Instantly, she melted. All that dangerous revolve dissolving on my tongue like fucking candy, sweet and addictive. I ate at her until she trembled. Unable to resist, I used my other hand, still cradling the dismantled gun, to palm her sex. It was as wet as I’d known it would be, her juices slick on my fingers, on the weapon that had been intended to kill us both.
When I broke away, she clutched me close, her breath as harsh as mine.
“No one will take you from me without a fight,” she whispered vehemently, the nails of the hand she had curled around my neck sinking into my skin so I hissed.
“Anyone who tries to come between our love will suffer then die,” I swore to her, kissing her again because I was high on adrenaline, on the scent of her damp pussy in my nose and the victory of a fight won in my blood.
I almost took her right then and there, my cock hard as stone in my boxer briefs, but I knew the intruder would wake any second and I wasn’t going to take chances on her safety. So I stepped away with effort, leaving her hands clasping at air, her breath stuttering through her swollen lips.
“Later, lottatrice,” I promised as I went to the chair near the doors and collected the sash from Elena’s robe draped over the back. Crouching beside the man, I rolled him to collect his hands behind his back and secure them in a handcuff knot. “Let me question this figlio di puttana and then I’ll finish what we’ve started, va bene?”
She studied me with the body for a moment, something dark working behind her gaze, and then she moved to my side. I watched slightly stupefied as she bent to pick up the intruder’s feet.
When I didn’t move, she raised a cool red brow at me. “Well, come on. The sooner you find out who sent this asshole, the better.”
A hard bullet of laughter exploded passed my lips, but I swallowed my amusement down with Elena scowled. Fuck me, but she was the perfect.
Not for everyone.
Fuck that.
I didn’t want some generic girl who’d bore me in three days.
Elena was perfect for me and only me.
Unflappable under pressure, an unbroachable vault for the secrets of the Family, passionate beneath that cool exterior, and smart enough to give me whiplash.
A dream coming true.
No, I’d never even thought to dream of such a woman. My imagination was incapable of forming the complicated layers of Elena Lombardi, but I’d happily spend the rest of my days carefully unearthing them like an archeologist.
“Dante?” she probed when I just stared at her.
I lunged forward to stamp a hard kiss to her unpainted lips. “Sei magnifica.”
A little grin whispered over her lips before she nodded curtly at me to pick up the man’s torso. “You can prove to me just how much after we deal with this stronzo.”
“Be still my heart,” I joked, clutching my chest as I staggered back toward his head.
She rolled her eyes.
And as we carried the body of a man who had just attempted to assassinate us to the basement of Tore’s villa, I laughed.
I laughed and I laughed, because what a fucking adventure life was with Elena at my side.
His name was Umberto Arno.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four years old, but then, in his profession of contract killing, not many men lived longer than that.
Tore had recognized him instantly as one of Rocco Abruzzi’s men, though he was also a favorite of Pietro Cavalli.
I stared at him impassively as he choked on a sob, blood bubbling out of his mouth and sliding down his chin into the saturated fabric of his black sweater. His right eyebrow was split, his mouth broken open like an eyelet pattern by the force of his teeth cutting through the skin when I hit him.
Perhaps I’d gone a little overboard.
But then again, the brutto figlio di puttana bastardo hadn’t just come for me. He’d put Elena in danger.
On a long sigh, I reared my torso back and brought the crushing weight of my fist down on his right cheek. It crumpled beneath my force.
Umberto let out an animal wail.
I wiped the blood from my knuckles in his sweat dampened hair.
“I told you,” he panted, leaning limply forward in the chair I’d tied him to. “No one sent me.”
“And I told you,” I said amiably before I wrenched his head back with a fist in his hair. He squinted at me through the sweat and blood. “I don’t believe you. You had a reason for coming here tonight.”
He glared at me, one eye nearly swollen shut.
I considered him, irritated that Made Men in Italy were made of sterner stuff than their American counterparts. I snapped my fingers at Nico, who lingered in the corner with Frankie and Tore. He left the room immediately to do my bidding.
Umberto’s eyes followed him, then shot back to me.
“Don’t worry about him,” I suggested as I pulled a chair over the tile floor just in front of him and sat down in it, leaning forward in faux comradery. “Worry about yourself. You’re young. Maybe you haven’t heard of me. I’ve been known by a lot of different names in my life, Umberto, but in Napoli they called me ‘principe ereditario dell'inferno’.”
The Crown Prince of Hell.
“Do you know why they called me that?” He didn’t respond. Blood dripped into his left eye and turned it vampiric. “Because I was an aristocrat, but I much preferred using my silver spoon to carve out my enemy’s eyes and shove them down their throat.”
Perfectly on cue, Nico reappeared through the door holding a blow torch and a grapefruit spoon with a serrated edge.
Umberto’s eyes widened just slightly at the sight before they flicked to me.
I nodded soberly. “You might know a few of the men I left blind and broken before I moved to America. Danny ‘Greaser’ Ricci, Alessandro Tedesco, Thumper Greco.” I paused, took the spoon and torch from Nico and flicked on the gas, flame bursting out of the nozzle between my face and Umberto’s. “You’ll live, but I hope you took a good long look at your wife or mother before you left home tonight. It’s the last time you’ll ever see them.”
Behind me, the door creaked slightly.
“Vaffanculo a chi t’è morto,” he cursed at me to fuck my dead family members.
Rage sparked deep in the heart of me.
It was the worst insult in Italian, one that infuriated any local because family was sacred in this country.
But it made me see red.
Because my mother, Chiara, was dead. Murdered before her time by my psychopathic father because she’d dared to threaten to go to the authorities about murdering his long string of mistresses.
No one––no one––spoke about my mother like that.
Swiftly, I held the spoon to the flame just long enough to sear the pure silver but not warp it, and then I lunged forward, grabbing Umberto by the hair in one punishing hand. He kicked out, struggling in the chair, but I had him paralyzed in my hold. My right hand was steady as I brought the smoking metal to his left eye and dug the edge into his tear duct.
His cry pierced the room, vibrating the old, dusty chandelier Tore had never bothered to take down from the ceiling. The chiming sound was almost as pretty as this bastard’s cries.
“Bene!” he screamed as I dug deeper, catching the edge of his eyeball. “Fermata!”