By Virtue I Fall (Sins of the Fathers #3)(96)

“I’d like to know what happened. No more lies, and I should tell you that I already talked to Anna.”

He was trying to put me in a corner, and make me worry about what Anna might have shared. Anna could keep a secret, if she deemed it safer to do so, but her mind worked quite different from mine. She might very well have decided that sharing everything would be the safer option for me.

I looked Dante in the eye. “I won’t share intimate details with you.”

“And I’ll thank you for that,” Dante drawled, but I didn’t miss the threatening undertone. I couldn’t blame him. If Anna were my daughter and I had found out about her bodyguard doing the deed with her, I would probably have smashed his face in. I was lucky Dante was controlled, though this might only mean a later but harsher punishment for me.

“Anna and I share a special bond. She’s a woman that doesn’t take shit. She doesn’t shy back from telling me a harsh truth or telling me that I’m full of shit.”

“I’m sure she’s had plenty of opportunities to do so.”

I wasn’t sure if Dante had meant it as a joke. His voice had been hard and dry but for some reason I thought he’d actually been a tad ironic.

“Plenty,” I agreed with a grin, remembering all the times Anna had given me fire for something I’d done. She’d never backed down. “She made me realize what my life had been missing. I needed a woman with a spine of steel and confidence and goals of her own. A woman who wouldn’t take shit from me. I know Anna won’t ever let me treat her badly and I’d never do it. She’s a woman that makes me want to worship her and that’s truly a new experience for me. I can’t imagine being with anyone else, and I haven’t been since we set foot in Paris. Anna is the only woman I want to be with. I want her to be mine, truly and openly. I want everyone in the Outfit to know she belongs to me.”

Dante walked over to the window, a contemplative look on his face. “You realize that would equal marriage.”

I smiled. “Oh yes.” I couldn’t wait to finally bang a married woman I was actually supposed to bang. I didn’t voice my very inappropriate thoughts and decided to keep them for Anna on our wedding night. I couldn’t wait for her surely fiery reaction and the amazing sex afterward. “I want to marry her.”

Dante’s expression didn’t look very forthcoming. This was probably a bit too soon, and definitely too much for him to stomach considering Anna’s wedding to Clifford had failed only today.

“Our family is based on trust. You realize you aren’t off to a great start if you intend to become part of it. You’ve been lying to me and my wife for years.”

“I know. And believe me, I wished the situation would have been different. I’d hated every moment of secrecy, of pretending Anna was nothing but a job when she was my everything. I’d never understood why my dad hadn’t even dated a woman years after my mother’s death, why he refuses to this day to marry again. I hadn’t understood the love he’d felt toward my mother and that he still feels for her. But now that I have Anna, I understand what it means to lose someone you love. When I’d thought Anna would marry Clifford out of duty to the Outfit, I’d been sure I could never fall for another woman again.”

I paused, realizing that Dante too had lost his first wife and had then married Valentina. Had I put my foot in my mouth again? Anna would say it was my biggest talent, and I was starting to believe she was right.

Dante was watching me intently, his cold blue eyes making me feel very on the spot. I rarely gave a shit what other people thought of me. But Dante held Anna’s and my future in his hands. “You and Anna could have run off together while you were in France. It would have taken a while for me to become suspicious and by then you could have found a hiding place.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Anna would never leave her family, not even for me, and I’d never ask her to do it. And I wouldn’t leave my dad and sister either. Our family had already suffered enough and I wouldn’t add to that. Not to mention that I was absolutely loyal to the Outfit. “That was never an option,” I said firmly. “Anna and I have one big thing in common, our love for our family, and our pride for the Outfit.”

I could tell that Dante believed me and that my answer had mollified him the tiniest bit. Maybe he’d been worried that I was ripping Anna away from him and the family.

“I want to keep doing my duty to the Outfit. I’d never run. And I want to become part of your family. No matter what you ask of me, I’ll do it. I’ll prove my loyalty to you, Anna, and the Outfit over and over again if I have to.”

“I expect nothing less,” Dante said. “First, you can help me contain the damage that was caused today. I think your past endeavors might be helpful in this regard.”

Anna must have told her father about my affair with Dolora. “Maybe.”





“Maybe you can talk sense into him,” Enzo greeted me when I stepped into Santino’s hospital room two days after my wedding blew up.

Santino was trying to pull a hoodie over his head but his bandages and the injuries covered by it made it difficult. I handed Enzo a cup of coffee, which I’d brought him yesterday as well. “What’s going on?”

“Santino decided to release himself from the hospital against the explicit orders of the doctors.”