When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  We did not.

  And as far as I could tell, Yara didn’t have a friendly coffee with anyone at the firm ever. She was a lone pillar of strength. It was one of the reasons I was so drawn to her.

  Even though suspicion spiked through me, I agreed because I would have been foolish not to. We walked together a few blocks from the courthouse to a little Italian place that served espresso through a window at the front of the small storefront. Yara ordered without asking me what I wanted, paid for our two double espressos, and then left me to carry the small white cups and saucers to the table she picked on the sidewalk farthest away from the door.

  With every second she was silent, my pulse raced harder. She and Dante both had a similar predatory quality, their gazes too watchful, too hungry and calculating.

  She took a small sip of the thick crema on the coffee and hummed her pleasure.

  I followed suit, but the coffee, good and strong, tasted like mud on my tongue.

  “So much more patient than I would have given you credit for, Ms. Lombardi,” Yara said with only a trace of a smile. “I know you must be bursting to question why I brought you here.”

  “I have a feeling it wasn’t for the coffee, as good as it is,” I demurred.

  Her lips twitched. “Astute. No, I brought you here for two reasons. The first is to tell you a story.” She paused, studying me so intently I could track the way her gaze mapped my features, drawing a line down my straight nose, over the arch of my brows, tunneling into my eyes. “When I was a girl, I fell in love with an Italian while I was on a summer abroad in Rome.”

  My eyebrows hiked into my hairline. That was not how I thought the conversation would start.

  “I was so young, barely nineteen, but I knew the moment I saw him that he should be mine. He had that Italian hair, you know? Thick and silken, so lush and curling I could already imagine my hands carding through it as we kissed.” She laughed, and it was an easy sound, a strange one coming from so calculated a woman. “He noticed me a moment later, and I knew when we locked eyes that he wanted me. So, when he approached, I went with him easily. He was funny, and I liked the way he was always using his hands to tell me things in ways his mouth could not. There was such confidence in him it made me feel important to be next to him.”

  She paused to take a sip of espresso, and I was struck by an overlay of her as that young girl, a beautiful Persian intrigued by the different culture and beauty of the Italian boy.

  “My family hated him, of course, when they found out we were going together. I only told them because I fully intended to marry him. I was in law school, but I wanted to drop out and move permanently to Italy. I wanted to drink wine with him in Piazza Navona every night for the rest of my life and have his babies. My parents told me if I didn’t at least finish my degree, they would never talk to me again. I figured, what is one more year in the grand scheme of life and our love? So, I returned to America at the end of the summer, and we wrote letters to each other every day for the next six months.”

  Her smile was sad, but then, I’d already known it would be a tragic story.

  “I was graduating in three weeks when I got a phone call from Donni. His father needed money. Their butcher shop was struggling, and the bank wouldn’t give him a loan. So, he’d gone to the local capo of the Camorra and asked him. Not only did they give Signore Carozza the loan, they also offered Donni a job.”

  My chest tightened with dread as I realized where this was going, that I was hearing yet another story about how the mafia had destroyed a life.

  “Like any American girl, I’d watched movies about the mafia, but I didn’t really understand the intricacies of the institution. I didn’t know enough to ask Donni not to work for them. He started to make good money, saving to buy a house for us when I moved back.” She sighed, pain stale in those beautiful dark eyes, lip lax with remembered sorrow. “He’d only been working with them for a month when he was in a car accident.”

  I frowned, my mouth opening as if I could correct her because I had been sure that wasn’t where the story was going to go.

