When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

She studied me with the body for a moment, something dark working behind her gaze, and then she moved to my side. I watched slightly stupefied as she bent to pick up the intruder’s feet.

When I didn’t move, she raised a cool red brow at me. “Well, come on. The sooner you find out who sent this asshole, the better.”

A hard bullet of laughter exploded passed my lips, but I swallowed my amusement down with Elena scowled. Fuck me, but she was the perfect.

Not for everyone.

Fuck that.

I didn’t want some generic girl who’d bore me in three days.

Elena was perfect for me and only me.

Unflappable under pressure, an unbroachable vault for the secrets of the Family, passionate beneath that cool exterior, and smart enough to give me whiplash.

A dream coming true.

No, I’d never even thought to dream of such a woman. My imagination was incapable of forming the complicated layers of Elena Lombardi, but I’d happily spend the rest of my days carefully unearthing them like an archeologist.

“Dante?” she probed when I just stared at her.

I lunged forward to stamp a hard kiss to her unpainted lips. “Sei magnifica.”

A little grin whispered over her lips before she nodded curtly at me to pick up the man’s torso. “You can prove to me just how much after we deal with this stronzo.”

“Be still my heart,” I joked, clutching my chest as I staggered back toward his head.

She rolled her eyes.

And as we carried the body of a man who had just attempted to assassinate us to the basement of Tore’s villa, I laughed.

I laughed and I laughed, because what a fucking adventure life was with Elena at my side.

His name was Umberto Arno.

He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four years old, but then, in his profession of contract killing, not many men lived longer than that.

Tore had recognized him instantly as one of Rocco Abruzzi’s men, though he was also a favorite of Pietro Cavalli.

I stared at him impassively as he choked on a sob, blood bubbling out of his mouth and sliding down his chin into the saturated fabric of his black sweater. His right eyebrow was split, his mouth broken open like an eyelet pattern by the force of his teeth cutting through the skin when I hit him.

Perhaps I’d gone a little overboard.

But then again, the brutto figlio di puttana bastardo hadn’t just come for me. He’d put Elena in danger.

On a long sigh, I reared my torso back and brought the crushing weight of my fist down on his right cheek. It crumpled beneath my force.

Umberto let out an animal wail.

I wiped the blood from my knuckles in his sweat dampened hair.

“I told you,” he panted, leaning limply forward in the chair I’d tied him to. “No one sent me.”

“And I told you,” I said amiably before I wrenched his head back with a fist in his hair. He squinted at me through the sweat and blood. “I don’t believe you. You had a reason for coming here tonight.”

He glared at me, one eye nearly swollen shut.

I considered him, irritated that Made Men in Italy were made of sterner stuff than their American counterparts. I snapped my fingers at Nico, who lingered in the corner with Frankie and Tore. He left the room immediately to do my bidding.

Umberto’s eyes followed him, then shot back to me.

“Don’t worry about him,” I suggested as I pulled a chair over the tile floor just in front of him and sat down in it, leaning forward in faux comradery. “Worry about yourself. You’re young. Maybe you haven’t heard of me. I’ve been known by a lot of different names in my life, Umberto, but in Napoli they called me ‘principe ereditario dell'inferno’.”

The Crown Prince of Hell.

“Do you know why they called me that?” He didn’t respond. Blood dripped into his left eye and turned it vampiric. “Because I was an aristocrat, but I much preferred using my silver spoon to carve out my enemy’s eyes and shove them down their throat.”

Perfectly on cue, Nico reappeared through the door holding a blow torch and a grapefruit spoon with a serrated edge.

Umberto’s eyes widened just slightly at the sight before they flicked to me.

I nodded soberly. “You might know a few of the men I left blind and broken before I moved to America. Danny ‘Greaser’ Ricci, Alessandro Tedesco, Thumper Greco.” I paused, took the spoon and torch from Nico and flicked on the gas, flame bursting out of the nozzle between my face and Umberto’s. “You’ll live, but I hope you took a good long look at your wife or mother before you left home tonight. It’s the last time you’ll ever see them.”

Behind me, the door creaked slightly.

“Vaffanculo a chi t’è morto,” he cursed at me to fuck my dead family members.