Page 115 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
An end date for my assignation with the capo.
So why did I feel so…out of sorts? Gloomier than I had in months, since well before I’d moved into Dante’s vivacious home.
Maybe that was it. I would just miss his company. I would miss his crew and our routine. I would miss Rora’s precocious chatter and inability to cook without making a mess. I’d miss Bambi’s sweet laughter and gentle presence. I’d even miss Tore, in a way, though we never conversed very much. I’d miss him because I liked to see the way he made Dante smile.
I groaned, dropping my head to the conference room desk.
This wasnotgood.
In the week since the car chase that had culminated in our tryst on his Ferrari, Dante and I had found time and reason to touch every day. He’d fucked me on the piano, in that colossal shower of his, and in his office pinned to the same bookshelf where he’d pressed that searing, significant little kiss to my neck weeks before. We came together explosively every single time.
I knew logically it was because Monica’s procedure had worked. The painful, stunting cysts on my ovaries that had kept me from feeling anything more than lukewarm pleasure were gone. After nearly two years of intense therapy, I was finally in a good place with my body and my past.
It could have been any man after that to make me orgasm.
But it wasn’t just any man.
It was Dante Salvatore, the black-eyed capo.
How could I have allowed this to happen?
I was in no way objective about him as a client anymore.
In fact, I was in danger of losing my blind respect for the law and completely compromising my previous hardline views of morality because the truth was, they were not always properly aligned.
Dante was one of the best men I knew, and I could admit that now.
But he was also, without any doubt, a criminal of the highest order.
The old Elena would have wanted him behind bars for life.
The new Elena couldn’t imagine even a single day without him.
It was a complete mess.
Worse, I was worried about him.
Worried that April 17thwould come and Yara, the legal team, and I would fail to defend him properly. That the most vital man I’d ever known would be forced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I simply couldn’t fathom that, and I didn’t want to.
So I found myself doing something incredibly stupid.
I collected my purse and coat and left the office just after noon. A cab took me deep into the Bronx, to a heavily Irish neighborhood with a local watering hole called Father Patrick’s.
I’d overheard Dante’s crew mention it in conjunction with Thomas Kelly, the Irish mobster.
The man my father was working with.
I told myself I was being stupid even as I paid for the cab and slipped into the cold air, the flurries falling densely now, so thick I could barely see across the street to the bar. I ducked into a little convenient store, bought a cheap, watery coffee, and stood at the window while I drank it. Watching.
Seamus Moore was a drunk and a gambler.
As a child, I could remember walking up to him passed out on the kitchen table surrounded by bottles. I’d always ushered him to bed before the others woke up, but the scent of hard liquor was burned into the grain of the wood table.
If this was where his crew hung out, he’d be there, even at just after one in the afternoon.
I only waited for forty minutes when I caught sight of vivid red hair tucked into a black knit cap. He moved quickly, braced against the wind, pausing for a moment at the bar door before ducking inside.