  Yara’s mouth tightened in recognition of my shock. “He was just twenty-three, and he was hit straight on by a drunk driver. There was massive damage, including trauma to his brain. When I flew out to Rome after getting the call, it was to visit Donni in the hospital, and he was hooked up to life support. He was in a coma, and the doctors didn’t have much hope he would recover.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes, but her voice was strong, her eyes almost wild with mad intensity as she leaned across the table and grabbed my hand tightly in her own. “The Camorra paid for his hospital fees, to keep him alive for as long as Signore Carozza and I needed to say our goodbyes. Their women brought flowers every single day until Donni’s room was like a garden. The capo himself visited while I was there, a handsome, strong man with more power in his little finger than I’d ever seen in another man’s entire body. He took my hand and he promised me he would take care of Signore Carozza and his family until the day he died. He told me that even though he’d only known Donni for a short time, he knew in his bones he’d been a good man and would have made me a good husband. Apparently, my Donni talked about me all the time.”

  Yara’s nail dug into my skin painfully, and when I winced slightly, she smoothed the pad of her thumb over the hurt. “They held a beautiful funeral for him. The capo gave me a traditional black lace veil one of the wives had made herself, and I saw my Donni off the way he would have wanted to go, with his family surrounding him and the man who’d saved them from destitution beside us. Do you know who that man was, Elena?”

  I knew.

  My lips spoke the words before my mind could even compute them. “Amadeo Salvatore.”

  “Yes,” she almost hissed, and I finally recognized where that manic intensity vibrating from her entire body stemmed from. Loyalty. “Amadeo Salvatore did right by a man he barely knew. He took care of an entire family just because a young boy who worked for him died. When Signore Carozza died, Tore paid for his funeral. When Donni’s sister wanted to go to school, he sent her to the Universita di Bologna.” She paused to smile, all teeth. “When I needed a job after returning heartbroken to America, Tore found me one, and when he moved here five years ago, I was finally in a place to return his loyalty.”

  My mouth was dry, my tongue coated with the bitterness of coffee. I had difficulty swallowing, maybe because I didn’t want to ingest Yara’s tale. I didn’t want to hear stories about the mafia being the good guys.

  I’d already had to rethink so many fundamental beliefs since Daniel left me. I wasn’t ready to empathize with the villains who’d haunted me and mine my entire life.

  Yara seemed to sense my recalcitrance, her mouth twisting tight over the carbonate anger I could see bubbling inside her. “A poor lawyer follows the law to the exact letter; the best lawyer makes the law work for them. Law and morality can’t always coexist, Elena, and sometimes, the difference between the two is loyalty.”

  “What are you asking of me?” I demanded, tugging my hand free from her damp grip to reclaim my cold coffee. “I’m already on the case.”

  “Are you?” she asked, one brow arched high like a question mark. “I was of the impression Elena Lombardi didn’t half-ass anything.”

  “I don’t,” I countered immediately, unthinkingly.

  “Good,” she said, her smile smug as the cat who ate the canary. “Then you’ll be willing to do anything to win this case.”

  I glared at her truculently, unwilling to answer.

  “I know you don’t want your sister’s best friend to come to any harm.” Her voice was warm again, cajoling. “You saw what this trial is doing to Dante. That won’t be the first attempt on his life if he can’t shake a conviction. His other…associates don’t trust a man on trial anymore. Rats are too common in the sewers of the underworld since Tomasso Bruschetta and Reno Maglione turned in the 80s.”

  “I don’t want him to die,” I
agreed because I’d found it was true. The sight of that massive body sprawled and lax on the black leather couch, broad face sheened with clammy sweat, all vitality lost, still made my stomach ache.

  Yara leaned back in her seat, crossed her legs, and folded her hands in her lap. I recognized the pose because I’d often adapted that false coolness when I was about to go in for the kill.

  My blood hummed beneath my skin in a way that felt like a pulled alarm, alerting me to leave at once.

  I didn’t.

  I should have.

  But I sat there frozen in the amber of my curiosity and almost morbid desire to be included.

  And Yara delivered her blow.

  “In such an important case, where information is swift-moving, and I don’t have the time to communicate with Mr. Salvatore as regularly as he requires, we’ve come up with a solution.”

  No.

