Despite everything, Dante still found time for me, taking me on dates escorted by Frankie in case anyone saw us out together and reported to Rocco. We went to Rome and Ravello, spent a late afternoon in Positano getting drunk on Aglianico red wine until Frankie finally told me the whole sordid story of his romance with his wife, Lilianna.
I continued to spar in the mornings with Dante and Frankie, but many of the men joined us too, including Tore. It was amusing at first, to watch my six foot five, packed with muscle lover circle the older man who was still high muscled, but lean and corded next to Dante’s bulk. The moment they first made contact, I lost my smile.
They attacked each other like two beasts locked in a cage. Their swinging fists weren’t tempered, hammering through the air to impact with the body on a dull, wince-inducing thud. They kicked and ducked, punched in a variety of combinations that was entirely too quick to track. Dante was better, but youth gave him his edge where Tore was all experience. He knew when to duck and bend, when to attack relentlessly.
By the time they were done, the mats were slick with sweat, large crystal beads of it rolling down both men’s glistening bodies.
They trained like Spartans, like they were headed off to battle the very next day to fight for their lives.
When I told Dante this after the first time I watched them, both of us under the cool stream of the shower in our room, he’d laughed even as he said, “We don’t fight often, but when we do, Lena, that’s what it is. A fight for our lives.”
His words should have chilled me more than the cold shower, but they had a different effect, one I was beginning to understand was my natural reaction to danger.
My whole life, I’d been risk adverse, careful to the point of drudgery.
Now, my bubble was cracked open and everything was spilling inside, violence and chaos, the threat of death that only proved to heighten every other aspect of life.
I was coming to know myself, and there was something frightening about that.
Like meeting the monster you always knew lurked under your bed.
I wasn’t all elegance and refined grace.
If I was a shell, there was that pearl of refinement inside me, but it was surrounded by the grit of sand and dirt.
I was baser than I’d ever realized.
Sex was on my brain anytime Dante was in the same vicinity of me. I couldn’t look at those densely muscled hands without imagining how his thumb might taste sucked into my mouth. I couldn’t sit across from him at the breakfast table without running my toe over the crisp hair of his calf just to have the intense thrill of his skin against my own. I wanted to bite him until bruises blossomed like tattoos of my ownership. I wanted to fuck him until all that power in those muscles and bones melted away and he was lax, vulnerable with spent ecstasy.
There was violence in me too. Maybe I’d always known that. I’d taken too much delight in beating Christopher when he came for Giselle. I enjoyed the tang of blood in my mouth when Damiano mistimed a punch and hit me on the edge of the chin. The feel of a gun in my hand was becoming natural, an extension of self that suited the armor I’d honed all these years.
Dante had told me once that one person didn’t have to be only one thing.
And I was learning the hard way that I was no saint.
Only, Dante’s words about being too much of one thing still resonated in my head.
I was done being boring, done trying to fit into this box I’d let society make for me.
With Dante, in Italy of all places, at the house of the capo I’d rued in my childhood, I found myself.
And I was starting to like her.
“Grip it higher.” Dante’s voice was like smoke, dark and sinuous as he stood behind me and studied my stance. “It will give you better leverage.”
I adjusted my right-hand grasp on the butt of the gun and let my left hand find the grooves in the hand already wrapped around the tang so they felt locked into place on the weapon.
“Molto bene, lottatrice mia,” Dante practically purred. “You look like a warrior goddess like this. Maybe you should lose the clothes, hmm?”
“Dante,” I said on a laugh. “Don’t distract me, I want to hit them all this time.”
“I’ll make you a wager,” he offered in that same sexy tone, definitely trying to distract me. “If you hit all six wine bottles, you can do whatever you want with me.” He chuckled when I shivered lightly. “And if you don’t…I get to do the same to you.”
“Deal,” I agreed instantly, my pulse already moving down between my legs.
“You two are sick,” Frankie deadpanned, but I knew without looking at him that he was joking so I didn’t take it personally the way I might have before.
“I’ve overheard you Facetiming with your wife, Frankie,” I pointed out with an arched brow. “Pot meet kettle.”
The men laughed, the sound of it calming me even further. Their friendship was what preoccupied me from thinking about Dante’s upcoming wedding to Mirabella or the war raging without us in New York.
I took a deep breath, my hands sweating lightly on the gun because of the high noon sun. Fifteen yards away, Dante and Frankie had set up makeshift targets, a collection of old olive oil, Limoncello, and wine bottles they’d pilfered from Tore’s stores. They were staggered across a crumbling stone wall that had once been a sheep enclosure.
There was a light breeze, but nothing to worry about as I focused on the targets. I ran though the instructions Dante had given me the last four days of practice and calmly squeezed the trigger.
There was a loud snapping noise as the bullet discharged and then the crashing tinkle as it impacted with the olive oil bottle on the far right, glass shattering everywhere.
Faintly, I heard Frankie let out a little whoop.
But I had my eye on the prize.
Snap, crack, tinkle.
I fired the gun, cocked to reload, and fired again.
Again.
Again.
I only had one bottle left, a squat Limoncello bottle on the far left.
Behind me the air shifted and the heat of Dante’s body fired the air between us.
“In boca al lupo,” he whispered.
Good luck.
Or more aptly, in the mouth of the wolf.
Only, Dante was the wolf who wanted me in his mouth if I failed and I refused to have that happen.
I sucked in a deep breath, the taste sweet of lemons and the tang of olives on my tongue, and fired.
Snap, crack, tinkle.
“Ammazza!” I cried out as I discharged the empty casing and clicked the safety then threw my hands up in the air.
I spun to face Dante, my hips moving side to side in a little victory dance as I began to belt the words to O Sole Mio, a traditional Neapolitan song that local sung at the slightest provocation on any and all occasions.
Frankie held his belly as he laughed beside me while I started a little victory lap around my man.
It didn’t last long.
Dante’s long arm hooked around my waist and pulled me into him. I collided with his chest with an oof then was carted up, up into his arms, his hands supporting my bum.
The gun had dropped to the ground so I threaded my fingers in the short sides of Dante’s hair and beamed down at him.
“I told you I’d become a sharp shooter,” I crowed unabashedly.
“You did.” He wasn’t smiling exactly, but his eyes danced like a night sky filled with constellations. “I knew you would.”