in his pockets, and a whistle through his lips like he was taking some kind of jaunty midnight stroll through the office.

“Hey man,” he called to Ethan, who’d leaned against a desk to text. He dropped his phone; his fingers numb with drink as he startled. “You got the time?”

Ethan stared at him numbly for a beat before he jerked himself out of it and bent to look at the clock on the desk he was perched on. “Yeah, it’s eleven—”

Frankie was there so quickly I barely saw him move, lunging across the space to curl his hand over the back of Ethan’s neck, using it to slam his face down into the clock he peered at. There was slap, crash, and wet garbled cry as Ethan collided with it.

Frankie yanked him back up and stepped closer to smile at him, patting Ethan’s bloody cheek with his free hand as he said, “There ya go. Now, next time I see you fucking with Elena Lombardi, I’m gonna put your head through a window, you get me?”

“Jesus,” Ethan groaned, trying to hold his broken nose as blood slipped through his fingers. “You fucking psycho.”

Frankie shrugged a shoulder modestly. “Hey, you think I’m a psycho, you should see Dante Salvatore when he’s been crossed.Cavolo, they call him the Devil of NYC for a reason.” He reached up again to squeeze Ethan’s bloody cheeks in one hand then turned his head to face me lingering in the doorway. “You fuck with Elena, you should know, that’s you fucking withhim. And he’ll do a lot worse than I would,capisci?”

When Ethan didn’t immediately respond, Frankie shook his head in his cruel hand, blood flying from the broken nose over the desk.

“Yes,” Ethan finally squawked. “Okay, alright, fuck! Chill.”

“Chill?” Frankie asked, then looked at me as if he was affronted. “I look anything but chill to you, Lena?”

“As a cucumber,” I agreed, because what else could I say?

A secret part of me deep inside thrilled at the sight of entitled, whining, asshole Ethan bleeding in Frankie’s hands. He wasn’t just a prick to me, but to every single associate in the office he felt was below his status, which was most of them.

Honestly, if Frankie hadn’t done it, it was probably only a matter of time before someone else did.

Even though I didn’t like the position it put me in, jeopardizing my job yetagain, I also had to admit it was unlikely that Ethan would go crying to our superiors about it. His enormous ego would be too bruised to admit what happened. I had no doubt by tomorrow he would have circulated an epic tale about getting beaten up on the subway or for trying to steal some guy’s girl at a bar.

I didn’t care.

It was enough to know that Frankie cared enough about me to stand up for me.

It was nice to hear that he felt Dante would do the same.

As Frankie dropped Ethan’s face and started toward me, reaching for a handkerchief he kept in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, I surprised myself by smiling at him.

“That was more than slightly awesome,” I whispered as he met up with me and continued forward down the hall in tandem. “I won’t say I fully approve of your methods but thank you.”

“Hey,” he said with a blasé shrug as if it was nothing. “You remind me of my wife. It was nothing to do.”