Page 54 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
I’d even…come to appreciate Dante the way one might appreciate a worthy adversary. After all, what was a hero without her villain?
But it seemed even that was crumbling to dust.
Dante has promised a game of corruption, and this was his trump card.
How could I remain unmoved by his heady charisma and the toxic fumes of his criminality if I was forced into such proximity with him for the next six months to three years? Would I have to stay that long if the trial was postponed as such cases often were?
What about my apartment?
Suddenly, the echoing loneliness of my space felt like an Eden, and through sheer coercion, Dante had force-fed me the forbidden fruit and damned me to his hell.
I walked the streets aimlessly, letting the idiosyncrasies of each neighborhood I passed through lend me their solace. From the moment I’d gotten off the plane and cabbed to our new home in New York, I’d fallen in love with the ever-changing nature of the city. It reminded me, in some ways, of myself. I wanted to be like the city herself, all things to all people depending on where you looked.
But as I walked, I realized I’d lost that somewhere in the last few years. Instead of being multifaceted like a prism, refracting light and beauty, I’d compressed in on myself and stagnated like coal where I would have been diamante.
I felt so lost in the maze of my own mind, I stopped seeing my surroundings and the hundreds of people who passed me. One of the things I loved most about the city was the anonymity you could experience in the teeming streets, the fact that I was a crying mess and no one stopped to stare or inquire about me.
It reinforced what I already knew.
I was an island, and I was okay that way.
I didn’t need anyone to look out for me. I didn’t need to be coddled or protected the way the entire family had done to Giselle for her whole life.
I didn’t needanyonefor anything.
By the time I reached my brownstone, my shoulders were pinned back, my chin high, my lips compressed around my righteous anger.
I didn’t have to cave in to this bullshit.
Yara was only acting on Dante’s behalf, and he was only acting like the capo he’d been for years.
But I wasn’t his soldier, and I didn’t have to go down without a fight.
There was a kernel of smug satisfaction in my heart as I walked up the stairs and unlocked my front door.
“I’ll wait here for you to collect your things,” a voice said as darkness separated from itself on the corner of my landing, and a man solidified from the shadows.
My heart slammed against my ribs, desperate to flee from the threat, but a small part of me recognized the voice.
“Frankie,” I greeted coldly. “Do you make it a habit of scaring women half to death?”
His smile was a flash of white in the darkness. “You’d be surprised.”
“I doubt that.”
Ignoring him, I pushed into my house and closed the door.
He could wait there all night.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
Twenty minutes later, I was drinking a glass of wine in the kitchen eating leftover noodles from the Thai place around the corner when the phone rang.
I answered by saying, “You might want to get Frankie’s address changed. If he insists on waiting for me to go with him, he’ll be living on my porch for the foreseeable future.”
And then I hung up.
When the phone rang again minutes later, I found my hunger had fled and tipped the rest of my dinner in the garbage before topping off my wine and moving into the living room to watch the latest episode ofThe Bachelor.