  I knew what she would say, heard it as if spoken by the devil in a voice of smoke and brimstone as she said the words I echoed in my mind.

  “We need you as point person on this, Ms. Lombardi. We need you to move into Mr. Salvatore’s apartment.”

  I’d always had a bad temper.

  Irish and Italian blood didn’t exactly lend itself to serenity, and at my heart, I was deeply emotional, too sensitive for my own good. So, I often lashed out violently at anyone who wounded me, the instinct to inflict hurt on those who injured me almost animalistic.

  I’d hurt Daniel, ridiculing him about his sexual deviancies because I was so ashamed I couldn’t get past my own sexual issues to even attempt to understand his kinky inclinations.

  I’d hurt Giselle when I found out she was pregnant, wanting to eviscerate her with my words if I couldn’t with my hands. Wanting to destroy her as surely as she’d destroyed my dreams.

  I’d hurt Christopher when he’d tried to assault Giselle at her gallery opening, not only for hurting me so long ago so irrevocably but also for hurting my sister. In a perverse way, only I was allowed to do that, and only then because I felt I’d earned the right.

  I tried to hurt Yara after she struck me with those career-killing blows.

  I’d honed the edge of my blade-like tongue, slashing at her with comments about corruption and betrayal, blackmail, and abuse of power.

  Because it was all true.

  She didn’t have to tell me, though she did at some point in my tirade, that I would be fired, and if she had any say in the matter, blacklisted in New York if I refused her demand. She didn’t have to imply that anyone who refused the Camorra was often found soon after beaten within an inch of their life or dead in some gutter.

  I fought with her until my voice was hoarse, my throat cut up by the barbs I tried to throw at her, and then worn weak by the pleas I’d followed up with when nothing else seemed to work.

  Yara was unmoved.

  She stared at me with that frozen expression I’d once admired so much, watching as the flame of anger and injustice erupted within me and melted me from the inside out.

  I felt so young, so weak and naïve to have ever believed she might be my mentor, might take me under her wing and nourish me with love and guidance. Hadn’t I learned better yet? Why did I allow myself to hope for kindness when I saw a hand extended my way when I knew I’d more than likely receive a slap to the face instead of a handshake?

  I was at the point in my life where I didn’t even dream of happiness. I just yearned for a life without further pain.

  But it seemed God or fate or whatever forces of nature had cursed me since birth had decided to fuck with me again by threatening the only thing I’d ever derived confidence from, the only dream I had left.

  If anyone found out I was living with the capo of the New York City Camorra, I’d lose my licence to practice law.

  The degree I’d spent four years studying for in Italy and another year computing into American law at NYU, then the last four years of my life practicing with a rabid kind of ferocity.

  It could all disappear in a puff of smoke.

  I was fucked if I agreed, fucked if I didn’t.

  When I left Yara at the café, too furious to say goodbye, it was nearly impossible not to drown in the ocean of self-pity and sorrow rising tidal strong from my gut up into my throat, choking my airways, leaking from my ducts.

  I hadn’t cried in over a year, not since I found out Giselle was pregnant with the baby I’d yearned so hard to have with Daniel.

  But I cried then, and I discovered just how many types of tears there were.

  Angry tears, so salty they burned my hot cheeks.

  Wallowing tears, the kind that seeped into my mouth and made me nauseous as if I’d swallowed too much sea water.

  Lonely tears as I realized how few people I had in my corner, how few loved ones I could call my own. As I realized much of that solitariness was my fault because I’d pushed so many people away out of fear of being hurt. Only, didn’t this situation prove exactly why I’d done that?

  I’d admired Yara, respected her and yearned for her validation.

  I’d even…come to appreciate Dante the way one might appreciate a worthy adversary. After all, what was a hero without her villain?

  But it seemed even that was crumbling to dust.

  Dante has promised a game of corruption, and this was his trump card.

  How could I remain unmoved by his heady charisma and the toxic fumes of his criminality if I was forced into such proximity with him for the next six months to three years? Would I have to stay that long if the trial was postponed as such cases often were?

