Page 147 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“I’m here to negotiate like men. I’m here to propose a change to the New York outfit that will mean millions more in cash lining the pockets of your Armani suits,capisci?”
He stared up at me, fury seething in the depths of those dark eyes. His breath was heavy between his lips because he was getting old, and he’d always been unfit. Because he was scared of me. There was no denying my physical dominance over him, and I knew he would do everything in his power to make me feel small so he could feel bigger and better than me.
I wasn’t intimidated by the prospect.
In thirty-five years of dangerous living, no one had gotten the better of me yet, and Rocco wasn’t clever enough to do what no one else had.
So I smiled down into his face, the expression slicing my face in two like the sharp edge of a blade.
“You wanna play, Rocco?” I whispered just for him. “Or you wanna make this as easy as possible for the both of us?”
Unsurprisingly, his eyes darted over my shoulder to peer at Elena briefly before reaffixing to mine. He canted his weak chin in the air, and with one simple sentence, he declared war.
“Come and meet your future wife, Dante. She’s missed you. While you are getting reacquainted, I will entertain the lovely Elena.”
Rocco lived five minutes fromSpaccanapoli, a main thoroughfare in Naples. The villa was flashy, sticking out like a sore thumb from the more modest pastel and sun-baked buildings on the rest of the street.
Stupid for a mafioso.
The kind of prideful senselessness that decimated numbers in both the New York and Italian Camorra in the last few decades.
Not to mention, it wasn’t particularly safe. Most high-ranking members of the outfit had well-protected, isolated homes in the countryside where they could spot an intruder or the police from a mile away.
Obviously, Rocco thought it made him seem fearless to live his life amid the masses. It made him feel even more untouchable.
No one was untouchable.
And I’d prove that to him before long.
He ushered us into a wood-paneled dining room filled to capacity with a massive, ornately carved table that seated twenty. Every seat but two were filled with a variety of Made Men. His capos, all focused exclusively on me as I entered the room behind theircapo dei capi. This wasn’t New York. Even though most of these men raked in serious cash with their schemes for the Camorra, many of them wore old sweaters and stained tees. The ones who tried to impress had gaudy gold jewelry nestled in their chest hair and on their furred knuckles and the hanging lobes of their ears. If you wore a multi-thousand-dollar suit the way Rocco and I did in this city, you’d likely get mugged, even if you were a capo.
I recognized some of the men from Tore’s reign as king, but most were new faces, their expressions tight with bitterness.
Ah, so Rocco had replaced those loyal to the old king and told some stories about me in my absence to the new recruits.
This would be harder than I’d imagined.
To make matters worse, the door across from us swung open as I took the seat Rocco gestured for me to have, and a familiar woman walked into the room.
Mirabella Ianni was a local beauty. Not the way Cosima had been, her name taking on a mythological cast because, for some inexplicable reason, Don Salvatore had forbidden anyone to touch her. But she was known from puberty as premium wife material. She was full-figured, her lush chest swelling over the edge of her neckline, the flesh damp with sweat probably from laboring in the kitchen for these men. Her thick hair curled from the humidity around her heart-shaped face, and those big brown eyes, thickly lashed, were limpid as they snagged mine across the room.
“Dante,” she breathed softly, an exhale more than a word.
Her fingers trembled as she lifted her hand to clutch the small golden cross at her throat. The men around us chuckled at her reaction, thinking she was a romantic girl overwhelmed by her reintroduction to a lost love.
I knew the truth.
She trembled because she feared me.
She always had.
After a brief hesitation, she moved around the table to serve espresso to each of the men from a tray on the sideboard. When ordered, she carefully balanced the tray on one hip to cut a spiral of rind from a lemon for the men to rub on the lip of their cups or offered the small bottle of Sambuca to add a splash of licorice liquor to the bitter contents. She handled her subservience deftly, with an ease that spoke of lifelong ritual. It was as beautiful as it was sad.
I’d spent too long in America where the women were fierce and entitled, always climbing, grabbing, scratching. I’d learned to find the beauty in their tenacity and verve, and I’d forgotten the gentle loveliness of women who yearned for less.
“Mira.” I inclined my head at her before I cut her out of my thoughts. “Don Abruzzi, gentlemen, if you have a place Elena could wait while we discuss business, let us proceed.”
“No,” Rocco decided with a mean little grin. “The girl stays.”
