When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  It was Noel.

  He’d killed my mother, and to make matters worse, he’d convinced my brother, Alexander, that Tore was to blame and that I had deserted them to take over his mafia outfit.

  In one way, he was right.

  From the day Chiara disappeared, I started to work for Amadeo Salvatore and reinvented myself as Dante Salvatore.

  Because I had realized something vital, a life lesson that could only have been imparted to me by Death itself.

  If I wanted to defeat my demons, I had to become the ultimate monster.

  So many years later, I was still ruled by the essential lessons I’d learned from her death.

  Trust no one, attack first, and, above all, protect those who cannot protect themselves.

  I was kicking myself a few days after my attempted murder because I had failed to follow the first two mandates.

  “The Irish scum,” Adriano said before spitting over the edge of the balcony as if the taste of the word in his mouth was venom. “Tore should have let us end them.”

  “No,” I disagreed from where I stood at the balustrade, remembering a decade ago when I’d looked over one very much like it to see if my mother lay broken below me. “We have to be smarter than them, Adriano.”

  “They’re fucking cowards to try to poison you,” Marco sneered as he cleaned his gun at the table. “No Italiano would lower himself to that.”

  I cocked an eyebrow but secretly wondered if an Italian hadn’t been behind the Irish attack. The truth was, my trial made the entire Commission nervous as hell. I was an outsider, a sconosciuto. I could speak Italian like a native, adhere to every antiquated custom and cultural norm, but the truth was, Italians were decidedly purist, even Italian-Americans, and they did not like that I’d been born and raised a Brit.

  Until me, there had never been a boss whose father wasn’t Italian, and even though my mother was Italian, it wasn’t the same thing for the Old World bosses in NYC.

  They’d never liked me, preferring instead to do business with Tore, and the fact that I was being investigated and tried under the RICO Act might have been as good an opportunity for them to rid themselves of me before I had the chance to roll over on them.

  I was no rat, but I had to admit, I was glad the head of the di Carlo family was dead and I’d fucking love the opportunity to make the Dons of the other four families––Lupi, Belcante, Accardi, and Maglione––follow him to an early grave.

  Not one of them was younger than seventy, and while I didn’t consider myself ageist, there was no denying the old mafia Dons had fossilized at the table.

  In my opinion, new blood was needed, and I’d been pushing for change for years only to be rejected at every turn.

  “You think one of the other Families is behind this?” Adriano asked, cracking his scarred knuckles. Even taller and broader than me, with arms like bags of rocks and shoulders so thick with muscle they made his neck look freakishly short, Addie was the biggest man in our immediate circle.

  I shrugged one shoulder, but I wasn’t ready to talk about my theory. My men were loyal, but they stayed loyal because I was careful not to point out a problem until I had a solution.

  “The Irish are small potatoes,” Marco joked with a snigger. “Wouldn’t put it past them to be working with someone else to get cut in on something. What do they got for their own anyway?”

  “Shylocking,” Chen piped up, always ready with information. The man was like a human encyclopedia. He got a lot of shit from capos outside the family for being Japanese, but he’d saved my life three times, and the moment I’d met him in a back-alley gambling den counting cards like a fucking pro, I’d known he needed to be on my team. “Some low-level drug muling. Nothing much.”

  “First the Basante deal and now this,” I mused, scrubbing a hand over my stubbled jaw. I hadn’t shaved since the day of San Gennaro, and my beard was coming in thick. “Tore was right to hold you back from a massacre when I’m already in the fucking hot seat with the feds, but we do have to strike back.”

  Marco, Chen, Adriano, Jaco, and Frankie were quiet as I thought on it, used to giving me my head. None of them, save Jaco and Frankie, had the knack or lust for leadership. Jaco was too hotheaded to be boss, and Frankie hated people too much to deal with them regularly. They were happy to defer to my leadership.

  But I took a second to scan their faces, aware as ever that Mason Matlock, still hanging like dried meat in my airplane hangar, had told me there was a mole in my operation.

