“You do,” he shouted, startling me even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. “Don’t you fucking see, Lena? You do need me to do this for you so that you’ll finally understand what this man tried to make you blind to.”
I hadn’t realized we’d arrived in Sorrento until Dante stopped at a hairpin turn descending from the Sorrentine Peninsula to the ocean at its feet. He gunned the car passed a trio of Vespas and parked in a tiny space before a stone balustrade overlooking the sea.
He got out of the car and stalked around the hood to my door, opening it and tugging me out before I could gather my senses. After practically dragging me to the stone wall, he lifted me up and crowed me, stepping between my legs to take my face in his hands.
His expression was wretched, a battlefield after war, battle torn and weary, filled with a bitter rage.
It made something in my heart sing a strange song.
“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.”
Tears clogged my throat and blurred his face. “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 still quaked with bottle 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.
His words scalded my ears, scoured down my throat and burned in my gut like grappa. I felt them, saw them, heard them in every way language could be understood.
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?”
Do you hear me?
“Yes,” I said through the silent tears that ruined my makeup. “I hear you, Dante.”
“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?”
A sob wedged in my throat and moved painfully in my mouth where it exploded from my lips and fell between us, wet and ugly. “Yes,” I hiccoughed, clutching at his chest with one hand and his hand on my cheek with the other. In that moment, I could fathom him ever letting me go. “I believe you.”
He stared at me like some avenging angel, mad with powerful, vengeful rage, but slowly, breath by breath, he softened until he finally sagged against me, forehead to forehead.
“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.”
“Thank you for telling me, I know it was hard.”
“It wasn’t, actually,” I confessed. “I feel better than I have in years. I’ll have to fire my therapist if we ever get back to New York.”
He laughed because he knew I wanted him to. “Mia bella lottatrice,” he murmured like prayer across my lips before he kissed me.
My beautiful fighter.
I kissed him like one. Like a fighter and not a victim. Because I felt for the first time like the victim I’d been could be properly buried and grieved for, moved on from. There would always be a gravestone in my soul where what Christopher had taken from me was buried, but it wouldn’t define me.
I wouldn’t let it and neither would this beautiful brute of man holding me like I was his treasure.
“Should we go home?” he asked, because he was just that dreamy.
I sighed, nuzzling into his neck because he smelled so good. “No, I feel okay.”
He made a noise of disagreement in his throat so I pulled back to smile at him. “I promise, I do feel okay. I want to replace all those old memories I have with Christopher here with something so much better. With you. Fuck the past, let’s focus on the future.”
“I love to hear you curse,” he said to lighten the mood.
I kissed him lingeringly. “Wine and dine me, capo, and then later, I can’t wait for you to fuck me.”
“Che coraggio,” he murmured against my lips. What courage. “Okay, lottatrice, let’s go.”
Twelve
Elena
We ate on the quay beside the glittering aquamarine ocean. Dante knew the owners of the small restaurant off the beaten path, around a massive cliff face from the major promenade filled with tourists. We started with Aperol Spritzes and moved on to wine to accompany our fresh seafood appetizers and pasta dishes, the meat course swimming in verdant green pesto, and a bitter espresso to finish it all off.
We laughed.
It was strange to think I could laugh after such a confession, that Dante could smile naturally after being so consumed by rage.
But that was the power of this thing between us.
We made each other come alive, in good ways and bad, everything heightened and poignant.
Dante told me happy stories about his childhood at Pearl Hall and promised we would visit the manor together one day so he could show me all his special haunts. I told him about being eight years old and dropping four-year-old Sebastian on his head. He’d had a massive lump for ages afterword, which was why he all affectionately called him patatino, little potato.
When a little local string band started to play after the sun set and the string lights were turned on over the stone walkway, Dante asked me to dance.
I stared at his offered hand, remembering how he’d asked me to dance in New York at the San Gennaro party and wondered at how far we’d come. From enemies to lovers, from rivals to a single unit locked tight with respect and adoration.
I slid my hand into his big palm and let him escort me into the empty space between the tables on the edge of the causeway and the restaurant tucked up against the cliff.
He spun me into his chest then dipped me back over his arm, smiling down into my face. “How is it that even with enemies at the gate, I feel at peace with you?”
My heart turned over in my chest as he locked our groins tight, his hand dominating the entirety of my low back as he pressed us together and led me into a series of tango steps. I followed him easily, drawn up in his gravitational pull.
“Because you and I are the same,” I said, and I meant it.
Our entire lives had led us to this moment. I caught the glint of Chiara’s cross around Dante’s neck through the opened throat of his white button-up and I knew that she’d been right, even our ancestors’ lives had brought us here.