When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  “Oh?”

  She nodded, eyeing Aurora who had rifled through her mum’s purse to find an iPad she was now playing some game on. “I wanted the chance to ask you for some…legal advice.”

  I frowned at her. “I practice criminal law, but I’m sure I could offer some insight, whatever it is. Is everything okay?”

  Bambi’s eyes really were the widest and bluest I’d ever seen, so perfectly round and opaque they seemed like marbles. “Everything will be, if you can help me. I think I need a lawyer.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, studying her agitated movements as she spun around the kitchen putting things in their place to fix a sauce for the pasta. “Why don’t you start with the why of it all?”

  She bit her lip, eyeing me from the fridge for a second before moving over to where I leaned against the counter. I was shocked when she took my hands in her own, only Dante’s voice asking me to be kind to the women in his family keeping me from snatching them from her grip.

  “Can I trust you?” she asked, desperation laced through her words. She squeezed my hands so hard the bones ground together beneath my skin. “I know Dante does, and usually that’s enough for me, but I need to know if I can trust you.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed instantly, reading the panic in her eyes. The edge of her desperation reminded me of Mama in those moments when Seamus put our family in jeopardy, and she felt filled with impotency and fear. “As long as it doesn’t usurp my privilege with Dante, I can help you.”

  She chewed her lip so hard the flesh broke, a bead of garnet blood leaking onto her chin. “I…I don’t know if it usurps that. It’s about Aurora’s father.”

  “Does it have something to do with his case?” I pressed.

  Those massive eyes blinked rapidly. “I-I don’t really know for sure. But I’m worried.”

  Technically, I couldn’t take her into my confidence if it meant she might have information on the case. It might put me in the position to have to testify at court, which would mean I’d have to recuse myself from the legal team.

  “Are you safe?” I asked because I still wasn’t sure where her fear was coming from.

  She nodded on a heavy sigh. “For now.”

  “Elena,” Adriano’s heavily accented voice carried from the mouth of the hallway. “Dante needs to see you in the office.”

  “Can it wait a moment?” I asked, tugging Bambi even closer to me by our joined hands. “Bambi needs me.”

  “No,” Adriano said flatly, crossing his hulk arms over his chest.

  I rolled my eyes at him, then gave Bambi’s hands a squeeze. “I’m going to give you my card, okay? If you need to speak to me, you can call me at work or at home. If you can say for sure whether it involves Dante or not, I can help or get one of the other associates to.”

  Bambi beamed at me, the same wide, gorgeous smile as her daughter, before pulling me into a quick, tight hug. “Grazie, Elena.”

  I nodded awkwardly as she pulled away and then turned to follow Adriano down the hall to Dante’s office. I hadn’t had a chance to explore the entire apartment before, but it struck me just how large it was when we passed several closed doors on the way to the room Dante used as his office at the very end.

  “Buona fortuna,” Adriano grumbled as he opened the paneled black door for me to walk through.

  I frowned over my shoulder at him as I passed through, but he was already closing the door in my face.

  When I turned around, I noted vaguely that the entire room was once again done in rich blacks, the only color popping from the spines on the books lined on the floor-to-ceiling shelves on two of the walls. But I didn’t have time to catalog more because Dante was leaning against the front of his palatial desk with his arms crossed over his broad chest, his features set into a dark scowl.

  “You must really like black,” I quipped lamely because the buzzing tension around Dante seemed to increase with each breath I took as we stared at each other across the large room.

  “Vieni qui,” he ordered brusquely.

  Come here.

  My lips flattened. “Don’t order me around. I’m not one of your soldati.”

  “No,” he agreed on a low purr that was more threat than seduction. “Vieni qui, lottatrice mia.”

  Come here, my fighter.

  I hesitated, my mind battling with the impulse to obey. My teeth clenched so tightly my jaw panged, but finally, I moved closer, stopping an arm span away from the tense mafioso.

  “What?” I demanded mulishly, feeling like a child called to the principal’s office to atone for her misdeeds.

