“Ma’am, should I take us to the nearest precinct?” Mr. Janko asked in a thin, shaky voice.
It made me feel infinitely better to know I wasn’t the only one rattled by the shooting.
“No, Janko, continue to the courthouse,” Yara instructed as her manicured fingers flew over the screen of her iPhone. There was a short pause while she finished her text message before she looked up at Dante, and they shared a secret, mischievous kind of grin.
“That should do it I think, si?” Dante asked with humor rich in his deep voice.
Yara’s answering grin was smug as the cat who ate the canary. “I should think so. Judge Hartford can’t very well deny you solitary confinement if they won’t post bail.”
I blinked heavily again, feeling, for the first time ever in my career, completely out of step with proceedings.
“Are you saying you knew that man would shoot at us?” I asked weakly.
Yara laughed lightly, but Dante threw his head back and laughed from his belly as if my innocent question was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
Embarrassment scorched through me, turning the tips of my ears red hot.
I was not used to being made a fool of—not intellectually, not at work.
And I did. Not. Like. It.
“The likelihood of Judge Hartford, who is notorious for harsh sentencing, posting bail for our client is slim, Ms. Lombardi,” Yara informed me slowly, overly solicitous as if speaking to a small child. “It is our responsibility to do everything in our power to get Mr. Salvatore the best sentencing we can.”
“And so you arranged someone to attack us on the way to the courthouse just in case Mr. Salvatore is arraigned and imprisoned?” I clarified, the words clicking like ice cubes in a glass by the glacial cast of my tone.
She slanted her dark gaze at me, her diamond-faced Bulgari Serpenti Incantati watch winking brightly even in the low light as she pushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear. I hadn’t had the opportunity to work with Yara Ghorbani before in my history at the firm. She was one of the youngest female partners and specialized in criminal defense litigation. Her reputation was ruthless, sly, and slippery as a serpent in the grass, getting even her most notorious clients off with severely reduced or completely severed sentences.
Now, it seemed, I was getting a clearer picture of how she did that.
“We merely leaked the information that Mr. Salvatore was being transported at this hour to the courthouse to certain…interested and unsavory elements. You’ll learn,” she said softly, menace just a silver edge to her words. “That the law is particularly malleable in the right hands, Ms. Lombardi. It was my understanding you are an ambitious associate, which was why I agreed to your presence on this legal team. Must I adjust my assumptions?”
I stared into her dark eyes, just as black and slicked with sly intent as the most seasoned mafiosos in my past in Naples, and something monumental occurred to me as I did so.
In order to represent the monsters of New York, did one have to become monstrous too?
I swallowed thickly as I fought a silent war in my head.
Ambition versus morality.
Both characteristics so elemental to me, I couldn’t fathom making a choice.
But in this case, ambition was coupled with a pledge I’d made to the only sibling I ever really loved to protect her beloved Dante Salvatore from a lifetime in prison.
So, I sucked in a deep, stabilizing breath and cast my gaze to the man in question. He was watching me, eyes infinite and gravitational as twin black holes pulling me into the unknown.
“What do you say, Elena?” he asked with a roguish grin, flagrantly ignoring my polite suggestion he call me by my surname. “O mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra?”
I hadn’t spoken more than a word or two of Italian in the years I’d lived in New York City. It was a matter of principle or more, a matter of survival.
My mind went to dark places in my native tongue.
But I understood clear enough what Dante was saying.
Are you going to take it or leave it?
Was I going to compromise myself and step into the shadowed world of the criminal or remain pristine and untouched by the upper echelons of success and power in the light?
I pretended it was a hard decision to make, but deep inside a heart that had long ago turned to ice, the decision felt more than a little right.
The car finally pulled up to the curb in front of the courthouse just as the sun broke over the crust of the metallic cityscape and spilled like broken yolk through the streets.
We were there hours early to avoid the media, but a few eager photogs and reporters littered the bottom steps of the marble building, and they jumped to their feet as we pulled up, ready to capture their first glimpse of the people who would be representing Dante Salvatore.
With another quiet, deep breath to brace myself, I turned away from Dante’s soul-sucking eyes and Yara’s cool cynicism to wrap my sweat-damp palm around the door handle.
“Let’s do this then, shall we?” I asked, and without waiting for a response, I alighted from the vehicle into the bright light of camera flashes.
ELENA
The courtroom.
My haven.
A place so entrenched in rules and customs, its hierarchy so pretty and plainly delineated as rice fields. I knew who I was in this place and what I needed to do.
A lawyer who would accept nothing less than victory.
Media filled to bursting in the antechambers outside. The courtroom itself was packed with people, most of them standing, including my sister Cosima and her husband, Lord Thornton, Duke of Greythorn.
My client seemed entirely unmoved as we progressed to our seats, but the moment he spotted my sister Cosima in the row behind the defendant’s table, his expression melted like a candle held too close to a flame.
“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.”
