When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  They were a tangle of contrasts I found myself wanting to sit cross-legged on the ground and pull apart until I held each individual thread in my hand. I was curious by nature, a puzzle solver by trade, but there was something primal in them that called to me like the howl of a fellow wolf at night.

  I felt moved by them and moved by their acceptance of me when normally, I would have judged them and found them wanting without ever giving them a chance. It shamed me to acknowledge that as much as it awed me to know they were above that.

  I caught Dante watching me sometimes when I sparred with Marco, who was short enough that we were more evenly matched, or when I spoke to Chen as I stretched about the recent economic downtown. He watched me with this look in his eye I couldn’t quite figure out, but it looked something like pride. I didn’t speak to him, avoiding any alone time with him as if it was essential to my safety, and in a way, it was. But I could admit to myself that I watched him too, and what I found continued to fascinate me.

  They clearly respected Dante, deferring to him in a myriad of different little ways I cataloged with more interest than I should have. They mimicked his movements sometimes, shifted their positions throughout the room in correlation to him like planets around a singular sun, and followed his orders without blinking an eye. They teased him often, fought him hard when they sparred, and seemed relaxed in his company, but an alert attentiveness in the soldiers spoke of their willingness to do more than just his bidding, an intensity that spoke of their readiness to dive in front of a bullet for him.

  It was heady to observe their dynamic.

  Not just observe like a witness, like the fly on the wall I’d been most of my life, but to participate in it.

  They enfolded me into their morning routine like sugar into egg whites, beating us together until, at the end of eight days, I felt like a homogenous member of their five a.m. practice sessions.

  From there, I did my ablutions, grabbed a banana from the bowl in the kitchen, and had Adriano take me to work, where I focused mostly on other cases while we waited to find out when the trial date would be set for Dante. Until we knew, we didn’t have access to the witness sheet, and therefore, it was difficult to know how to defend Dante against whoever they would find to replace Mason Matlock. The only evidence they seemed to have of Dante’s racketeering and illegal gambling was a low-level bookie in New Jersey who’d been arrested eight months ago and rolled over on Dante to reduce his sentencing time as well as a wiretap they’d taken of Dante speaking to a known sports gambling shylock in the Bronx about betting for the 2018 World Series years ago.

  It wasn’t much, and it would be nothing if we could squash the murder charges.

  I worked through the weekend to avoid spending time at the apartment with Dante even though he was often as busy as I was, working in his office deep into the night, always on the phone or entertaining a variety of men and some women who all had that trademark wet black mafia look in their eyes.

  I was taking the Thursday and Friday off from work then working remotely for three days the next week anyway for my surgery, so I told myself it made sense to work longer hours than usual, staying at the office until ten o’clock every night when Adriano would arrive to drive me back to the apartment.

  It wasn’t that I was avoiding him or the feelings he seemed to stir to life beneath my frozen skin.

  I was just busy with work, as always.

  The Wednesday night before my surgery, I stayed even later at the office, the small silver clock on my desk in the bullpen glowing with the number 11:17.

  Seventeen was an unlucky number for Italians, signaling death, and even after years of stifling my cultural history, I shivered at seeing it on the screen, instinctively reaching for the cross I’d once worn at my neck.

  It was as good enough a cue as any to end the night there. I’d finished my research on a hit and run for a client who had claimed there hadn’t been a stop sign at the corner where the accident had occurred. Fortunately, the company PI, Ricardo Stavos, had located the vandals in Brooklyn Heights who had stolen it, which meant when we finally went to court in two weeks, we had a solid chance of getting him off with a heavy fine and license penalty given the victim had only suffered a fractured collarbone.

  I laughed resentfully as I stood from my uncomfortable chair to stretch the kinks out of my body from sitting at my desk for hours. As a girl, I’d dreamed of being a lawyer, imagining myself like a superhero in a Prada suit, then when I’d first moved to America, I’d been caught up in the idea of glamor and prestige as one of the city’s top attorneys.