  What about my apartment?

  Suddenly, the echoing loneliness of my space felt like an Eden, and through sheer coercion, Dante had force-fed me the forbidden fruit and damned me to his hell.

  I walked the streets aimlessly, letting the idiosyncrasies of each neighborhood I passed through lend me their solace. From the moment I’d gotten off the plane and cabbed to our new home in New York, I’d fallen in love with the ever-changing nature of the city. It reminded me, in some ways, of myself. I wanted to be like the city herself, all things to all people depending on where you looked.

  But as I walked, I realized I’d lost that somewhere in the last few years. Instead of being multifaceted like a prism, refracting light and beauty, I’d compressed in on myself and stagnated like coal where I would have been diamante.

  I felt so lost in the maze of my own mind, I stopped seeing my surroundings and the hundreds of people who passed me. One of the things I loved most about the city was the anonymity you could experience in the teeming streets, the fact that I was a crying mess and no one stopped to stare or inquire about me.

  It reinforced what I already knew.

  I was an island, and I was okay that way.

  I didn’t need anyone to look out for me. I didn’t need to be coddled or protected the way the entire family had done to Giselle for her whole life.

  I didn’t need anyone for anything.

  By the time I reached my brownstone, my shoulders were pinned back, my chin high, my lips compressed around my righteous anger.

  I didn’t have to cave in to this bullshit.

  Yara was only acting on Dante’s behalf, and he was only acting like the capo he’d been for years.

  But I wasn’t his soldier, and I didn’t have to go down without a fight.

  There was a kernel of smug satisfaction in my heart as I walked up the stairs and unlocked my front door.

  “I’ll wait here for you to collect your things,” a voice said as darkness separated from itself on the corner of my landing, and a man solidified from the shadows.

  My heart slammed against my ribs, desperate to flee from the threat, but a small part of me recognized the voice.

  “Frankie,” I greeted coldly. “Do you make it a habit of scaring women half to death?”

  His smile was a flash of white in the darkness. “You’d be surprised.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Ignoring him,
I pushed into my house and closed the door.

  He could wait there all night.

  I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Twenty minutes later, I was drinking a glass of wine in the kitchen eating leftover noodles from the Thai place around the corner when the phone rang.

  I answered by saying, “You might want to get Frankie’s address changed. If he insists on waiting for me to go with him, he’ll be living on my porch for the foreseeable future.”

  And then I hung up.

  When the phone rang again minutes later, I found my hunger had fled and tipped the rest of my dinner in the garbage before topping off my wine and moving into the living room to watch the latest episode of The Bachelor.

  I almost didn’t hear the sound when it started up ten minutes after that, a faint whirring like a dentist’s drill, and then it took me too long to process why that sound would be emanating from my front stoop.

  Moments later, there was a slight thud and then the sound of hard-heeled shoes against the wood floors in my hallway.

  Frankie appeared in the doorway flanked by two men I recognized from the night of the San Gennaro party, a short, bearded man and a mammoth man with a face like a poorly chiseled block of granite. The tiny one held a drill in one hand, and Frankie tossed a small metallic object I recognized as a screw in his.

  The bastards had taken my goddamn door off its hinges.

  I gaped at them furiously, then exploded to my feet and stalked toward them with a finger pointed at them like a loaded gun. “Are you kidding me? You better put that door back exactly where you found it, and if there is any damage, your stronzo capo is paying for it, do you understand me?”

  Frankie nodded solemnly, but there was a wicked gleam in his dark eyes that had me stopping in my tracks a few feet from him. “Whatever you say, Donna Elena.”

  The big thug took a step toward me. Panic sizzled through me, an electric shock that faintly excited me even as it terrified me. I held my hands up and backed away, but he continued forward with zero expression on his craggy face.

  “Do not touch me,” I ordered him imperiously.