When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

We needed more.

So in the week leading up to the wedding, I set my own plan in motion.

I met with Leonardo Esposito.

With Umberto Arno, still recovering from the partial loss of his sight in one eye.

With Mattia Filoso, a semi-retired fisherman who’d taken the money I’d given him for a job six years ago and started a luxury boat rental company to take advantage of wealthy tourists.

The night before the wedding, I sat on the back patio under the twinkling string lights Elena and Frankie had put up a few days before and drank an over full glass of Sambuca with Tore, Alexander, and Frankie.

“Everything’s in place?” Tore confirmed, taking a puff from the Cuban cigar between his teeth.

“As much as it can be,” I said.

“And you’re sure?” Alexander asked, his voice so crisp and British it made me nostalgic for my old life and first home in England even though both would forever be tainted by Noel.

“The only thing I’m sure of is Lena. No matter what happens, I won’t let her go. I’ll kill anyone who tries to come between us.”

My brother’s golden brows cut creases into his forehead. He looked so much like Noel sitting there in his bespoke navy-blue suit, his only concession to the casualness of the setting a lack of tie at his throat. But he was so much more than Noel had ever been.

He was capable of love, the kind he’d kill and die for happily.

After years of bad blood between us, it felt unspeakably good to share a drink with him. To share my soul with him.

He tipped his glass of whiskey to me. “Lombardi women are worth all the treasure in this world.”

“Aye, aye,” Tore agreed, raising his own glass.

“The only thing I’m not sure about is Elena’s reaction to your part of the plan,” Frankie admitted with a glint of dark humor in his eyes. “She’s not the kinda woman who thinks being duped is romantic.”

“We need to get back to New York, fratello. Our Family is under attack and they need their fucking capo to put things to right. This is the only way I can return home and keep her safe.”

“Yeah, she’s gonna like you turning yourself in even less than what you have planned for tomorrow,” Frankie noted.

And he was right.

My fighter would never willingly give me up for anything.

Which was why I was taking the choice from her.

I thought of her upstairs in a guest room asleep beside her sister. She hadn’t thought anything of it when Cosima suggested the girl’s night, even though she made sure to fuck me in the lemon grove before she disappeared for the evening. She had no idea I’d suggested the idea to Cosima so we could adhere to Italian tradition.

The groom should never see the bride the night before the wedding.

“The moment you think you know Elena, she surprises you with more,” I told Frankie. “Think about how much she’s changed since we first met her. I shouldn’t say changed really, because it was already all there beneath the ice and scar tissue. No matter how angry she might be with me, she’ll do what needs to be done when we return home.”

“Cosima did the same thing to me,” Alexander confessed, staring into the bowl of his glass is if memories were playing out on a screen there. “I never knew what love was until her.”

“And she’ll never know it again without me,” I asserted. “That’s why I’m doing this. It might not have happened tomorrow or this year or even the next, but the truth is, none of that fucking matters. Elena became mine the day she got on the plane and I was never going to give her back.”

I told myself that again and again, because honestly, I wasn’t sure how my fighter was going to take the second half of the plan I’d put in place.

She was independent and strong willed, and she was also the kind of woman who had been planning the events of her entire life since she was a little girl.

This was definitely not something she could have predicted.

But there was no other option.

If I wanted to stay alive and keep her out of jail, Elena Lombardi would have to become my wife.

Sixteen

Elena

The Sunday before Christmas dawned bright and cold, a wind rushing in off the bay that rattled the lemon trees and swirled the garbage in the streets of Naples like snow in a globe. I got ready for the wedding alone in the room I shared with Dante, my lover gone long before I woke up to ready himself for the day.

There was a lot to be done if we were going to pull this thing off.

I strapped my thigh holster to my leg under the red wrap dress I wore, secure in the fact I knew how to yield the weapon if I needed to. I took extra time getting ready, making my lips red as my dress, curling my hair until it fell in a mess of Chianti colored waves around my breasts. It was a bold color to wear to a wedding, but I wanted Rocco to see me in the crowd.