When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

“He asked me to bring him a beer one day. Some imported English merda he brought with him everywhere. He’d already fucked me once that day, told me he was the only one who would ever love me, who would ever accept me for being the pathetic loner we both knew I was.”

I shrugged, but the words were an echo my mind never forgot.

“I guess something just clicked, I don’t even remember what I was thinking. I broke the beer bottle against the edge of the table and held it up to his neck. I told him I was leaving and if he followed, I’d tell Mama about how he hurt me. I’d tell the police. He threatened me, but I think he believed I’d come back at some point, that he’d succeeded in brain washing me.”

“You didn’t go back.”

“No. Two weeks later, Cosima told me she had the money to send Mama and I to America. I avoided him until then and then we just took off. I didn’t see him again for four years.”

“Where is he now?” he asked, his voice a silk ribbon, but lethal, a noose and a trap.

“Relax, Dante, he showed up in New York almost two years ago now looking for Giselle. I found them and beat him up pretty soundly.” I couldn’t help the smugness in my voice. “That’s why I’d been taking self-defence classes for years, just in case my wildest dreams came true and I ever got to face him again. He’s in jail now serving time for aggravated assault and stalking. He won’t get out for years.”

Silence descended between us.

It felt like I should say more, maybe apologise for keeping it from him, but my pride rebelled against the idea. I didn’t owe him every secret of my past, every mark and bruise I’d ever gotten relived just so I could share it with him.

The quiet was so thick it vibrated the space around us.

His breath was too slow, too controlled through his massive chest. The face I loved for his expressiveness, the creases cut into the skin beside his eyes and mouth that showed his thirty-five years beautifully had turned to unmarked stone.

“Dante, it was a long time ago,” I whispered into that clogged air. “You don’t have to be so angry for me. I’m fine.”

“Fine,” he spit, eyes darting to me with unrestrained fury. “You’re fine. Elena, you’ve been living like a fucking ascetic for years because this cazzo di merda robbed you of whatever joy you might have been able to scrounge up in your childhood. Is it his voice you hear in your head telling you that you’ll never be worthy of love? That you won’t ever be better than your sister, good enough to warrant true love and actual respect from a man?”

He was shaking, physically trembling with the force of his rage. I didn’t know what to do sitting there, watching him come apart at the seams with emotion stronger than I’d ever seen before.

“Jail isn’t enough for this brutto figlio di putanna,” he growled so harshly it must have hurt his throat. “He deserves to be killed slowly, death by a thousand fucking paper cuts. I’ll take his eyes and his balls, his finger nails then sections of the finger, knuckle by knuckle, finger by fucking finger. I’ll pour acid in his wounds until he can’t scream anymore and then, because he won’t need it ever again, I’ll rip out his goddamn motherfucking throat.”

“I don’t need you to do that,” I told him calmly, trying to use the coolness of my voice to offset the heat in his.

I wanted to soothe him, but there was no comforting a cornered beast and my history had done just that, caging him in bars of iron wrath.

“You do,” he shouted, startling me even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. “Don’t you fucking see, Lena? You do need me to do this for you so that you’ll finally understand what this man tried to make you blind to.”

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived in Sorrento until Dante stopped at a hairpin turn descending from the Sorrentine Peninsula to the ocean at its feet. He gunned the car passed a trio of Vespas and parked in a tiny space before a stone balustrade overlooking the sea.

He got out of the car and stalked around the hood to my door, opening it and tugging me out before I could gather my senses. After practically dragging me to the stone wall, he lifted me up and crowed me, stepping between my legs to take my face in his hands.

His expression was wretched, a battlefield after war, battle torn and weary, filled with a bitter rage.

It made something in my heart sing a strange song.

“You need me to kill this man to prove to you that you are worthy of love. You are worthy of passion. You are worthy of respect. In all my life of hardships, Elena Lombardi, you are the truest thing that has ever been worth fighting for. You deserve the loyalty and love you give to everyone but yourself and now I know, this figlio di cane made you feel like a beggar when you are a motherfucking queen.”