When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

He was dangerous, not because he was clever, but because he was not.

He was bad tempered and quick to react as a startled rattlesnake. He was feared, not revered, but in Naples, that was enough to secure you a fuck ton of power.

When Tore and I left for New York, we’d promoted ‘Bon Bon’ Flavio Marconi as capo dei capi.

Two months later, Bon Bon was at the bottom of the Bay of Naples and Rocco Abruzzi, a capo known for his cruelty and profitable gambling operation, was sudden king of mafia kings.

This was not good for me.

Rocco never liked Tore. He thought he was soft because he tried to protect the Lombardi women from Seamus’s gambling debts and resulting punishments.

Rocco hated me.

I was younger, fitter, and next in line for the underworld throne. Once, years ago, Rocco had put a cigar out on my hand during a poker game. I’d been twenty-something, young and still wet behind the ears after joining Tore’s operation.

I hadn’t flinched and I hadn’t snitched.

Instead, I beat Rocco at his poker game and left with a circular burn mark in the meat of my thumb to remind me of another debt he would pay one day.

I still intended to extract my retribution, but my entire plan hinged on getting Don Abruzzi’s good favor.

So when he pressed a gun to my forehead and smiled like a madman up into my face, I didn’t snap his neck for threatening me and frightening Elena the way I wanted to. Instead, I let my hands fall from Elena’s tense form and moved forward slowly, but deliberately to kiss Rocco on one flaccid cheek and then the other.

“Ciao, fratello mio,” I murmured to the older man as I respectfully greeted him. “It is a pleasure to be back on Italian soil. What a warm greeting you’ve arranged for us.”

Rocco’s eyes narrowed so they nearly disappeared under his sagging brow. “You mocking me, Salvatore?”

I blinked innocently. “I’m many things, Don Abruzzi, but an idiot has not been one of them for a number of years.”

He studied me for a long moment then looked over my shoulder at Elena, his features going slack at the sight of her beauty.

“Who do we have here, huh? A present for your host?” he dared to ask.

I forced a deep breath through my nose, my hands shaking with the urge to throttle his fleshy neck. “No.”

“Not gonna introduce me?” he demanded, his look souring as his gaze swept back to me. “I got a right to know who’s in my territory.”

There wasn’t time for deliberation. I cursed myself for not talking about it with her on the plane, but I hadn’t wanted to overwhelm Elena when the last forty-eight hours of her life had consisted of being abducted, shooting her father, and running away with a fugitive.

This was why love could make a man weak.

I had put her comfort before her safety and now I was paying a price.

“My wife,” Frankie asserted from behind me.

Shocked, but schooled enough to hide it, I turned in time to see him sling an arm around Elena’s waist and press a kiss to the very hickey I’d put on her neck only minutes before. Elena’s eyes were pinned to mine, but she let Frankie touch her.

Smart girl.

One slip-up and we’d be dead on the hot asphalt beneath the plane.

“Thought you married a Sicilian girl,” Rocco muttered skeptically, staring hard at Elena’s dark red hair. “The girl barely looks Italian.”

“Te assicuro che sono Italian,” Elena promised in fluid Italian, her voice distinctly Neapolitan. “Frankie got rid of the old bitch and traded up for me.”

Rocco let out a hard, little laugh, his eyes glazed with desire as he moved closer to me in order to get closer to her. “Fiery thing, aren’t you?”

“Touch me and you’ll find out just how much,” she purred, leaning into Frankie provocatively even as she kept her eyes pinned on him.

The entire charade was ridiculous. I wanted to pick the Don up by his fat neck and break him over my knee like a feeble stick. A man like him didn’t deserve to even look at Elena. The difference was almost blasphemous, a sinner looking on a saint.

I wanted him to die for wanting her and he hadn’t even tried to touch her yet.

He would.

I knew it as surely as I knew the sun would rise in the sky every morning. He was a man ruled by his impulses and his gut cried out to take Elena’s strength and overpower it with his own. He didn’t understand a woman like her. He wanted to break her to prove his machismo, not understanding that a true man stood beside a woman like that and was made more powerful by her own strength at his back.

“I worried for a moment,” he said slyly, shooting me a beady eyed look. “If you were married, you would be no use to me.”