When Villains Rise (Anti-Heroes in Love, #2)

by Giana Darling

“You have a need for a man like Dante, you understand? Daniel Sinclair was looking for peace, figlia mia, but you? You were always looking for chaos, si? Someone who makes you feel alive.” So alive I burn.

The truth was, validation was important to me. I’d grown up the second son of a powerful man, the spare to the prodigal heir. No one had their eyes on me, and it chafed more than I cared to admit. I was shaped by that need for glory, so much so that it was entirely too easy to settle for infamy in the place of fame.

you must not forget that while the cats are away, the mice will play,”

“Fuck my sterling reputation,” she snapped, the flames of my rage catching on her edges and igniting her entire body. “I worked so hard for that, and it got me nowhere. Unhappy and alone. I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. No one but you and the family we love.”

Maybe every bad thing that had happened to us, maybe every single time we’d been made to feel like the villains of our own life story, we had been moving farther along the path to this. To us. Two broken and battered people made whole by love.

This love was dark. It was night as black as my eyes and as stormy as hers. It was seeing the shadows in each other’s souls and being drawn into their abyss. It was knowing we would never understand each other, not fully, and it was loving that challenge as much as the mystery. This was what happened when two villains fell in love.

“All your life, men have hurt you. I didn’t understand until now. Seamus, Christopher, Daniel. None of them showed you how goddamn tragically beautiful you are, Elena. But I will. I’ll prove it to you every single day until I die, mi senti?” Do you hear me?