I swallowed thickly, uncomfortable with the situation. There were three rows of media allowed in the chamber, and each camera was clacking rapidly to catch the exchange. We didn’t need Dante accused of flirting with his brother’s wife on top of everything else, and I didn’t want Cosima caught up in the drama any more than she had to be.
“We will win,” his brother, Alexander, as big and broad as Dante but golden to the mafioso’s swarthy good looks. “I won’t let them do this to you.”
Dante’s red mouth twisted. “You think you can do anything. You do know the entire world does not bow down to your grace, si?”
When Alexander only raised a cool brow, Dante laughed that completely inappropriate, absurdly lovely laugh that rang throughout the courtroom.
“Shut up,” I demanded under my breath as the rattle of camera shutters increased. “Face forward, Edward, and for once in your life, do as you’re told.”
We’d discussed calling him Edward in court to further emphasize his connections to England and the aristocracy and not the seedier side of his Italian life and criminal connections.
Of course, Dante flatly refused to answer to the name.
“Make me,” he taunted as if we were in a child’s schoolyard and not in one of the highest courts in the nation trying to convince a judge not to send him to prison while he awaited trial.
“If only the judge could see how childish you are, maybe he would agree to try you as a minor,” I countered smoothly, turning away to reorganize my already immaculate pile of papers and legal pads.
“This is not a playground,” Yara said without moving her lips, her gaze still locked on her files. “Exercise some decorum, please.”
My skin burned with humiliation, which was only exacerbated by Dante’s smooth, smoky chuckle as he readjusted to lounge comfortably in a fundamentally uncomfortable courtroom chair.
“
We’ll speak later,” Cosima whispered to him before adding in a soft voice to me, “Thank you, Lena.”
I tipped my head down in acknowledgment of her sweet words but otherwise didn’t respond. She had thanked me a dozen times already, and I had no doubt she would thank me a dozen more. This wasn’t the kind of case I’d ever thought to define my legal career on. I’d thought long and hard about going to work for the DA’s office or even the US Attorney’s office for southern New York. They did the kind of heroic work I’d idolized as a child in Italy, where the mafia was a matter of everyday life, and a behemoth entity the prosecutors and policemen were murdered frequently trying to take down.
But I wasn’t ashamed to admit my greed had won over my principles, and instead, I’d taken a job at Fields, Harding & Griffith, a top-five law firm in the city, the country, and even internationally with offices in London and Hong Kong. When you grew up poor, money wasn’t only a primary motivator; it was almost an obsession. I still remembered how it felt to get my first paycheck as an associate. My fellow law students complained about their lowly wages as a first year, but my yearly salary was already astronomical compared to the means we’d had in Naples. It was the first time in my life I’d earned more than minimum wage, and it symbolized what I hoped would be the first milestone in a long and storied legal career.
So, it was my greed that led me to the courtroom that day defending a man I didn’t like and didn’t believe for one second was innocent of the crimes he was accused of and many more besides.
Naturally, my eyes swept over the room to the right side where the US Attorney and his assistants manned the prosecution. Dennis O’Malley wasn’t a large man or even a showy one. He wore a simple, well-tailored blue suit with a striped tie in a muted green that I knew only from experience was the same shade as his eyes. There was silver at the thick hair over his ears, threading through the warm brown in a way that I’d always felt was very attractive, and he carried himself the way middle-aged men tended to, with a conservative grace and arrogance that made him even more attractive.
Dennis was forty-eight and one of the most successful prosecutors in the history of southern New York. Despite his shorter stature, he was classically handsome, cultured, intelligent, and ambitious. It was rumored that he was considering a run for the Senate, and the publicity this case would bring if he won would go a long way to ensuring he was a shoo-in for the position.
As if sensing my focus, Dennis looked up from his briefing notes and looked over at the table, his eyes snagging mine. When his eyebrows cut high lines into his forehead, I knew he was surprised to see me there.
“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.”
Despite myself, a little snort escaped me. “Oh, don’t be jealous. He wants your head on a pike if that’s any consolation.”
Dante hummed, his fingers thrumming lightly on the hard thigh beneath his trousers. “Now, you’re just projecting.”
“I don’t want your head on a pike, Mr. Salvatore. I want it free and clear of these charges so that you might go about your life and we will never have to see each other again,” I quipped quickly as there was a collective stir of energy in the crowd seconds before the door to the judge’s chamber opened to reveal the man presiding over this arraignment.
I could still feel two pairs of hot eyes on me, Dante from the left and Dennis from the right, but nothing existed for me except Judge Hartford.
He was a tall, bullish man with a thick neck and a nest of coarse black hair gone to salt at the temple. His robustness was magnified by the high, wide judge’s bench he sat behind so that he seemed like an Olympian god preceding over his courtroom.
I’d done my research on him just as any good lawyer would have. It helped immeasurably to know who you were appealing to, and in this case, we had an uphill battle trying to convince pious, old-school Martin Hartford to let Dante out on bail.
