When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

“It was so pleasant to meet you, Rocco,” she murmured in low, liquid Italian, her blood red mouth brushing his cheek as she spoke intimately to him. “Do not ruin it by insulting my people, mmm? I belong with my man as much as he belongs with me. No one will take him from me, not God or the devil himself. Not even you, the mighty capo dei capi of Napoli.”

Rocco stared up at her for an interminable moment, his eyes hot and cold with desire and wrath. He was shocked by his own arousal, to want such a bold woman seemingly went against his nature. He didn’t know, as I did, that he wanted her the way a leech wants a host, to suck her power straight from the source until he was plump with it.

“You dare to talk to me like that?” he asked gruffly, not as authoritatively as he might have liked.

I maintained my slightly slouched posture in my chair because some of the more astute capos were staring at me, but beneath the table, one hand dipped into my pocket around the folding knife I always kept on my person. Rocco had taken my gun, but he’d been too stupid to search for anything else.

“I dare many things,” she admitted in a husky drawl as she drew the gun down his neck, past his chest, to the seat of his pants where she tapped at the bulge there. “Most of which, Don Abruzzi, I do not think you’d like.”

“Try me,” he bit back, his grin feral with rabid lust.

This wasn’t a game he’d played with an attractive woman before and the perverseness of his nature made her all the more appealing. I knew he was already imagining how he could break her. What she might look like with tears in her eyes as he beat her or fucked her.

A growl built in my chest, fingers tightening around my knife. But Frankie caught my eye and stilled me with a subtle jerk of his chin.

The three of us would be dead if I acted on my jealousy and rage, and that would ruin everything.

“Abruzzi,” Pietro Cavalli snapped, the oldest man at the table taking umbrage with the entire situation. “Release Frankie Amato’s woman and let us get back to business.”

Rocco licked his lips as he took one long last look at Elena’s mouth, then patted her hip to release her from his lap. “Go with the women. I want to speak with your husband and his capo a moment more. But, beautiful, I am very glad you have come to my home. I promise to be a warm host.”

Elena didn’t hesitate. She stood from his lap without ceremony and walked through the doors Mirabella had disappeared through minutes before.

She didn’t even look over her shoulder at me as she went.

It wasn’t only Rocco, the stinking bastardo, who was aroused by Elena’s display of power, but it was easier for me to move on from it than the slightly panting Neapolitan Don.

Because I knew that the moment we left this place, Elena would be mine to do with as I pleased.

As she pleased.

And suddenly, the idea of a her trailing a gun down my body was hotly erotic.

“You heard me, Dante?” Rocco demanded. “I won’t have you thinking you’re the boss when you got no say here, understood?”

I smiled at him, a wolf hiding in plain sight among the sheep. “Of course, Don Abruzzi. I am merely a humble visitor.”

He stared at me suspiciously, but was quickly distracted by another capo who questioned if I would be invited to the funeral of a local capo.

He wondered why I was not properly insulted, effectively put in my place. How could I be so cool and self-assured when he had all the power and I would only exist here by his own grace?

He didn’t understand, as I did, that power wasn’t solely in action. It was in the timing of that action and the reason for taking it. He didn’t understand that he was showing his hand too soon, that now I knew just how unwilling he was to ever support my plans.

He didn’t know yet that his gauntlet had been properly thrown down and I was just waiting to pick it up when the time was right.

And then, he would know just how much power I had and how willing I was to wield it.

It was about more than just the politics of the Camorra.

He’d made it about Elena.

There was an old Neapolitan saying that perfectly suited the situation.

Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore.

Whoever is against this love, suffers and then dies.

Four

Dante

It was hours before the discussion finished.

Rocco wanted to posture, waxing fucking poetic about how much money he’d made in the years of my absence, how ruthlessly they’d gone after those who couldn’t pay their debts or refused to genuflect to his authority.