When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

But then, didn’t I?

That was exactly how I felt about Dante. How he’d seduced me away from myself and into something better.

Only, I’d had the courage to follow my capo into the dark when Mama had not.

The idea that Dante had wanted my sister romantically felt like a slap to the face of that courage. Was there something in me that reminded him or her the way it had with Christopher and Giselle? Was he using me to make her jealous? Was he wishing every day that I was someone else?

My head fell, chin to my chest, the weight of my chaotic thoughts to heavy too hold up anymore. Dante’s lyrically accented words echoed in the cavern of my reeling mind.

Io sono con te.

I am with you.

Elena, you don’t realize this yet, but I see you, I know you, and I’m undone by you.

Sono pazzo di te. I’m crazy about you.

Only you, Elena. Only with you do I like fucking you, marking you, owning you with my body and my cum. Mine to fuck. Mine to cherish. Mine to love.

It is a privilege to know you intimately. It is an honor to know you and I won’t ever take that for granted.

Tu sei la mia regina. You are my queen.

My heart burned and twisted like warped metal in the fire. It was pure agony to think of everything Dante and I had been through and wonder if it was tainted by this new information. But I leaned into it, diving deeper, because I knew I would hate myself if I let go of this man without a fight.

He’d fought for me, too.

From the moment he’d meet me, he’d fought to scale my icy walls, to break down my barriers not only so that he could know me, love me, but so that I could learn to love myself.

He’d killed for me, become a fugitive to save me from my father, and he’d given me his family so I’d have love and protection, a community, when I hadn’t allowed myself to have one before.

I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face.

It was possible I’d overreacted.

But it was shocking and disheartening to feel like the only idiot with their head in the sand. To imagine everyone talking about Tore and Caprice, about Dante and Cosima behind my back.

The former wasn’t really Dante’s fault, though.

Of course, Cosima would want to tell me herself and she hadn’t been able to until now, even though she’d had plenty of time before I took Dante’s case to fess up. I understood, even if I didn’t like it, that before then, I had no real reason to know because Dante and Tore were nothing to me.

No reason beyond the fact that I was Cosima’s sister.

I wanted that to be enough, but when had it ever been?

Giselle was my sister, and she’d cheated on me with my ex-partner.

Sebastian was my brother and he’d only just confessed his long-time love for not only a married woman, but a man.

Caprice was my mother but she’d never told me about Salvatore.

We were as fractured as a windshield after a crash, only held together by a sheer feat of engineering that was the Italian family ideal. Stay together at all costs. Pretend to be happy when your neighbors ask how you are, even if your life at home is nightmarish.

It was pathetic.

Until now, until these two secrets that had exploded in my face and threatened to eviscerate my soul, Dante hadn’t lied to me. He’d let me see exactly who he was, what he did, and who he wanted.

Me.

It was impossible to think back to our time and New York without seeing how he had set his sights on me, hunting me down with single minded determination until I was his.

Because he so clearly wanted to be mine.

I felt shaky, every nerve flayed and raw as I took a scalpel to myself and dissected why this had hurt so badly, why it had felt for a moment like I was dying.

I’d always felt I wasn’t good enough.

Maybe I was born with that inside me, but Christopher watered it for years then Daniel, unwittingly, cultivated it when he left me so callously for my little sister. My self-loathing and doubt had grown into something monstrous, blocking out all other light.

Until Dante.

I don’t want to be loved.

Let me love you anyway.

There were tears on my cheeks and the imprint of agony inside my chest, but I dragged in a deep breath of stale church air and felt a little better.

My knees cracked loudly as I stood, a nonna glaring at me as if I disturbed her purposefully. I ignored her scowl as I made my way into the separate chamber that housed the ruins of the old temple to Apollo. My skin sizzled as I stepped into the hallowed space, my soul connecting with the pagan God where it hadn’t with the Christian deity.