  The truth was fair less dazzling. Very few lawyers ever made it into the papers for their work or won cases that made a serious change to the dynamics of society. Most people were in it for the power, the money, or the nepotism. We all worked endless hours, ate at our desks, and eschewed normal social conventions like dinner dates and Sundays at Central Park for work, work, and more work.

  It was an endless toil.

  And in a way, it perfectly mimicked my life.

  I’d had my nose to the grindstone since I was ten years old and realized if I wanted a chance to get out of the stinking hole of our poverty in Naples, I had to hone my mind into my mightiest weapon, the only one in my arsenal.

  It was no wonder I was always tired. It was as if I just needed a night of good, deep sleep, but I still felt exhausted even when I woke up. It was more than physical exhaustion or mental. The brunt of it was emotional weariness, all of my hope and optimism worn smooth by the continued battering of life’s antagonistic waves against the shores of my heart.

  All I wanted was to go back to Dante’s apartment, crawl into that huge, decadent bed, and sink into the silky sheets with a glass of wine and the latest edition of The Economist.

  Not exactly exciting, but after a day like I’d had, a week, a year, it was all I wanted. My needs were small and simple because I never let them become blown out of proportion by dreams.

  “Burning the midnight oil?” Ethan asked as he sauntered into the room in a beautiful blue suit, his voice slurred slightly with drink. “Why did I know I’d find the invulnerable Elena Lombardi still at her desk?”

  I ignored him as I packed up my things. In my experience, men like him wanted any kind of attention, so if you starved him of it, he’d leave you alone.

  The drink made him bolder. He sauntered forward, slammed his hip into the side of a desk, and hissed before saying, “You should relax a little. ’S not like you’re next in line for the partner track.”

  I sighed heavily. “Maybe if you spent less time out drinking with your buddies and more time at work, you’d have a chance at it someday too.”

  “I have more than a chance,” he countered, his flushed faced furrowing. “My father is Horace Topp. I’m just paying my dues here in this pit with the rest of you.”

  “The rest of us who actually work for our success,” I countered superciliously, giving him a wide birth as I walked around him to the door.

  I was tired and human, and he was irritating. I could only resist his idiocy for so long.

  He lunged forward, surprisingly quick for his drunkenness, and grabbed my wrist. “You’re a real bitch, you know that? You should be nice to me. I could do you a favor or two if I was properly motivated.”

  “If being a bitch means being smart enough to know the truth and brave enough to speak it, I’ll count it as a compliment,” I told him calmly, peeling his fingers off the silk of my blouse, frowning at the oily print his grip left there. “And one day, Ethan, I have no doubt you’ll be needing a favor from me so why don’t you go home to Daddy’s lush apartment and have some sweet dreams while you still can.”

  I walked away from his gaping mouth and furious flush even though he stammered behind me and called out some choice curse words as if they’d have any effect on me. When your own family thought you were a bitch, it was difficult for anyone else’s knife to inflict the same kind of wound.

  It s
hocked me to see Frankie just outside the glass doors to the bullpen, his mouth twisted up with rage, his eyes over my shoulder on the idiot that was no doubt still staring after me.

  “He was giving you trouble,” he said, tone flat with fury.

  I was momentarily surprised by that. Why should Frankie care if one of the associates was haranguing me? It happened literally every day, and I’d had much, much worse confrontations in my life. This was a blip, a nothing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I assured. “I’m used to his nonsense.”

  Francesco Amato, Dante’s right-hand man, a sharp-minded, quick-fingered hacker, pinned me then with a gaze that reminded me all too much of the wet black eyes of the mafiosos in my past. For one fleeting second, I was terrified.

