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

by Giana Darling

I’m ready. Because between all of the chaos, there’s you. And to me, there’s nothing better in this world than you.”

Two broken and battered people made whole by love.

This love was all teeth and claws, fight and passion.

Light was easy to 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.

I’d never been a lucky man, but standing there with Elena in my arms in the only place that had ever really felt like home even with enemies all around us, I felt like a fucking god.

I was wearing one now, a tiny red number that hardly covered my small breasts, let alone my groin and buttocks. Normally, I never would have something like that, but the way Dante’s eyes heated like lit coals made me feel like a goddess in it.

“I am going to take you to the most beautiful place in the south, water you with the finest wine and the best food you’ve ever tasted, praise you until you feel like regina mia, and then I am going to bring you back home and fuck you

“Sei cosi bella,”

Is it his voice you hear in your head telling you that you’ll never be worthy of love?

“Jail isn’t enough for this brutto figlio di putanna,” he growled so harshly it must have hurt his throat. “He deserved to be killed slowly, death by a thousand fucking paper cuts. I’ll take his eyes and his balls, his fingernails, then each section of his fingers, knuckle by knuckle, finger by fucking finger. I’ll pour acid in his wounds until he can’t scream anymore, and then, because he won’t need it ever again, I’ll rip out his goddamn motherfucking throat.”

“You need me to kill this man to prove to you that you are worthy of love. You are worthy of passion. You are worthy of respect. In all my life of hardships, Elena Lombardi, you are the truest thing that has ever been worth fighting for. You deserve the loyalty and love you give to everyone but yourself, and now I know, this figlio di cane made you feel like a beggar when you are a motherfucking queen.”

“I don’t know if killing him will make that all go away.” “It’s a start,” he promised, his hands so gentle on my cheeks even though the rest of his body still quaked with bottled-up fury. “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? I did.

He grabbed my hand and pressed it hard over his madly beating heart. “This beats for you. It bleeds for you. I am yours. Your sword, your champion, your lover, and your home. You don’t understand this yet, but I will never hurt you, Elena. I only ever hurt for you because fuck me, you’ve been through too much already. I will only ever hurt those who hurt you because I love you, and I won’t let anyone else ever get away with putting pain in your heart without consequences. Mi senti?”

“I love you, Elena,” he said, the words like four punches straight to my chest, breaking through the cage of my ribs to directly impact with my tender, eager heart. “Mi senti?” “Ti sento,” I promised him, licking the tears from my mouth. “I hear you.” “You believe me?”

“Yes,” I hiccoughed, clutching at his chest with one hand and his hand on my cheek with the other. At that moment, I couldn’t fathom him ever letting me go. “I believe you.”

“Cuore mia, my heart breaks for you,” he whispered raggedly before kissing the tears from my cheeks. “I won’t let yours break again.” “Okay,” I whispered through my strangled throat. “Okay, Dante.”

“Mia bella lottatrice,” he murmured like a prayer across my lips before he kissed me. My beautiful fighter.

“How is it that even with enemies at the gate, I feel at peace with you?”

“Che coraggio,” he murmured for the second time that night as he stepped back to study me. What courage. Warmed through with his praise, already wet and pulsating, I demanded, “Touch me.” “Like this?” he teased, stepping forward to run his hand down the middle of my chest, following the plunging neckline of the designer dress. “Di più,” I ordered, glaring at him. Harder. He gently tweaked my nipples through the fabric. “Va bene cosi?” Like this? “No,” I ground out, arching my back to get closer. “More, Dante.” “You want me to fuck you hard, my Lena?” he asked darkly, twisting my nipples tight between his knuckles until I hissed. “Because after tonight, I need to fuck you until you feel me on every inch of your skin.” “Yes,” I agreed. “Do it.”

“In Italian,” he coaxed, letting go of my breasts. “Scopami, per favore.” Fuck me, please. His grin flashed in the moonlight.

