When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

Still nothing.

We had Aurora, who was everything, so we didn’t let it depress us as much as it could have, but it was hard when I’d always wanted to carry my only child, when I wanted so badly to see a baby with Dante’s black hair and lightly dimpled chin.

Last year, we tried IVF.

It didn’t take either time.

So, we stopped.

I was tired. Dante was tired.

Even poor Aurora was tired of praying for a baby brother or sister that didn’t seem to want to come.

We stopped trying and then, somehow, it happened.

I’d asked Monica about it and she said it was actually fairly common. That the stress of trying to procreate could keep it from happening. When we gave up, we released that tension.

I had a slightly more romantic theory.

Our babies were always meant to be ours, but like their papa and mama, they were stubborn and they took their time coming to us.

I didn’t care about the heartaches we’d endured to get to this point. Dante had taught me that every single decision in your life was leading to something, was leading to exactly where you needed to be at the moment.

And this moment, for us, was a miracle.

“Good luck topping this birthday present next year, cuore mia,” Dante quipped after we’d both composed ourselves and just sat quietly rocking back and forth in our babies’ rooms.

I laughed a little wetly as I tipped my head back to look up at his handsome face and scratch my nails down his bristly jaw. “I had to try to top yours from when you made Rora our daughter legally, but I think this one might take the cake.”

“I’m okay with that. More than okay.” He dipped down to kiss me, our lips salty from tears, his soft and firm as they parted my mouth for his tongue. He kissed me sweetly, but thoroughly, until I ached for him. “Do you know how much I love you, lottatrice mia?”

“Yes,” I said, because I did.

Because Dante proved to me every single day that I was worthy of love and he showed me just how much he had of that to give not only me, but Aurora and our entire family.

“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked him.

His face creased into that small, close mouth smile that was just for me. It wasn’t his flashy grin or showstopper smile, just this intimate little curl that was mine alone.

“Yes,” he echoed. “Enough to change your entire life for me.”

“I changed it for the best thing that ever happened to me,” I corrected. “It wasn’t as horrible as you make it sound.”

“I would live with the guilt if everything hadn’t worked out as well as it did,” he admitted as he palmed my still-flat belly. “Ghorbani & Lombardi has been massively successful so I didn’t completely ruin your dreams of being a lawyer.”

I laughed. “Not at all. I never thought I’d be famous for representing criminals and mobsters, but I can’t complain. Most of them are good men and women.”

This was true.

I never took a case if I truly felt the person a harmful criminal, but most of the time, I had no problem taking on clients in the mafia or other gangs. I’d recently represented the Prez of The Fallen MC in New York on trial for manslaughter and got him off on self-defence.

Maybe I wasn’t the hero I’d always thought I’d be in the courtroom, but I represented the kind of people I’d come to know and love. The kind of person I’d become. The anti-hero. And that was infinitely more interesting than anything I could have dreamed up in my youth.

“They’ll be proud to have such a gladiator for a mother,” he told me, splaying his big hand entirely over the width of my belly. “Just like Rora is.”

“She will be over the moon about the babies.”

“Certo, she might not leave your side again.”

I hoped that wasn’t the case.

We still took Rora to therapy six years on from her mother’s death, which helped, but we’d also given her a cellphone so she could keep in touch with us all the time. It helped allay her worries and it was a simple fix.

Often, she would just texted us one word. A word her zio Sebastian had taught her.

Insieme.

Together.

The same word that had banded my siblings and I together as kids.

“I was thinking Chiara or Georgina for girls,” I suggested, thinking of Dante’s mother and Bambi. “And maybe Amadeo or Jacopo for boys.”

If it was possible, Dante’s eyes grew even warmer on my face. “Bellissima. Those are perfect.”

“For the record, capo, you have nothing to feel guilty for, ever. You gave me the only two things I ever really wanted.” I threaded our fingers together on my belly. “True love and a family.”

“Cheesy,” he teased and then he kissed me.