Page 79 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I needed to have her to understand her. To have the privilege of unwrapping layer after layer until I got to the heart of her. Once, I’d thought her soul would be frozen through, an icy vessel used only to pump blood through her body, but I was beginning to understand the truth.

Elena Lombardi had so much heart. She was overfull with emotion, and she had no idea how to hide that vulnerability from people unless it was behind a mask of icy indifference and cool disdain. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust others with that tender, swollen organ so much as she didn’t trust herself to use it.

What a fucking tragedy.

I stared down at her sleeping face feeling my own heart shift in my chest, the tectonic plates of my life fluctuating to accommodate a new presence there, one I didn’t intend to let go.

At that moment, I had no thought to myborgata, my responsibilities, or the risks associated with having a romance with my lawyer, a woman who hated so much of what I loved.

I considered only the magnitude of the challenge I was setting for myself and the eagerness I felt setting out to conquer it.

To conquer her.

Because I resolved in much the same way I resolved to solve my mother’s murder and resolved to save Cosima from the Order of Dionysus that I would show Elena Lombardi what it was like to live and love freely.

And I’d do it by loving her.

First, I just had to trick her into letting down her shields long enough to let me try.

I woke up because someone was sitting at the edge of my bed with their hand on my cheek. Immediately, I thought it was Dante, but the scent was off. The hand was rough tipped and broad like a man’s, but the fragrance was all spice and musk, not the bright tang of lemon and pepper I recognized as Dante’s.

When I pushed back my eye mask, I was shocked to see my brother, Sebastian, seated on the bed beside me.

I hadn’t seen him in a few months, but that wasn’t unusual. He’d moved to Los Angeles to be closer to a film project late last year, and though he visited often, I didn’t always make the time to see him, and he didn’t always ask. There was no bad blood between us, as there was with Giselle and me, but there was a…wariness. We both had demons, and ours were too incompatible to play nice for long.

But seeing him there in my room, still shaky from the anesthesia and emotional from the impact the surgery would have on my life, I felt, to my horror, tears spring to my eyes.

“Patatino,” I whispered through my thick throat before I carefully tried to sit up higher on the tower of pillows to prop me up at a forty-five-degree angle.

His grin was gorgeous, but then again, everything about the twins was pure beauty. I cataloged the way his golden eyes creased at the corners into charming crow’s feet and how his wide, full mouth pulled apart in a perfectly symmetrical smile. His black hair was long on top and short on the sides, a trendy haircut for one of the hot young actors of our day. He looked handsome, of course, but also a little lost somewhere in the depths of those tiger yellow eyes.

“Hey, Lady.”

I’d honestly forgotten that nickname. It had been so long since he called me that affectionally, Lady Elena or Signora Elena, because I was always badgering him about manners and decorum while he was growing up.

I was sore, and it was fabulously out of character, but I gave in to the impulse and gently leaned forward to wrap my arms around my little brother.

He laughed in my ear softly as he hugged me back, holding me to his strong chest as if I was a child. I could still remember when he had his growth spurt at fourteen years old. One day, he was this scrawny little kid, shorter and thinner than me, and the next moment, I was craning my neck back to look him in the eyes. The tears stubbornly refusing to leave my eyes alone swelled in my ducts and rolled slowly off the edge of my lids onto my cheeks.

“Hey, hey,” he hushed, his familiar lightly accented baritone smooth and soothing. “What’s this about, hmm? I don’t think I’ve seen you cry in years.”

I laughed a little weakly as I pulled away from him to dry the drops on my cheeks with my fingertips. “I want to say it’s the drugs, but I’ve been a little…off lately. I guess it took me off guard how much I’ve missed you.”

It hurt to see the surprise on Seb’s face, but I knew I deserved it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told him I missed him, let alone that I loved him or was proud of him.

And I was.

So proud of him.

So in love with the man he’d grown into against all the odds.

Tears burned and burned in my eyes, but I didn’t let any more fall.

“I’m happy to see you too,sorella mia,” he finally said with a genuine grin, reaching out to tug on a curl. “It’s been too long.”

“It has,” I agreed before it occurred to me that we were in Dante’s Upper East Side apartment. How the hell did Sebastian know I was even here? “How are you here?”

The humor fled from his face, replaced by an uncharacteristic scowl. “Dante answered your phone when I called earlier to see if it was cool I stayed with you at your place for the weekend. He told me you were in the hospital and just got out. Why didn’t you tell me, Lena?”