Page 126 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“Love?” he echoed my shocked thought, then laughed so hard he almost lost his balance. “My fighter? My cold fish? You never loved me, and you never loved your family. You wouldn’t have betrayed me if you did.”
“You betrayed me first,” I cried out. Tugging at the bonds, I wanted to claw his eyes out. “You betrayed all of us by gambling and lying and putting us in jeopardy every day of our lives. Even now, you. Are. Still. Doing. It.”
Pure malice overtook his features a second before his hand lashed out across my face. Pain exploded under my left eye, and my head cranked to the side so hard, my neck spasmed.
“Puttanna ingrata,” he snarled into my face. “You don’t know half of what I’ve suffered for you.”
He was close enough.
I slammed my head down, my forehead connecting with his face perfectly. Stars wheeled over my vision at the impact, leaving me dazed, but I was aware of Seamus cursing, holding his bleeding nose.
“You bitch,” he shouted through the blood.
Kelly opened the door from the other room and popped his head in to check on us. “Is everything—”
Pop.
Pop.
They both froze. Kelly’s phone to his ear, and Seamus’s hands to his nose.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Even I recognized the gunfire.
It was close too, close enough that the neighborhood dog couldn’t hear the muffled shots. They were already just outside the house.
A grin sliced open my face like a raw wound. “They’re here.”
Kelly cursed, shouting for his men as he tossed his phone and grabbed the gun from his belt before dashing up the stairs.
Seamus stayed with me.
Calmly, he moved to the table in the corner again. I thought he was grabbing a gun, but when he turned there was a roll of duct tape in one hand. He moved closer to me and smiled through the mess of blood on his face. “Your capo is going to die today, Elena, and I’m going to be the one to kill him. You deserve it for choosing him over your own father.”
I opened my mouth to protest when he hit me again, this time a glancing blow to the same cheek. My jaw felt as if it came unhinged. Fire and tears flooded my eyes at the bright, brilliant pain. Before I knew what he was doing, he smacked duct tape on my mouth.
“Such a disappointment,cara,” he said sadly as he cupped the same cheek he had just hit twice. His thumb rubbed over my split cheekbone, my blood staining his skin. “I’m sorry I failed you and Cosima. You could have been so much more if I’d been given the chance…” He trailed off with a little sigh, then backed away.
I cursed at him from behind the tape, struggling against my bonds even though it hurt.
It was almost impossible to fathom the level of narcissism it took for Seamus to be able to spin his life story into a tragedy inflicted against him as the victim. My blood boiled as I watched him move to the table. He took a gun out of a drawer, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then put one finger to his lips as he slipped beneath the table into the shadows underneath.
Panic seized me in its electric hold as I realized his plan.
He’d known Dante would come for me.
He’d known he would get inside the house.
He’d counted on it.
He was going to hide in the shadows until Dante reached me and then kill him.
Pure, cold terror moved through me unlike anything I’d ever known before, not at the hands of Christopher or any of the mafiosos in Napoli.
I could only hope that Dante had stayed at his apartment, properly attached to his ankle monitor, waiting for his men to bring me back safely.
But a small voice in my gut told me differently.
