Page 145 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
At that moment, I heard a series of mechanic clicks like locks sliding into place.
I frowned as I blinked away the sunspots, but Dante was already pulling me hard back into his chest, then slightly behind his body.
Finally, I understood why.
The clicks weren’t a series of locks turning.
But a series of guns loading.
“Ciao, Don Salvatore!” someone called warmly in Italian, a man who stepped out from the congregation of armedsoldatito stalk toward the stairs leading up to the plane.
Dante didn’t move a muscle as the short, portly man with diamonds in both ears lumbered up the stairs and came to a stop before us. He had small dark eyes, wet black hair like an oil slick and just as greasy. With a jovial grin, he lifted a massive handgun in his left hand and pressed it as high as he could reach on Dante, right on the soft underside of his chin.
“Benvenuto a Napoli.”
Welcome home.
Rocco Abruzzi was a typical Made Man. In it for the cash, the girls, and the power. He had two ex-wives and a current one, each younger than the last, as well as two mistresses he kept housed on opposite sides of town. One was classy, the other trashy, a staple of Piazza Garibaldi where the seedy side of the city thrived. He’d grown up in deep poverty the way many Camorrasoldatidid, but the reason he thrived and rose in the ranks when so many didn’t was because Rocco had a mean streak a mile wide. He loved to hit his wives, execute his own hits even though Dons never carried out their own kill orders as a rule, and he was known as “Rocky Rocco” by his street thugs because he’d been known to beat a man just for looking at him wrong.
He was dangerous, not because he was clever but because he wasnot.
He was bad-tempered and quick to react as a startled rattlesnake. He was feared, not revered, but in Naples, that was enough to secure you a fuck ton of power.
When Tore and I left for New York, we’d promoted “Bon Bon” Flavio Marconi ascapo dei capi.
Two months later, Bon Bon was at the bottom of the Bay of Naples and Rocco Abruzzi, a capo known for his cruelty and profitable gambling operation, was the sudden king of mafia kings.
This was not good for me.
Rocco never liked Tore. He thought he was soft because he tried to protect the Lombardi women from Seamus’s gambling debts and resulting punishments.
Rocco hated me.
I was younger, fitter, and next in line for the underworld throne. Once, years ago, Rocco had put a cigar out on my hand during a poker game. I’d been twenty-something, young and still wet behind the ears after joining Tore’s operation.
I hadn’t flinched, and I hadn’t snitched.
Instead, I beat Rocco at his poker game and left with a circular burn mark in the meat of my thumb to remind me of another debt he would pay one day.
I still intended to extract my retribution, but my entire plan hinged on getting Don Abruzzi’s good favor.
So when he pressed a gun to my chin and smiled like a madman up into my face, I didn’t snap his neck for threatening me and frightening Elena the way I wanted to. Instead, I let my hands fall from Elena’s tense form and moved forward slowly but deliberately to kiss Rocco on one flaccid cheek and then the other.
“Ciao, fratello mio,” I murmured to the older man as I respectfully greeted him. “It is a pleasure to be back on Italian soil. What a warm greeting you’ve arranged for us.”
Rocco’s eyes narrowed so they nearly disappeared under his sagging brow. “You mocking me, Salvatore?”
I blinked innocently. “I’m many things, Don Abruzzi, but an idiot has not been one of them for a number of years.”
He studied me for a long moment, then looked over my shoulder at Elena, his features going slack at the sight of her beauty.
“Who do we have here, huh? A present for your host?” he dared to ask.
I forced a deep breath through my nose, my hands shaking with the urge to throttle his fleshy neck. “No.”
“Not gonna introduce me?” he demanded, his look souring as his gaze swept back to me. “I got a right to know who’s in my territory.”
There wasn’t time for deliberation. I cursed myself for not talking about it with her on the plane, but I hadn’t wanted to overwhelm Elena when the last forty-eight hours of her life had consisted of being abducted, shooting her father, and running away with a fugitive.