He’d only been a young buck during the roaring mafia-crazed eighties, but he’d been there and done his time in the district attorney’s office. He was known to have zero tolerance for organized crime.
I was too green to speak to the judge myself, not in a case as important as this, but I could comb through every spoken word looking for loopholes and intel that might assist Yara in persuading the judge that Dante Salvatore, born as Edward Davenport, second son to one of the wealthiest peerages in England, was worthy of bail.
“The United States of America versus Dante Salvatore,” Judge Hartford began in that old-school radio announcer voice that made him seem slightly jovial when he was truly anything but.
I’d once overheard him say he believed thieves should have their right hand chopped off in punishment for their crimes as they still did in Dubai. He was archaic, and he was ruthless against those he deemed lifelong criminals.
The lead lawyers on each case were asked to identify themselves, but I remained in my seat as a lowly associate. My leg bounced with excited nerves beneath the table, a habit I hadn’t been able to kick since childhood.
Only when a broad, hot palm wrapped fully around the circumference of my thigh beneath the table did I freeze.
Dante didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed to the judge and lawyers conferring at the judge’s bench, but he gave my thigh another squeeze before removing his hand.
I was so startled by his boldness that my mouth was still hanging open when Yara returned to the table and shot me an unimpressed look.
Bill Michaels and Ernesto Burgos snickered very lightly under their breath beside me. They were my fellow associates on the case who were allowed in the courtroom, with many more enlisted behind the scenes. I liked Ernesto well enough when he wasn’t with Bill, but together, they loved to ridicule me, and no issue was too far for them to take their teasing.
Including the fact that my fiancé had left me for my sister.
For the third time that day, I’d been embarrassed by my client.
Anger coiled in my belly, a serpent caught in a snare desperate to burst free and strangle the first thing in sight. I fought through the madness, my fingers clenched too hard around my Montblanc pen, dragging controlled breaths through my nose the way my therapist had taught me.
It did little to help clear the fog of red tinting my vision when I darted another glance at Dante. He was staring at me from the corner of his eyes, his lips compressed just slightly as if he fought a smile at my expense.
It was official.
I hated him.
Didn’t he realize I’d taken this case on as a favor to my sister? That I normally stayed fifty yards away from Made Men, that they made me sick with painful memories and injustices.
He was supposed to love Cosima, so why the hell was he finding ways to embarrass her sister in front of her boss?
I shifted in my seat and picked at a hangnail until it bled.
It helped calm me down.
When I looked at Dante again, he was frowning slightly at me, his hand in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. A moment later, a pristine white handkerchief floated into my lap.
I glared at it, annoyed he was the kind of man to carry such a thing because I’d always found the habit gentlemanly and attractive. Spitefully, I ground my bleeding thumb into the fabric so the blood smeared across the whiteness.
Dante’s lips, nearly the same color red that I’d deposited on the fabric, tightened again with a suppressed grin.
I ground my teeth and forced myself to focus on the proceedings once again.
Judge Hartford laid out the charges under the RICO Act––the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act––stating that Dante Salvatore was being indicted on three counts: first-degree murder, illegal gambling and racketeering, and money laundering.
T
he murder charge was the real focus of the case, though. Some charges just couldn’t stick unless they were adhered to something weightier with more burden of proof. Murder was the anchor for the case the state had been building against Dante Salvatore in the five years since he’d moved to America and become one of the biggest crime bosses in modern history.
If we could just get him clear of that charge, the prosecution’s case would fall like a poorly constructed house of cards.
I was mulling that over when the judge asked Dante how he pleaded to the charges.
It was only then that I clued into the energy emanating from the mafioso at my side. The air around him seemed to solidify like an invisible force field, and when he spoke, the only sound in the entire room was the European cadence of his voice. It was so still, it seemed everyone was holding their breath.
Even me.
Slowly, his large body unraveling almost endlessly with a grace no man who muscled should’ve been capable of, Dante rose to his feet. Once there, he slanted a quick glance at the closest cluster of photogs, did up his suit jacket button calmly, and then locked eyes with the judge.
One measured blink that was somehow predatory, his attention a stalking weight on Judge Hartford, and then he drawled solemnly, “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
Immediately the entire room lit up with flashes and commotion. Whispers reverberated like gunshots through the cramped courtroom, and they only disappeared when Judge Hartford called for order three times, the last voiced in a commanding yell that raised the hair on the backs of my arms.
I looked up at Dante to find a small, self-satisfied grin on his too-red mouth. Without hesitation, I tugged at the back of his suit jacket to get him to sit down and stop his bizarre gloating. He settled into his chair willingly, an innocent expression affixed to his strong features.
I didn’t know who he thought he was fooling with those wide eyes and slightly raised brows, but a small part of me applauded his audacity.
On trial for murder, potentially facing a lifetime behind bars, and still, Dante Salvatore managed to have fun, however inappropriate it might have been.
When Heroes Fall Page 3