When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

“Of course.” She stood, dropped the knife, and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Tore, I’ll finish the chopping for the ziti when we get back.”

“No ti preoccupare,” he said, no worries.

We shared a look over her shoulder as I stood and took her hand to usher her away from the house. His face smoothed out and turned to stone, his eyes alive with fire.

He knew what had happened to Marco.

He was just the best actor I’d ever known and had unwittingly passed that trait on to his son, Sebastian, who didn’t even know that was where he got the talent from.

So many fucking secrets.

“What’s happened?” Lena asked me, her eyes sharp on the side of my face as we padded across the slopping lawn to the rows of lemons trees.

Their scent was thick in warm air, sweet and tangy enough to make my mouth water.

“Dante?” she asked, tugging on my hand so that I would look at her.

She was so beautiful there among the yellow fruit, her classically beautiful features made striking by her remarkable red hair and pale gold skin, by the heavy-lidded eyes that made her gaze unbelievably sultry. For a brief irrational moment, I just wanted to lay her down under the Sfusato Amalfitano lemons and fuck her into the dirt. I wanted to bury my sorrow and fear in her sweet body and forget about the weight of so many worlds on my shoulders.

“Marco was shot,” I told her instead, ripping off the band as I took her face in my hands. “He’s in the hospital, but it doesn’t look good.”

“No,” she breathed, the word an expulsion of air from a popped balloon.

I nodded. “The di Carlos got him outside one of our pizzerias. The same one I first met Marco at years ago. We have a mole in the outfit and this fucking reeks of his work.”

“A mole?” Her eyes were wide, dark and textured as wet concrete.

“Mason Matlock told me a few months ago, but I haven’t been able to discover who it is,” I admitted.

“Mason Matlock has been missing for months…He’s presumed dead,” she said slowly, that keen mind working.

I shrugged. “We didn’t kill him. We gave him back to his family when we were done with him.”

“…But at that point, he would be more of a liability than he was worth,” she surmised. When I didn’t say anything, she cursed softly. “This world of yours is savage.”

“This world of ours, lottatrice mia. I wouldn’t love you so much as I do if you weren’t capable of withstanding the savagery.”

I watched as my words starched her spine and made her eyes flash. It was only the truth, but it reminded me how little praise she’d received in her life.

“Marco will be okay,” she declared as if she had some say in the matter.

It made me smile despite myself. “If anyone could conjure that out of the universe by sheer will power, it would be you.”

“I hate that we can’t be there for them,” she murmured, her eyes sheened with wet even though I knew she wouldn’t let herself cry.

“Bambi was there. Apparently, she and Marco have been having an affair for a while. She wasn’t hurt, but it’s a mess with his wife.”

Her face spasmed with something like horror.

“What?” I asked, foreboding rolling through me.

“I…” she sucked in a deep breath. “Bambi came to me a few times in New York. She said she was having troubles with a boyfriend who was getting rough with her. She said she worried about her safety and Aurora’s. Even when I pressed, she wouldn’t tell me who the man was but now…”

“Marco,” I breathed out as her words sucker punched me in the gut. “No, there’s no way he would hurt a woman. You know him, too.”

She bit her red lip. “I know. I honestly never got those vibes from him. But how else are we supposed to connect the dots? If he kept his affair with Bambi secret from you is it so unlikely he would be the kind of man who would beat his partner?”

“Or become a mole,” I muttered darkly, bitterness on the back of my tongue as the piece of my heart that had belonged to Marco burned up to ash.

We were quite for a long moment, standing under the awning of greenery and sugar-sweet lemons with the knife of betrayal run through both our backs.

“We have to get back,” Elena said suddenly, clutching at my forearms, nailing digging deep. “Marco could have compromised everyone. What if they took him out because they’d gotten enough from him and now they’re going for everyone else?”

“They won’t just take out every person in the Camorra,” I assured her, though my heart had turned to lead, poisoned, a dead weight in my chest cavity. “They’ll go for our businesses first and if there is anyone in the way, they’ll take those men out. Addie is still recovering, he’ll be careful. Chen and Jacopo are smart.”