When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love 2)

Dante’s full mouth compressed into a flat line. “Not exactly.”

I blinked at him. “Okay…Is there a way to turn the plane around?”

He chuckled, leaning close to brush his nose over mine in a gesture that was achingly sweet.

“You are with me now, si? You are mine as I am yours. I told you once, I am the most honest man you will ever meet so do not ask questions you do not want the answers to.” He paused, his black eyes all-consuming. “So I’m asking you, how much do you want to know?”

Unconsciously I picked at a hangnail as I considered his question.

I could physically feel the conflict inside me, the sharp edge of jostling swords and the agony of pierced flesh. My body was a battle zone for the thoughts raging in my head.

I didn’t want to be a bad person. I never had, which wasn’t to say I’d succeed in that.

I’d been bad.

But I’d always had this fairy tale ideal of good and bad, pure and evil. I’d assumed I would always be on the ‘right’ side of the law and morality. But when one contradicted the other, I found myself at a cross roads.

And Dante was asking me to pick one path and journey down its shadowy corridors alongside him. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I could be with Dante romantically and not become entangled in his underworld dealings.

The truth was, it had already happened.

I’d unwittingly become the right-hand woman to his consigliere when I took on his RICO case. I’d befriended his closest associates and overheard information in passing that could make the case I was an accessory to criminal activity.

I’d shot a man.

Seamus Moore was dead because of me.

But then…hadn’t I already been embroiled in the mafia and crime because of that same man? The father who sold my youngest sister into sexual slavery at the age of eighteen in order to repay his gambling debts? The same father who brought Christopher into our lives and consequently into my bed.

It was ironic in a way, to think that I’d eschewed all things morally grey and certainly criminal because my father was a deplorable human only to meet a man who was both of those things yet the best person I’d ever known.

It was mind boggling and I couldn’t sort the threads of my thoughts well enough to give Dante an eloquent answer.

“I want to be with you,” I promised solemnly as I cupped his jaw, running my thumb over the jutting bone and the sharp stubble there. “I just don’t know what that means for me. If I stand beside you the way you might want me to, it means I could never be a lawyer again. You have to understand, the dream of being a lawyer has tethered me all my life. It–it would be difficult to give it up.”

Difficult, but maybe not impossible.

I had to re-examine why I was a lawyer and if there was some way I could do good in another capacity.

Dante’s laugh was hard and hollow, a spent casing clicking against the floor. “We are going into the belly of the beast, Lena. I’ll do my best to shield you from the brunt of it, but I can’t make any guarantees. If people know you are my woman, they’ll assume you stand at my side.”

“Don’t most mafioso’s wives and girlfriends stay one step behind them?” I quipped lamely, trying to pull the frown from between his thick brows.

He blinked at me solemnly, those long lashes absurdly thick over those fathomless eyes. “I’m not most mafiosos. I thought we had already established that.”

It was my turn to blink hard, this time on a wince.

I didn’t mean to continue to judge him, but a lifetime of carefully constructing my own moral compass made it difficult to curb my impulsive reactions.

His sigh wafted over my forehead, stirring my hair. “You are here with me when I never thought you would take such a risk. For now, that is more than enough.”

“I don’t want to let you down,” I admitted even though it hurt, the words torn straight from the fabric of my heart. “I’ve let my loved ones down all my life and I can’t bear the thought of doing the same to you.”

“Then don’t,” he said simply, palming my throat and dipping down to kiss my brow. “But Elena, you should know, I have never met a woman with such coraggio. And I have no doubt that whoever you felt you let down in your past let you down as well, si?”

I thought about Daniel and Giselle, but the sour tang of bitterness and remorse didn’t wash over my tongue the way it normally did.

“You give me too much credit,” I murmured, avoiding that penetrating gaze that seemed capable of x-raying more than just my bones.