  As much as I didn’t want to think it was one of the men I considered brothers, I knew better than to trust blindly.

  “Addie, you feel like having a friendly talk with one of the bartenders at Father Patrick’s? See if we can’t get a beat on what’s going on down there.”

  His grin was all big, jagged teeth, his brutish face utterly intimidating. It almost made me smile to think about his fierce love for his massive black mutt, Toro, and his obsession with cannoli, the cream somehow always finding its way onto his shirts.

  This was the contrast of all my men, of Tore, and of me.

  We were sinners of the highest order, driven to make money, end our rivals, and succeed at almost any cost.

  But we were also men.

  Men driven by lust and love and loyalty. By our dogs and cannoli and comradery.

  This was what a woman like Elena Lombardi was incapable of understanding. That two opposites could coexist in one whole. That you didn’t have to be all or nothing, black or white, good or bad.

  Such narrow-minded thinking should have repelled me, but I found myself thinking more and more about how I might change her mind. The idea of corrupting her was heady, as arousing mentally as it was physically.

  What might she be like warmed with passion, alight with vengeful anger, so ruthless in her ambition she didn’t give a single fuck about the obstacles in her way.

  For the first time since I’d been poisoned, my dick twitched with arousal.

  “You’re distracted,” Frankie noted because he knew me better than the rest of my men, and he wasn’t afraid to speak up.

  He was originally from Sicily and the very same Cosa Nostra we were currently feuding with, but I had no doubt he wasn’t the traitor. His family had made him seduce and defile a woman in order to bring down a rival family, and he’d ended up falling for her. Now, they lived together in the city and were safeguarded from their past by my protection.

  “Thinking about the redhead with the legs?” Marco asked with a waggle of his thick brows. “Damn, but I couldn’t look at her the other night without getting a hard-on.”

  I was up out of my seat baring my teeth at one of my best soldati before I could curb the impulse. “Stai zitto.” I told him to shut up. “Do not talk about her this way.”

  He frowned, eyes darting around the small group of my six most trusted men. “Am I missing something?”

  “He wants to fuck her,” Frankie surmised with a slow grin. “I fucking knew it! Lombardi women are your kryptonite, D.”

  “I don’t want to fuck her,” I said calmly, tossing my hand as if the idea was garbage I was throwing in the bin. “She wouldn’t know the first thing about taking my cock.”

  It was true, in a sense.

  They didn’t need to know that I was more than mildly intrigued about teaching her how to please me and herself.

  “Leave it to you to have two hot lawyers,” Jaco muttered around his cigarette. “I hope they’re more useful than just being pretty to look at.”

  “They are. Yara’s never let us down, and even if Elena wasn’t driven like a fucking race car by the idea of success, she would do anything for her family, and Cosima asked her to take this on…” I trailed off as my mind snagged on the teeth of my words.

  And there it was.

  That simple.

  An idea.

  A way to be smarter than those Irish scum and bring them to heel without starting a full-fledged war with them or the pieces of shit di Carl
os they seemed to be in bed with.

  It stemmed from one basic principle.

  Most people would do anything to protect the ones they loved.

  I would have gladly taken Chiara’s place buried in the maze behind Pearl Hall.

  Elena would gladly have taken Cosima’s when she lay comatose in the hospital last year.

  Now, it just remained to be seen if the Irish mob had enough decency to look out for their own in the same way.

  I pulled out my cell phone without discussing the plan with anyone and dialed Yara’s number.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I told her. “But you’re not gonna like it.”

  ELENA

  I didn’t see Dante for six days.

  That wasn’t unusual for many reasons.

  A federal trial like his could take years to go to court, and even though we had filed for an expedited trial, the legal clogs still took months to churn.

  We were busy, though.

