When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

The sigh that unraveled from my lips was as long as a ball of untangled yarn. “Dante…why do you have to be the most honorable bad guy in the entire world?”

He laughed, the sound gruff with relief. I let him hug me tighter and slowly moved my arms around his waist so I could hold him too.

“It’s definitely inconvenient,” he agreed. “But we can do this, lottatrice mia. If we can take down the capo dei capi of Napoli, we can find a way to rid myself of these bogus charges. Do you remember? Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore. Whoever is against this love, suffers and then dies.”

His words galvanized me as he meant them to, which irritated me, but not enough to ignore the truth in them.

I’d been planning to take down Dennis O’Malley before we fled the country, I had ideas and plans already set in motion. Maybe I could pick up those threads and continue to weave a new future with them.

I didn’t doubt my own abilities as a lawyer. I didn’t even doubt my resolve as Dante’s wife. I wouldn’t leave him, not even if the worst happened and he was imprisoned for life. My heart was his and always had been, just waiting in my chest for him to come along and activate it.

It was funny to think of love as passive, as if you could fall into it like stumbling over a misplaced shoe. Love required work, it didn’t just happen. Like a flower it required tending to, a serious of action to make it beautiful and fulfilled. I’d always thought love just happened and then it just stayed. How wrong I’d been.

Dante was right, love was worth fighting for and I’d been fighting for it unwittingly all my life. I’d fought for my siblings in Naples, for Daniel however poorly that had ended, and now, I could fight for Dante too, for however long it took to win.

“If you feel like you need to do this,” I said slowly, tipping my head up to look into the eyes of the only man I’d ever loved. “Then we’ll do it. I’m just scared.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured, drawing his thumb over my lower lip before he gently placed a kiss there. “I’m happy you care enough to be scared for me.”

“I’m scared for me, too,” I admitted, even though it hurt to rip that truth off my soul. “I’m afraid of what will happen to me without you? Will I go back to who I was before? Because she wasn’t happy or healthy.”

“Maybe not, but that version of you didn’t die, Lena. You just stopped cutting yourself in two and letting one side wither and die. You’re whole now, and you have much more to do with that than I do.”

I scoffed. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”

His palms cupped my ass and lifted, taking me into his arms so he could sit down and place me comfortably in his lap again. Only when I was perfectly arranged to his liking, our left hands linked so our wedding rings faced up, did he respond to me. “Flowers don’t thank the sun for shining on them or the rain for its wet. Whatever happened to you because of knowing me was always in you to give. I think you just needed a little love to realize how magnificent you are. How magnificent you’ll continue to be even while I’m gone.”

“See,” I said, tears in my throat but banished from my eyes. I didn’t want my remaining time with Dante to be sullied by crying. “You always say the right thing. How do you do that?”

His smile was just a suggestion around his full lips, an implication and a secret all at once. It was intimate and small, not his usual full-bodied grin that he shared with everyone else. It was just for me.

“Some people have hobbies, art, music, playing sport. Mine is learning you.”

Twenty-Two

Elena

If you’d asked me before, I would have said I’d miss my life if I was forced from it. I liked my routine, the neat orderly line up of activities that got me through my day. The Sunday dinner with whomever of the twins and Mama were in town, the cases I spent hours after dark working on alone in my echoing home and the frequent TV and movie binge watch nights I had with Beau. I would have said I would miss it all. Even my bitterness, that constant aftertaste like coffee breath I wore on the back of my tongue for so long I didn’t know taste without it.

But I found, in that car rolling into New York City, a place I’d dreamed about my entire childhood having just returned from my birthplace I’d sworn vehemently I’d never return to, that I didn’t miss it at all.