Page 93 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Always,” he agreed, kissing my cheek again and grasping my elbow with a little squeeze. “You seem…easier today.”

Instantly, my brow notched, and I was even more on guard than before. “Excuse me?”

He held up his hands in surrender on a laugh. “Jesus, don’t go all icy on me again. I meant it as a compliment, Elena. You seem easier in yourself today. There was no hesitation in doing what needed to be done in there for our client. Before, you might have struggled with it. And…”

“And?” I almost snapped at him, panic flooding my system like water spilled over a hard drive.

I was glitching hard at the idea I might be giving something away that could link me to Dante beyond a professional capacity.

“And,” he drawled. “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had gotten laid.”

My chest tightened until I couldn’t breathe, but I forced myself to laugh lightly and brush his words away with a casual wave of my hand. “Trust me, Ric, I’m over all that.”

“Sex or love?”

I leveled him with a cool look and opened the door of the Ferrari, signaling my closure of the subject. “Men,” I countered before I ducked into the low car. “Goodbye, Ric.”

It was only after I started the car, the smooth rumble of the engine vibrating through me, that I took a deep, shaky breath.

I hadn’t lied.

I was done with men.

Unfortunately, Dante Salvatore was so much more than a man.

He was a beast and, the truth was, he was the only one to ever make me feel like a beauty.

A sigh leaked out of my mouth like air from a puncture wound as I instructed the car’s system to dial his name and pulled out from the curb to drive back to Manhattan.

“Ciao lottatrice mia,” Dante’s deep rumble, so similar to the smooth purr of the car around me, settled some of the panic lingering like lactic acid in my tissues. Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped being annoyed when he spoke to me in my mother tongue. “How are you enjoying my beauty?”

I rubbed my hands over the buttery leather steering wheel with glee. “She’s exquisite.”

“Say it in Italian for me,” he coaxed.

Humor and giddiness bubbled up my throat at his flirtation. It had been so long since I enjoyed such simple banter with anyone. “Lei è squisita.”

“Molto bene, Elena,” he praised darkly. “Next time I kiss that gorgeous red mouth, I’m going to make you so crazy that all you know is Italian.”

I tried to snort derisively, but the idea was oddly appealing. Usually, Italian was the language of my panic, my fear, its roots deeply seated in past trauma. The idea of Dante coaxing it out from the shadows into the light with something as powerful as his touch was both arousing and heartening.

“I didn’t call to flirt with you,” I told him archly, remembering myself. “We just interviewed Ottavio Petretti. He agreed to turn witness for our defense.”

There was a long pause.

“I was under the impression he would not be turned,” he said carefully, but there was a wealth of unsaid thoughts behind the words.

“He was persuaded.” It was difficult to keep the smugness from my voice, and I knew when Dante chuckled that I hadn’t succeeded.

“How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that. You’ll tell me about it when you get home.”

Home.

Dante’s apartment was definitely that for his community. Chen, Marco, Jacopo, Frankie, and Adriano practically lived there as did Bambi, who cooked and cleaned, and her sweet little girl, Aurora, who visited often. Tore was in and out at least once a week, down from his home in the Niagara valley, and he always stayed the night at the apartment, making dinner himself elbow to elbow with his pseudo-son. They filled the space with laughter and their tangible admiration and adoration of each other.

They were ruthless mafia dons, yet the way they treated each other and everyone else was a far cry from the cruelty I’d witnessed from soldiers in Naples as a girl.

Tore and Dante relished in the games they played with Aurora, laughing with her as if she was a treasure. They played chess together after dinner over wine, exchanging trash talk in a mixture of English and Italian.