Page 211 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“Si, sorella mia,” she crowed, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Xan says his scalp is itching from the dye, but other than that and a nasty cut on his cheek from some loose shrapnel, we are both fine. Fine and happy becauseit worked.”
I grinned, holding the phone with both hands, about to answer when the captain of the small boat in front of us straightened and turned to face us.
It wasn’t Dante, as I’d hoped, but Salvatore, his face creased into the widest grin I’d ever seen.
“Come,” he beckoned, tossing a rope to Frankie, who caught it and held it taut. “Hurry, Elena.”
“I have to go, Cosi,” I told her even as I moved to the boat and accepted Tore’s help getting in. “Grazie mille. Thank you for taking such a risk for me. It means more than I can say.”
“Then say nothing,” she suggested easily as if she hadn’t just put her and her husband’s life in danger to help us. “Both you and Dante have spent your life trying to protect Xan and me. It was our turn to return the favor.Buona fortunaand I’ll see you later.”
“Good luck,” I echoed. “Be safe.”
Frankie clapped his hands at me, so I tossed him the phone.
“Where are we going?” I demanded of either man, but they ignored me as they maneuvered a saddlebag from the Vespa onto the boat, and Tore started to push off the dock.
“Tore,” I called, nearly falling into the water as he gunned the engine forward.
Frankie tossed the rope into the back of the boat and waved jauntily as if we were off for an afternoon delight and not fleeing the scene of a crime.
Tore helped me into my seat and retook his spot at the wheel.
“Tranquilo,” he shouted over the noise of the boat cutting through the blue waves and tossing up foam. “Be patient.”
I made a face, but I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
The wind whipped over my body and through my hair, as violent as the conclusion of Dante and Mirabella’s fake wedding.
It had seemed so obvious when I looked at Mira in the alleyway that day. She had a passing resemblance to Cosima that would be easy to emphasize with the right dress and veil. Dante and Alexander were almost identical when you stripped away the different coloring and wildly opposing personalities.
A little hair dye late last night and a pair of contacts procured from Capo Leonardo Esposito’s wife who worked in film, and we were set.
My concern had been that Rocco would see through our ruse, but he was too simple a man to believe he could be fooled in such a way. Cosima kept mostly quiet, which fit Mira’s personality and didn’t alert Rocco to anything afoot.
Alexander and Cosima were the perfect stand-ins while Dante and Mirabella got the hell out of Dodge.
By the time the car bomb went off, Mira and Rosetta would have been halfway to France, equipped with enough money from Tore and Dante to set up a life for themselves and two passports with new identities.
Dante was supposed to meet me at the airfield.
Instead, I was on a boat with Tore in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
We had been driving for twenty or thirty minutes when Tore angled the boat back into the coastline, and the bright orange roofs of Sorrento came into view on the looming green mountains.
My heartbeat quickened.
“Why are we here?” I asked softly as the boat slowed and the engine quieted.
Tore turned to me, hair a windblown mess around his tanned face, and he smiled at me in a way that said he had a secret.
A secret he was dying to tell me, but wouldn’t.
“You know now that I have two children I was not allowed to parent for most of their lives. Only in the past few years did Cosima find out the truth about our relationship, and Caprice has asked me not to tell Sebastian.” His face spasmed with pain, then recovered its soft beauty. “But I was lucky enough to have a son by choice. A man who saw everything I was and everything I did, the bad and the ugly, yet he still chose to take my side. He chose to be my family, to be my son and my ally. I will never stop grieving for Chiara, but in death, she gave me the greatest treasure. Dante is the best man I know. It does not shame me to admit I learn fromhimevery day. I am proud to be the father of his heart, so proud I could burst.”
He hit his chest with his open palm and splayed his fingers, a dramatic, Italian movement that made me smile even as my chest panged with the beauty and pain of his words.
“I am very grateful now, too, that he has found hisanima gemella.”
