When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

“Oh?” I didn’t give him the benefit of genuine curiosity. Instead, the word fell like dead weight to the ground between us. I checked my cufflinks, adjusted the golden crest on my right sleeve that spoke of my first life in England.

He growled. “You wanna find a home in Napoli again, Salvatore, I got a home for you. But it’s in the bed of Mirabella Ianni. You remember her? The woman you were supposed to marry?”

I fought the crushing desire to shoot Rocco with the gun he’d dropped to his side. Of course, the figlio di puttana didn’t entirely trust that Elena was Frankie’s woman and not mine. Just in case, he’d thrown a grenade at us, hoping for maximum impact.

Elena didn’t say a thing and I didn’t dare look over my shoulder to see her reaction, but I trusted that her impeccable poker face was in place.

My own was not.

A muscle in my jaw spasmed as I ground my teeth.

“I’m not here to marry some country girl, Rocco.” He flinched at my disrespectful use of his first name, but I was beyond caring. He flinched again when I took a step down the stairs so I could loom over him. His gun raised between us, the butt pressed right to my heart, but I didn’t shy away from the gun. I was a man who only feared one thing, which I was learning was infinitely more dangerous than a man who feared nothing.

I would not lose Elena.

Not for anything.

Not for my bloody kingdom and stacks of crisp bills.

Not for my honor or my family, my Italian ideals.

She was it.

Mine.

Forever.

And if Rocco wanted to test that, I’d show him what happened to people who tried to come between our love and wedge us apart.

“I’m here to negotiate like men. I’m here to propose a change to the New York outfit that will mean millions more in cash lining the pockets of your Armani suits, capisci?”

He stared up at me, fury seething in the depths of those dark eyes. His breath was heavy between his lips because he was getting old and he’d always been unfit. Because he was scared of me. There was no denying my physical dominance over him and I knew he would do everything in his power to make me feel small so he could feel bigger and better than me.

I wasn’t intimidated by the prospect.

In thirty-five years of dangerous living, no one had gotten the better of me yet, and Rocco wasn’t clever enough to do what no one else had.

So I smiled down into his face, the expression slicing my face in two like the sharp edge of a blade.

“You wanna play, Rocco?” I whispered just for him. “Or you wanna make this as easy as possible for the both of us?”

Unsurprisingly, his eyes darted over my shoulder to peer at Elena briefly before reaffixing to mine. He canted his weak chin in the air and with one simple sentence, he declared war.

“Come and meet your future wife, Dante. She’s missed you. While you are getting reacquainted, I will entertain the lovely Elena.”

Rocco lived five minutes from Spaccanapoli, a main thoroughfare in Naples. The villa was flashy, sticking out like a sore thumb from the more modest pastel and sun-baked buildings on the rest of the street.

Stupid for a mafioso.

The kind of prideful senselessness that decimated numbers in both the New York and Italian Camorra in the last few decades.

Not to mention, it wasn’t particularly safe. Most high-ranking members of the outfit had well protected, isolated homes in the countryside where they could spot an intruder or the police from a mile away.

Obviously, Rocco thought it made him seem fearless to live his life amid the amasses. It made him feel even more untouchable.

No one was untouchable.

And I’d prove that to him before long.

He ushered us into a wood panelled dining room filled to capacity with a massive, ornately carved table that seated twenty. Every seat but two were filled with a variety of Made Men. His capos, all focused exclusively on me as I entered the room behind their capo dei capi. This wasn’t New York. Even though most of these men raked in serious cash with their schemes for the Camorra, many of them wore old sweaters, stained tees. The ones who tried to impress had gaudy gold jewellery nestled in their chest hair, on their furred knuckles and the hanging lobes of their ears. If you wore a multi-thousand dollar suit the way Rocco and I did in this city, you’d likely get mugged, even if you were a capo.

I recognized some of the men from Tore’s reign as king, but most were new faces, their expressions tight with bitterness.

Ah, so Rocco had replaced those loyal to the old king and told some stories about me in my absence to the new recruits.