  Our pre-trial motion to suppress Mason Matlock’s testimony was going to court that morning, and it was absolutely vital that we won. Giuseppe di Carlo’s nephew had testified to police following the shooting at Ottavio’s that it was Dante who had driven by in an unmarked black SUV with a few of his “thugs” to shoot out the deli.

  The problem was, Dante didn’t have an alibi we could use because he was protecting someone.

  After studying the particulars of the case, I had to wonder if he wasn’t protecting my sister.

  Cosima had been shot three times that day, but arguably, she could have killed Giuseppe di Carlo before the drive-by shooters arrived.

  It was one of the many theories circulating through my mind as I worked long hours on the case each day, not only his case but also the man himself a dominant feature in my thoughts.

  It wasn’t easy to admit I was intrigued by him.

  So, I didn’t credit my theory about Cosima and his protection too much. It almost seemed like wistful thinking on my part, trying to make a rogue into a gentleman through any means possible.

  But I couldn’t kick the suspicion as I walked to work that morning, and before I could curb the impulse, my fingers were tapping out Cosima’s phone number.

  “Hallo, my Lena,” she answered in a jaunty British manner, her voice filled with radiant happiness. She always sounded like that now, high on her life, grateful for every moment. “How is my favorite lawyer?”

  The smile that pulled my lips over my teeth was inexorable. As if it was Cosima’s beautiful face, I cupped the phone tight to my cheek. “Hello, my beautiful Cosi. I’m fine. Just getting coffee before a long day of court and research. How are you?”

  There was a deep voice in the background and then my sister’s breathy giggle. “Xan, stop it. I’m talking to Elena.”

  “Tell her you’re busy,” he ordered, loud enough for me to hear. “Very busy.”

  Cosima’s warm laughter spilled like honey through the line. “Sorry, Lena, you know Alexander. He can be so bossy.”

  There was a throaty chuckle and then a shuffle as Cosima moved. “Let me just leave the room, or he won’t stop bothering me.”

  “I’ll remember that next time you’re begging for me to make you come,” he yelled deliberately so I could hear.

  A blush warmed my cheeks, and I groaned as I pushed open the doors of my favorite coffee shop and stood in line. “Oh my God, Cosi, I’ll just call you back.”

  “No,” she demanded. “He’s gone now. I apologize. I know these kinds of things make you uncomfortable.”

  I hesitated, picking at the side of a hangnail as I considered being honest with her. “I’m working on that, you know.”

  Her voice was velvet, a soft place for my confessions to land. “Oh? With your therapist?”

  “Yes, and Monica, she told me there is hope for me… I have surgery scheduled in two weeks. Apparently, post-op, I’ll be able to orgasm, and maybe…” I sucked in a shaky breath, almost afraid to say the words out loud as if they might dissipate forever like smoke in the air. “Maybe I’ll be able to conceive naturally one day too.”

  “Dio mio, Elena,” my sister breathed, tears instantly thick in her voice. “My love, I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear that. You must be over the moon.”

  “I am,” I agreed before quickly ordering my coffee from the barista with my hand over the phone. Then I moved away and said to Cosima, “It’s just…strange. I feel like my life is empty still. A year ago, I would have been thrilled. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if Daniel and I got this news together before he met Giselle.”

  “Oh, my love, please don’t let your mind go there. Aren’t you the one who has always told me the past cannot be altered and to focus on the future?”

  “Yes,” I agreed on a sigh, the knot in my chest slowly loosening under the careful tending of her calm attention. “I know I should be over it, but it’s easier said than done. It’s not just Daniel who lied to me and broke my heart. Somehow, Giselle’s disloyalty is even worse. Betrayal from someone who is supposed to understand your pain and should stand by you no matter what feels impossible to move on from.”

  “You and Giselle haven’t been tight in so long…I know what she did is not forgivable, but the fractures in your sisterhood gave room for her relationship with Sin to grow. By the time she knew you were the girlfriend, she was too in love to change the outcome. I know it hurts, but they’re really happy together. Happier than you were with him, my Lena. Don’t waste any more time on a man who isn’t spending time thinking about you.”

