Page 271 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
“Yes, yes, focus on Jaco. I’m fine.”
Adrenaline had eradicated whatever damage Agostino had done to me. I was pure energy, all of it focused on the dying man who had stood between Dante and a gun.
“Why?” Dante murmured, pressed his hands even harder around the seeping wound. “Why didn’t you just tell me, you stubbornstupido?”
Jaco’s lids fluttered, his breath a wet rattle. “Family shame. Started with my father. D-Didn’t want to hurt you, D.”
“Stai zitto,” he ordered. “Shut up. You can explain when you are healed.”
Jaco tried to laugh, but blood spurted from his mouth like a mini geyser. “’Fraid not,fratello. ’S okay. I go to Bambi and Papa.”
“Jacopo.” Dante’s voice was ravaged with tears, his face so taut in anger that I thought it would crack in two. “You idiot. I would have protected you all.”
A little smile teased the bleached edges of his mouth, but Jaco didn’t open his eyes again. Blood leaked from the corners of his lips and trailed down his chin.
“Call me your brother before I go,” he whispered, hardly any sound. “Forgive me.”
“Fratello,” Dante murmured, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Ti amo sempre, fratello mio.”
I will love you always, my brother.
Tears dripped down my own face as Dante held his cousin in his lap and watched him die, choking slightly on his blood, then going still. His face relaxed with peace, and Dante kissed him again on the forehead as he murmured a prayer for the dead in Italian under his breath.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
I knew they were coming closer because I’d left my phone in the closet.
My heart stopped, then restarted with an awful electric shock. I shoved to my feet and sprinted to the kitchen cabinet to throw the door open.
Aurora sat huddled in the shadows at the back, hugging her knees to her chest as she rocked herself, tears dripping from her cheeks.
“Vieni, gattina mia,” I murmured, bending into the cabinet to pick her up. “Come here, sweet girl.”
She clutched at me, her nails breaking the skin of my arms as she practically crawled up my body into my embrace. I held the back of her head and bottom as I stood, careful to keep her from seeing the dead bodies in the living room.
Although she had just spent the last half an hour in a closet listening to her mother, father, and uncle die.
She was so quiet, crying silently in my arms until Dante stalked forward, his face like a thunderclap. She didn’t flinch as he approached even though I almost did, he looked that ferocious. Instead, she turned in my arms and launched herself into his, sobbing the second she hit his chest.
He curled her against his big torso, curving his shoulders inward, wrapping her tightly in his arms as if he could shield her from the pain.
He couldn’t.
Neither of us could.
I moved into them, wrapping one arm around Dante’s waist and the other around Aurora, who grabbed my hand and lifted it to her cheek, cuddling it desperately.
We stood there together, silently, mourning, as the sirens grew louder, and finally, a red and blue block of light spiraled through the bloody crime scene.
Six months later.
Dante didn’t like it.
It was the only way, but I understood his reluctance. I never wanted to be within ten feet of another di Carlo ever again.
That Family had worked their asses off to ruin Dante’s Family. To ruin mine.
Now the New York Salvatores were a unit of four; Tore, Dante, Aurora, and me.
