Page 77 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I couldn’t trust a mafioso with my life or my happiness.

To do so was suicide.

So why did I secretly yearn to, and why did that yearning feel like a crime I was committing against myself?

“When you wake up, Elena, you’ll be a new woman,” Monica promised as the anesthesiologist held the mask to my mouth and told me to breathe deeply.

I wanted to argue with her, but the gas was already pulling me under.

I wanted to tell her I was happy with the woman I was, and I was terrified of becoming anyone else.

But then I passed out, and when I woke up, my first thought was of a mafioso with eyes like the velvet black New York sky.

I was in a meeting with three of my captains when Marco appeared at the door to my office and tipped his chin.

Elena had returned.

The urge to go to her immediately was surprisingly powerful, but I tamped it down with the iron will I’d been born with as a Brit, then cultivated as a capo.

She would need space to get settled, and I’d already had Bambi clean her sheets, put a box of tissues, a bottle of water, and some saltine crackers by her bedside just in case. She’d be fine until I finished business.

“It worked,” Gaetan was saying with a massive grin. “Heard through the grapevine that Moore and Kelly went at it over Elena staying with you. Apparently, thefiglio di puttanahas some kinda heart ’cause he straight-up refused to do anything that could hurt his precious daughter.”

“You gonna hurt her, he steps outta line?” Joe asked, leaning forward somewhat eagerly.

Whoever said women were terrible gossips clearly had never met an Italian man.

Whatever plans I had for Elena were decidedly more about pleasure than pain, but Joe Lodi didn’t need to know that.

Just as Elena didn’t need to know I’d forced her to move in, in part, so that her arsehole of a father would back off our operation. It was a risky bet, given I’d doubted the man had a heart, even in regards to his daughters, given he’d sold Cosima into slavery to pay off his gambling debts to the Italian Camorra, but it was worth a shot.

I loved it when those paid off.

I arched a brow at Joe, watching as he deflated slightly under my cold regard. “No, Joe, I’m not going to beat a woman who is a guest in my house just because her father is apezzo di Merda. I don’t trust those Irishbastardi, so we stay vigilant, but now we’ve got something on them, so I’m hoping we can focus on the di Carlo problem.”

“Mason Matlock’s been moved to a safe place like you asked,” Enzo promised. “He’ll stay there under surveillance until you say so.”

I nodded. “Good, though I have a feeling that broken fucker has told us all he knows. Now, we know the di Carlos have a civil war brewing over leadership between the di Carlo brothers and Giuseppe’s underboss, Italo Faletti, and we can use that to our advantage.”

Irrationally, I wanted Gideone di Carlo and his older brother, Agostino, to die horrible deaths just for approaching Elena, but I knew if I was going to back a horse in this race it had to be the younger di Carlos.

There was an idea lurking at the periphery of my mind when I zoned out on the myriad of problems facing me. A solution to the feud Giuseppe had started with us and the Irish problem, even the irritating fact that the other heads of the five families in the Commission still didn’t accept me as one of their own.

Could I wipe them all out in one fell swoop with a singular, explosive idea?

It was still too murky to detail out loud, but if everything came together, including a certain icy redhead in her room upstairs, I could emerge from thiscazzatotrial with more power than I’d had even before it.

I grinned at my men as I decided to set the wheels in motion. There was a mole in my operation, a fact I wouldn’t soon forget, but hopefully, this scheme would also draw them out.

“Enzo,” I ordered, “Have Violetta Matlock brought close by and get Caelian Accardi’s information for me.”

“The son of the ’Ndrangheta boss?” he questioned.

Gaetan hit him on the back of his head. “Just do as the boss says, numb skull.”

Enzo winced, then excused himself to make a call at the back of the room.

“What’re you thinking, D?” Frankie asked from the coffee table in the middle of the room where he’d set up shop.