“Cazzo, come sei bagnata,” he growled over the wet slap of his balls against my drenched core. Fuck, you’re so wet. I was. The sloppy sounds and smooth, liquid glide of his hot length inside me were almost too much to bear. “I’m going to come so hard,” I whimpered, a little scared by the looming weight of my climax bearing down on me. “Come with me,” he ordered, taking my mouth for a moment even though we were both breathing too hard to make it last. “Milk my cock with your sweet, tight cunt.”

“A Don,” I corrected, gasping as he bent to collect me in his arms to carry me back to the house. It was archaic, but I was grateful because it seemed my bones had melted. “A Don and his Donna.”

I didn’t need my own happiness because I could borrow yours.

“What else are you keeping from me?” I whispered, the words too hot in my cold mouth. “Do you really intend to marry Mirabella? You’ll just keep me as some mistress on the side because you know I love you enough to stick around? You’re wrong, Dante. I could never do that. I won’t watch you kiss another woman or have kids with anyone but me.”

“He doesn’t feel that way about her anymore,” Tore interjected. “It’s obvious to everyone with eyes that he’s never felt this way about anyone before.”

There was something there. He doesn’t care about her like that anymore.

He’d shut down because once, however long ago, maybe even still, he’d been in love with my sister.

“You loved her?” I whispered so quietly, he had to read my lips. “No, never like this.”

“Once, maybe, I thought of more, but never ever came of it. Cosima was always in love Alexander. And now I know how sciocco I was because the way I love you makes the possibility of ever having loved someone else or ever loving anyone else again impossible.”

“You own me, Elena. You and only you.”

Was it impossible to find a man who hadn’t loved one of my sisters first? Was I always destined to be second choice?

“I’ve never been the first choice,” I croaked. “And I won’t settle anymore for second place. I need some space. Don’t follow me, Dante.”

I had nothing to grasp but my own turmoil. Seamus was dead because I’d killed him. Killed a man. Killed my own father. Cosima was my half sister because Mama had fallen in love with a Camorra capo and irrevocably changed our lives in doing so.

Dante had loved her once. Of course, he had, almost every man I’d ever known had fallen in love with Cosima at one point or another. She was everything I wasn’t, likeable and loving, passionate and sensual, gorgeous and wise.

At some point in their shared history, he’d thought himself in love with her. Like Christopher and Daniel with Giselle. I was just the second-string sister.

Mirabella Ianni gaped at me over her lover’s shoulder, her pink mouth still wet from her kisses.

“My Lena, lottatrice mia,” he murmured as he clutched me to him like a life raft. “You have to know, please know, I love you better than anyone else. I love you better even than I love myself.”

“I promised I wouldn’t hurt you and I’m sorry. I knew if you found out, it would damage the truth between us so I didn’t tell you about Cosima. I didn’t tell you because those feelings were nothing. How can you compare the beauty of a single bulb to the brilliance of light from the sun?”

“You leave without a guard again, lottatrice, I’ll tan your ass so red you won’t be able to sit for a week,”

“But to betray you would be betraying myself. I won’t do that to either of us.”

“The only thing I’m sure of is Lena. No matter what happens, I won’t let her go. I’ll kill anyone who tries to come between us.”

“Lombardi women are worth all the treasure in this world.”

“The moment you think you know Elena, she surprises you with more,” I told Frankie. “Think about how much she’s changed since we first met her. I shouldn’t say changed, really, because it was already all there beneath the ice and scar tissue. No matter how angry she might be with me, she’ll do what needs to be done when we return home.”

Elena became mine the day she got on the plane, and I am never going to give her back.”

If I wanted to stay alive and keep her out of jail, Elena Lombardi would have to become my wife.

If Dante wanted to drag me into the bowels of hell, I’d go with him gladly. Love makes animals of us all, all instinct and heart with no capacity for reason.

I’d marry Dante in a back alley or a parking lot if it meant being his legally.

I wanted to be his lottatice, regina, and moglie. His fighter, his queen, and his wife.

“You’re a good girl.” I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped. “Oh, Don Abruzzi, I promise you, I’m not.”

Only a mafioso would joke after a freaking car bomb went off.