  Dante studied me with those liquid black eyes, his entire body clenched with the force of holding back the anger that toiled beneath his surface.

  “I heard you met a man today,” he said finally.

  Instantly, I went to take a step away from him, but Dante was already moving, knowing me well enough to stymie my flight. His hot hand curled around my wrist, engulfing it in his meaty palm. He didn’t say another word, but he watched me with those predatory eyes, those hungry animal eyes that said he wanted to eat me up for his next meal.

  The adrenaline sluicing through my limbs pooled warmly in my gut and seeped lower, heating the place between my thighs I hadn’t felt the urge to touch in months.

  “Who told you?” I made the mistake of asking.

  Dante bared his teeth. “You should have told me. Do not be angry with Adriano for doing what I asked.”

  “For spying on me?” I snapped, leaning closer to the angry Made Man even though I knew it was dangerous. Fear and excitement tangled in my chest, dancing together in a way they never had before. I felt alive with sizzling energy, restless with the need to poke at the growling bear before me until he snapped.

  The perverse side of me wanted to see what would happen when he did.

  “For watching out for you,” he ground out, pushing off the edge of his desk so that our bodies collided, my slight curves yielding to his iron edges.

  My nipples beaded so tight they pulsed as they brushed against his upper stomach.

  “I can take care of myself, Dante. I don’t need to be watched like some child,” I argued, raising up to my toes in my high heels to get even closer to his sneering mouth.

  “Like a child? No. A child has more sense than you sometimes,” he countered cruelly. “Ma dai! Do you know the man you gave your number to, Elena?”

  “Does it matter? Unlike you, he was a gentleman.” I never raised my voice, but I found I was nearly yelling at him, the slim space between our snarling mouths filled with our comingled breath hot as dragon fire.

  “Gentiluomo? That man was Gideone di Carlo,” he growled, cupping my shoulders in his hands to give me a little shake. “The same man whose brother is trying to assume leadership of the fucking Cosa Nostra. The same man whose family nearly murdered your sister. The same family who tried to kill me at my own party.”

  I blinked, shocked by the revelation.

  Dante continued, battering into my defenses ruthlessly. “I told you my enemies would want to use you against me, Elena, and I told you to be careful. Instead, you give a man who wants me dead your fucking phone number.”

  Anger leaked from the puncture wound in my pride. I sagged slightly in his hold and pinned my eyes over his shoulder to avoid his censorious gaze. “I didn’t know.”

  He sighed harshly, his warm, wine-scented breath against my face as he surprised me by hauling me tight against him in a sudden hug. His arms nearly crushed me, fury still palpable even in the tender expression. “For a smart woman, you can be very blind.”

  I struggled out of his arms, face flaming, skin pricking with shame. “Excuse me for thinking for one moment that a man could have taken a genuine interest in me.”

  I winced slightly as I realized the vulnerability of my words.

  Some of the antagonism vibrating through Dante quieted as his expression morphed into somber consideration. When he shook me again by the shoulder, it was alm
ost gentle.

  “Elena,” he said, clearly exasperated. “You are the most complicated woman I’ve ever known. So tough and strong, a born fighter because life taught you the need to survive, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

  I pulled away from him, stepping back because suddenly I couldn’t breathe well. He let me go, but his eyes were hooked through mine, forcing me to witness the sincerity there, to hear the words I knew would eviscerate me.

  “Yet, you’re so afraid,” he said in a low voice, his words creeping across the space toward me like the slow roll of thick, ominous fog. “You’re so goddamn afraid of being soft and tender because all that silk beneath your armor would rip so easily in the wrong hands. This insecurity blinds you to the truth. It corrodes the goodness in you. If you saw what I saw when I looked at you, you would never doubt yourself again. You wouldn’t be tricked by the easy flattery of some stronzo like di Carlo into thinking he was good enough for you.”

  “Oh,” I lashed out, hand slicing through the air as if my words were a knife I could wield. “And I suppose you are?”

