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January 13 - January 21, 2025
To the strong women who have earned their armor by battling their entire lives for respect, admiration, and a love worthy of their greatness.
Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.” – Leonardo di Vinci
And Dante? A man who was well-known in criminal circles as the Devil of NYC?
He only had the audacity to tip his head back and roar with deeply inappropriate laughter in the hallway of the hospital intensive care unit.
“Ah,” he said in a low, muddled accent that was somehow British, American, and Italian all in one. “Elena Lombardi. I should have known she would send you.”
Well, he would find I was immune to his charm.
He wore a ring on one finger, a thick band of silver with some ornate crest in the middle. It shouldn’t have been attractive, as gaudy as it was, but it only served to draw attention to those powerful hands, the muscle dense in his palms, veins threading through the tops up into lightly furred forearms peeking out from the jumpsuit.
“And do you think law and morality are one and the same, Elena?”
Dante only quirked that thick right brow. “You see things in black and white,” he surmised, disappointment evident in his tone.
“I suppose you don’t.” “Black and white and red,” he said with a wink.
“I am the most honest man you’ll ever meet.” “Why do I find that hard to believe?” A slow blink as he scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Because you do not see me in color. You see what you want to see.”
“What a game this will be.” “Game?” “It’s usually so easy to corrupt people. I think you might prove a challenge.”
“You watch too many movies, Elena. In real life, the villain always wins because we are willing to do anything to succeed.” He paused as I did in the doorway. “I think you know a little something about that.”
The truth was, he really was too startlingly handsome to be a Made Man.
The most infamous mafioso of the 21st century in a time when most Americans believed the mafia to be a dead and fossilized creature, well, he was another beast entirely.
“You say nothing for a woman with eloquent eyes,” he said then, jarring me from my introspection.
He looked criminal, filled with wicked intent and handsome enough to tempt the pope to sin.
Instead, I gasped because the air compressed from my lungs by the weight of a large, incredibly heavy Italian man caging me against the seat. I tipped my face up, mouth open, eyes dry and prickling with shock. Dante caught my gaze, his own burning coal black and just as hot.
“It’ll heal,” he assured, swiping his thumb over the droplet of blood there then, shockingly, disgustingly, he brought it to his lush mouth and sucked it off.
Ambition versus morality. Both characteristics so elemental to me, I couldn’t fathom making a choice.
“Tesoro,” he murmured to her as he sat, already twisting to look at her. Cosima’s golden eyes glittered with the sheen of tears as she leaned forward to place her hand on the rail separating them. “Fratello.”
We didn’t need Dante accused of flirting with his brother’s wife on top of everything else,
“If only the judge could see how childish you are, maybe he would agree to try you as a minor,”
“This is not a playground,” Yara said without moving her lips, her gaze still locked on her files. “Exercise some decorum, please.”
“Why is that man staring at you?” Dante murmured, elbowing me softly in the side. I glared at him quickly before returning to my case notes. “He isn’t.” “A man knows when a beautiful woman is being admired,” Dante drawled in that bastardized accent. “It isn’t me he wants.”
Dante Salvatore, born as Edward Davenport, second son to one of the wealthiest peerages in England,
Including the fact that my fiancé had left me for my sister.
“You can cage the man, Elena, but not the idea. No collection of walls is strong enough to hold me or mine.”
“Have dinner with me tonight. It’s my last as a free man.”
So let me get right to it then. I have good news. What you have is a combination of various abnormalities that have made fertility and orgasm achievement difficult for you.
It was silly, really, that I should feel so emotional over potentially gaining the ability to orgasm after a lifetime of sex without true pleasure.
Lord knew, sex wasn’t everything.
The cat would resent me in the end, just as most people seemed to, and I didn’t think I could stand another rejection.
“Bellisima, Elena,” Dante Salvatore commended over the hearty sound of his applause as he stood leaning against the doorframe between my living room and hallway. “Who knew you had such beauty at your fingertips?”
“But I am an intruder bearing gifts, and I’ve never known an Italian woman to turn away a handsome man with food.”
“Oh, the sound of a curse on your lips is sinful, Elena. You should swear more often.”
“You know, it is the contrast between two opposites that heightens them both to keener glory. You shouldn’t be afraid to be coarse, just as I shouldn’t be afraid to be gentle. Too much of one thing is boring, Elena.”
“It is the end of a long day, Elena. Why don’t you sit down and help me eat all this food, hmm?”
I stared at him, finally pinpointing what it was exactly about Dante Salvatore that put me so ill at ease. He was utterly genuine. In his dominance, in his charm, in his concern.
“It is okay to admire me.” His voice bumped into my thoughts, upending a flush that spilled like the wine in his glass all the way from my cheeks to my breasts. “You are a Lombardi woman, and as such, I’m certain you have a deep appreciation for beauty.” “This is why I dislike Italian men. You’re so arrogant.” “Is it arrogance if it is based in fact? Why fake humility? Would you rather I deceive you than speak the truth?” he countered calmly.
“Si, these hands have seen violence and retribution, Elena, but does that mean they cannot also comfort a child, bring pleasure to a lover, or protect an innocent?”
his hand wrapped around my throat in a shockingly firm grip.
There was a flush in my cheeks I could feel and a heaviness in my gut I told myself was anger instead of something more carnal.
“Who knows, lottatrice, maybe you’ll find more pleasure being in bed with the devil than you would have imagined.”
The mafia of old died in the 80s after the trial of Arturo Accardi hit the final nail in the coffins of the Old Guard. The public hits, Made Men caricatures wrapped up in tailor-made Prada suits with gold chains and pockets bulging with rolls of fat hundreds, were gone. But the mafia itself could not be killed. Not then, certainly not now, and if I had to hedge a bet, not ever.
The mafia was founded on the idea of brotherhood and greed, both so essential to the human existence it could never be snuffed out.
The mafia was founded as a result of a greater power trying to cut Italians down, so Italians created their own organization to fight back and police their own.
This was why even after the massive governmental and police attacks on the American mafia in the 80s, families of organized crime not only still existed… They fucking thrived. Not even cancel culture could cancel the mafia.
Well, in this life, my third in thirty-five years, I was Dante Salvatore, capo of the Salvatore borgata. Charmingly mad, bad, and entirely too dangerous to know. Or so they said.
You have to earn respect to get respect. Is this a concept youth today cannot grasp?”