  I swallowed convulsively past the lump in my throat, struggling to digest her words. Not because I disagreed with them, but because I didn’t.

  The way Daniel had acted after he returned from their affair in Mexico… it was as if he was a different man, one I didn’t know very well at all despite being with him for four years.

  I hadn’t made him happy, not like her.

  And God, that burned like frostbite emanating from my arctic heart.

  “One day,” Cosima said so softly, so quietly, as if she was afraid to spook me. “I know you’ll find a man who makes you forget every fear you’ve ever had, who soothes all the ragged wounds you’ve had to endure in your life, who makes you feel more alive than you ever have before.”

  “Like Alexander and you,” I said with a tight smile, happy at least she had found that.

  No one deserved that kind of love more than the most loving woman I knew.

  “Like Alexander and me,” she agreed. “Don’t be afraid of a rough start, either. Sometimes, you are too quick to judge. Give things time to develop. Lord knows I hated Xan before I fell for him.”

  A hiccough moved through my chest as I remembered the real reason for my call.

  A man I’d thought was hateful who I was beginning to question might not be so awful after all.

  “Cosima, you know I’m happy to finally repay even one iota of what you’ve done for our family,” I began, acknowledging the fact that she and Sebastian had provided for our family since they were teenagers, that they had been the ones to move us to America and get us out of that Neapolitan stink hole. “But I need to know, what is your relationship with Tore and Dante?”

  The pause that followed was filled with words in a language I didn’t understand. I was thrown back to childhood when Seamus had relentlessly taught all of us English, my siblings catching on quickly, but my own mind lagging behind.

  I was tired of the language of secrets.

  “I need to know,” I pushed. “I’m representing him, Cosi. I need to know the facts.”

  “You want to know,” she argued, but she wasn’t angry, just weary. “You’ve always wondered, but now, you finally want to know the truth. Even if it’s horrible.”

  “Yes,” I whispered, my eyes unseeing as I stood in the middle of the bustling coffee shop imagining what horrors my sister had endured for our family. “Tell me.”

  “I won’t tell you the whole story over the phon
e, Lena, but I’ll come to visit. It’s been a while, and this is something I should tell you in person. But as far as Tore and Dante are concerned…they’re my family. I know you have bad memories of the Camorra and you hate everything they represent, but those two men are two of the best I’ve ever known, and they’ve proved that to me too many times to count. I trust them with my life and my heart, and I’d trust them with yours.”

  “What really happened that day at Ottavio’s?” I demanded, leaning forward as if I was in front of her, bearing down on her to squeeze more of the truth from a woman who was as porous as a stone. “Is Dante trying to protect you by not giving his alibi?”

  A brief hesitation so quick it shot past like a shooting star.

  Then, so solemnly it felt like a vow spoken by a monk at prayer. “Dante is always trying to protect me.”

  Does he love you? I suddenly wanted to ask, the question burning up my chest like gasoline-lit tinder.

  Does he love you? Does he love you? Does he love you? my inner voice screamed.

  But I didn’t say anything.

  I wasn’t sure why, but it might have had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t deal with the knowledge of another man showing me some level of attention only to find one of my sisters far superior.

  Not that Dante liked me.

  I was just a game as he’d told me from the very beginning. A game of corruption.

  But my chest, it burned and burned.

  “Be careful, amore, you are a lawyer for one of the most powerful criminal families in the country. I hate to put you in danger, but I know you are strong enough to endure. It brings me peace to know the smartest woman I know is protecting the bravest man and vice versa. Don’t do anything foolish and watch your back.”

  A shiver sank pointed teeth into the back of my neck and dragged down my spine, leaving me flayed with fear. Suspiciously, I looked around the coffee shop as I picked up my coffee from the station.

  It was only because I was looking that I saw the flash of red.

  Red like a flag tossed before a bull.

  Instantly my back went up, and my fight or flight impulse surged through my limbs.