Page 37 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
I was looking forward to furthering my studies.
“You wouldn’t. Success means too much to you,” I noted, leaning back against the island and crossing my arms over my chest. Her eyes dipped to the swell of muscles beneath the fabric before she could curb the impulse.
“You’re one to talk.”
I inclined my head. “The drive for success motivates me,si. Not more so than the drive for happiness.”
“They are one and the same,” she concluded with a shrug that was the physical expression of the word “duh.”
“They are not. Success is defined by society. Happiness is defined by our hearts and minds. I think,lottatrice, you would be much happier if you learned to value the latter.”
“Don’t call me that and don’t preach to me,capo. You’re in no position to offer me advice.”
“Am I not?” I opened my hands wide to gesture to the party surging around us. “I am a successful businessman with powerful friends who support me even when I am on trial for murder.”
“Success,” she countered, lifting her hand to show me her red fingertips as she counted them off. “A fancy apartment, probably a few ridiculous sports cars, enough money to bribe these powerful ‘friends’ to look the other way from your misdeeds.” She raised an eyebrow. “Would you like me to call you a hypocrite yet?”
I laughed, finally having fun at my own party, and it was at the hands of the most unlikely woman I’d ever met.
“Who is making my son laugh?” Tore said as he stepped up beside me and clapped a hand on my shoulder.
I watched, fascinated, as Elena’s entire demeanor changed. Her bristling, hostile energy cooled, her features relaxed into an expression of polite interest and even her stance shifted, weight distributed evenly, and shoulders rolled stiffly back.
She smiled slightly at the only man I considered my father and offered her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you officially, Mr. Salvatore. I am Elena Lombardi, one of Edward’s lawyers.”
I rolled my eyes at her deliberate use of my old name, but Tore only laughed and accepted her slim hand between both of his, turning on his mega-watt charm.
The same charm that had seduced Elena’s mama into an affair. Based on Elena’s placid greeting, it was safe to assume she had no idea she was talking to the father of her two youngest siblings.
“You are many more things than Dante’s lawyer,” Tore was saying as he patted her hand in his. “One might say we are old family friends. Please, call me Tore.”
Something dark flickered in her eyes, but her lips were plastic molded around the shape of a stock smile. “If you’d like. Of course, I heard of you in my childhood.”
There was an underlying sentence that seemed to echo as boldly as if it had been spoken.
You were the orchestrator of the nightmares in my youth.
Of course, she didn’t know that when Tore had arrived in Napoli years after his affair with Caprice, he was as shocked as anyone to discover the twin children with his golden eyes in her home. He’d done everything in his power short of losing that power to shield the Lombardis from Seamus’s dangerous dealings with the Camorra.
But he didn’t say anything about it.
Instead, he took the silent hit she doled out like he deserved it.
Anger sparked in my blood.
It was one thing for her to judge me but quite another for her to skewer Tore with her misplaced hatred.
“He did more for your family than you know,” I cut in, glowering down at her from my advanced height. “Do not cast stones when you are blind to your surroundings.”
Elena ignored me, those gray eyes thunderous as they stared at Tore. “You might not remember this, but I was there the day you dragged Cosima from my mother’s house in Naples.”
I remembered that day too. Alexander had sent Cosima back home to Italy in order to get information on Tore and me, information about our mother’s death. It was that evening that Cosima learned the truth about what happened to Chiara and the truth about her paternity.
Elena didn’t know anything about it, about Tore and Cosima’s father-daughter relationship or that Cosima had been sold to Alexander at the tender age of eighteen as his sex slave to satisfy his role in an ancient secret society, the Order of Dionysus.
Truly, she didn’t know a thing about her own sister.
Either of them, probably.