  His gaze was unnerving, unblinking on mine, so dark I lost my way in the black maze of those eyes. Finally, he shrugged that eloquent Italian shrug and put his hands in his pockets as if to contain them. “Forse.”

  Maybe.

  I shook my head, back and forth, back and forth, unable to stop because I didn’t for one second want to forget my denial. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “I prefer romantic,” he offered, making light of me as he always did.

  Only this time, it wasn’t funny.

  It was dangerous and potentially lethal.

  I backed up another step. “I’m your lawyer, Dante. Nothing more.”

  “You were more than that from the moment I met you,” he countered, stepping forward, stalking me across the room step for step. “You were my best friend’s sister, the woman she admired most in the world. How could I not be intrigued? And then you saw me in the hospital room, and I thought you would fight me there and then to protect her. But it wasn’t until you pushed me up against the wall with your little fist in my shirt and threatened me with death if I ever hurt Cosima that I knew you were something special. A true lottatrice, a female gladiator.”

  We were both across the room now, beyond the entrance at the back wall of books. I took one more step back, and my spine hit the shelves. Dante was on me in the next breath, his body a careful inch away from mine, but his hand, as it seemed to do, found the column of my throat and cupped it, his thumb stroking my pulse almost soothingly.

  He leaned closer until his eyes were my entire world. “How could a man like me resist a woman like that?”

  “Try harder,” I suggested, but the impact of my cold words was lessened by the heaviness of my breath and the mad beat of my pulse against the pad of his thumb.

  “For once in your life, be brave,” he demanded. “And maybe I’ll give you what you’re too terrified to ask me for.”

  “I want to leave.”

  “No,” he purred darkly. “No, you want me to fuck you senseless without asking for your permission. If I don’t ask, you don’t have to pretend to be a lady and say no.”

  My core clenched at the darkly provocative thought, my mind spinning the fantasy faster than I could quell it. His hands turning me around, pushing me into the books so he could undo the pearl buttons down the length of my blouse. His teeth on my neck, pinning me in place as he loosened my trousers and sent them pooling to the floor at my heels, then the sharp bite of satin at my hips as he wrenched off my underwear and used his fingers to spread me apart for his cock. He’d take me there, without preparation, working himself into me with short, powerful thrusts until I opened up around him, until I screamed as he seated himself to the hilt.

  The air was thin in my lungs as I tried to regulate my breath, turning my head to the side so Dante wouldn’t see the desire I knew blazed from my eyes like neon lights. The hand on my neck moved up to grasp my chin, tilting my face back and up so he could look down into it.

  His own features were coated in shadow, his beauty stark and forceful in the low light. It took my breath away, the contrast between the ferocity of the body poised just over mine and the gentle way he cupped my chin. His night dark eyes swallowed me up as he looked into me, through me, behind every shield I’d painstakingly constructed.

  “Coraggio, lottatrice mia,” he coaxed softly.

  Courage, my fighter.

  “Let me show you all the ways a man can appreciate a woman,” he continued, running his nose along my cheek to my ear, where he took the lobe quickly between his teeth in a sharp nip that made me gasp. “Let me teach you all the ways you can appreciate me.”

  Helplessly, I tipped my head back against the books to give him better access to my neck, my fingers trembling uselessly at my sides.

  Dio mio, I wanted him with an acuteness I hadn’t felt in years.

  No, that was a lie I couldn’t begin to swallow.

  I’d never felt like this. This hammering, all-encompassing fervor that struck through me with each beat of my heart like a lightning strike. I wanted to prostrate myself for this beast of a man and witness all the ways he could bring my body back to life.

  He kissed the hollow of my throat, just a flutter of silken lips against warm skin, yet it made me want to cry. When was the last time someone had touched me with such reverence?

  Never?

  But it was more than sexual. That simple kiss laid roots through my flesh and bones, deep into the very center of my chest, where they wrapped intractably around my fragile heart.

  The kiss was kind.

  That was it. That simple and that profound for me.

  Dante was showing me kindness, the depths of which I hadn’t experienced much of in my life.

  It was a blow to the already fractured walls protecting my heart, body, and mind from intruders, and it was the last one I could stand to take. With a sound that was half growl, half shriek, I pushed Dante away with both hands on his steel chest.

  He moved away more as a result of my intent than my strength. I noticed he was breathing hard, that there was a sizable tent at the groin of his black pants I didn’t allow myself to focus on for more than a nanosecond.

  “Elena,” he said, just the one word, just my name, but in it a wealth of promises, an invitation in.

  Come to the underworld with me, it seemed to say. Come and play with me in the shadows where you belong.

  But I didn’t belong there.

  I didn’t belong anywhere, really, but certainly not on the dark side of life with a man on trial for murder, a man with blood on his hands and sin stained through his soul.

  My head was shaking again, back and forth almost manically as I beat a hasty, backward retreat to the office door.

  “I won’t go out with Gideone di Carlo if he calls,” I promised weakly.

  “I forbid it,” he barked, face darkening immediately, body tensing to move toward me again.

  I held my hands up between us as I moved to flee. “I won’t. But this can’t happen. This... this just cannot happen. Don’t push me on this, Dante. I’ll leave. I’ll ask to be off your case.”

  “Elena,” he protested, and I hated the way he said it with the lyrical Italian accent as if it was exotic and beautiful. As if I was.

  “No,” I said, locking down my battered defenses as I wrapped my hand around the door handle and opened it behind me. “I mean it. Forget this ever happened.”

  “What if I cannot?” he defied, crossing his arms and bracing his feet apart like a general preparing for battle.

  Good Lord, let him give up on me before it came to that. I was strong, and I was resilient, but I was not prepared to go to war with a man like him when the prize could mean more than my body.

  “Per favore,” I asked softly, remembering the way he had reacted to the word in my mouth once before. “Please, Dante.”

  And then before he could respond, I spun on my heel
, and I ran like the devil was at my back. I didn’t stop until I was in the bedroom he’d given me, but even that didn’t seem safe enough, so I locked myself in the en suite and braced myself on the sink, breathing hard as I stared at my haunted eyes in the mirror.

  My pale olive gold skin was flushed, my pupils dilated, my hair tousled as if from a lover’s hands. I looked well fucked, and he’d only kissed me on the neck, nipped my earlobe in those strong teeth.

  What would he do to me if given the chance?

  His demeanor held an unmistakable dominance, but from the first time since Christopher, I felt curious about it, almost entranced by it. Dante was dangerous, violence dressed in a thousand-dollar suit, but beneath it all, he was also the kind of man who wept at a friend’s hospital bedside and made pasta with a girl who called him uncle.

  He was a contradiction, a bigger mess of contrarian values than anyone I’d ever known outside myself.

  He was tall, dark, and sinfully handsome, a masterfully created man.

  My heart raced, and the primal urge to flee spiked hot again through my veins because even though walls separated us, I knew instinctively he was not done hunting me.

  And I thought, for the first time in my life, that I might have just met my match.

  ELENA

  My life settled into an odd kind of routine over the next week. I woke up early every morning to use Dante’s state-of-the-art gym. Sometimes, I ran on the treadmill the way I had at my own gym, reading The New York Times while I warmed up, then doing intervals for forty-five minutes. Most of the time, I worked out with Dante and some assortment of his crew.

  As I said, it was odd.

  They were all criminals, rough wiseguys who cursed freely, flouted everything I stood for, and made money hand over fist through ill-begotten means.

  I shouldn’t have liked them.

  But I found I kind of did.

  They were fun and free in a way I’d never seen people act before. They joked with each other just as easily as they delivered brutal blows when they fought on the sparring mats. There wasn’t competition between them as there was between every lawyer and me at the firm, that edge of envy and wariness that curdled socialization. They were brothers in crime, bonded over battles in alleyways and on street corners, in backrooms and ballrooms. They were as capable of sophistication––I learned Chen actually had a master’s degree in mathematics and Frankie was COO of the Salvatore-owned Terra Energy Solutions, a well-known energy and gas company––as they were of ruthlessness.