  “You shouldn’t have to deal with nonsense,” he said firmly. “One thing rolls into another, and before you know it, you’ve let a pile of shit a mile wide accumulate at your back, and no matter how hard you run, you’ll never outpace it. No.” He leaned closer, conspiratorially. Naturally, I bent to meet him. “Someone gives you hell, Elena, you give it to ’em right back. You teach them that for every move against you, however slight, you’re ready to battle. So many of the wealthiest, most successful men you’ll ever see are bullies at heart, and there’s nothing a bully hates so much as pushback.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, mostly because I wasn’t sure I agreed. My family had called me a bully before for my cruelty to Giselle, and Lord knew, I was met with pushback for every word I’d ever spoken against her, even if it was warranted. It still didn’t stop the poison of hatred for her and self-loathing for myself seep through my bloodstream.

  “Besides,” Frankie continued, cuffing my chin lightly the way I’d seen fathers do to sons, as if he was imparting life wisdom. “You’re with us, now. You think the Salvatore borgata puts up with limp-dicked stronzi like this bastardo?”

  Before I could say anything, Frankie sauntered past me into the bullpen, his gait easy, hands in his pockets, and a whistle through his lips like he was taking some kind of jaunty midnight stroll through the office.

  “Hey man,” he called to Ethan, who’d leaned against a desk to text. He dropped his phone; his fingers numb with drink as he startled. “You got the time?”

  Ethan stared at him numbly for a beat before he jerked himself out of it and bent to look at the clock on the desk he was perched on. “Yeah, it’s eleven––”

  Frankie was there so quickly I barely saw him move, lunging across the space to curl his hand over the back of Ethan’s neck, using it to slam his face down into the clock he peered at. There was slap, crash, and wet garbled cry as Ethan collided with it.

  Frankie yanked him back up and stepped closer to smile at him, patting Ethan’s bloody cheek with his free hand as he said, “There ya go. Now, next time I see you fucking with Elena Lombardi, I’m gonna put your head through a window, you get me?”

  “Jesus,” Ethan groaned, trying to hold his broken nose as blood slipped through his fingers. “You fucking psycho.”

  Frankie shrugged a shoulder modestly. “Hey, you think I’m a psycho, you should see Dante Salvatore when he’s been crossed. Cavolo, they call him the Devil of NYC for a reason.” He reached up again to squeeze Ethan’s bloody cheeks in one hand then turned his head to face me lingering in the doorway. “You fuck with Elena, you should know, that’s you fucking with him. And he’ll do a lot worse than I would, capisci?”

  When Ethan didn’t immediately respond, Frankie shook his head in his cruel hand, blood flying from the broken nose over the desk.

  “Yes,” Ethan finally squawked. “Okay, alright, fuck! Chill.”

  “Chill?” Frankie asked, then looked at me as if he was affronted. “I look anything but chill to you, Lena?”

  “As a cucumber,” I agreed, because what else could I say?

  A secret part of me deep inside thrilled at the sight of entitled, whining, asshole Ethan bleeding in Frankie’s hands. He wasn’t just a prick to me, but to every single associate in the office he felt was below his status, which was most of them.

  Honestly, if Frankie hadn’t done it, it was probably only a matter of time before someone else did.

  Even though I didn’t like the position it put me in, jeopardizing my job yet again, I also had to admit it was unlikely that Ethan would go crying to our superiors about it. His enormous ego would be too bruised to admit what happened. I had no doubt by tomorrow he would have circulated an epic tale about getting beaten up on the subway or for trying to steal some guy’s girl at a bar.

  I didn’t care.

  It was enough to know that Frankie cared enough about me to stand up for me.

  It was nice to hear that he felt Dante would do the same.

  As Frankie dropped Ethan’s face and started toward me, reaching for a handkerchief he kept in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, I surprised myself by smiling at him.

  “That was more than slightly awesome,” I whispered as he met up with me and continued forward down the hall in tandem. “I won’t say I fully approve of your methods but thank you.”

  “Hey,” he said with a blasé shrug as if it was nothing. “You remind me of my wife. It was nothing to do.”

  “What’s she like?” I asked as we took the elevator down to the street level.

  He shot me a sidelong glance. “She’s a real bitch.”

  I laughed the entire ride down.

  It was dark in the apartment when I stepped from the elevator after Frankie dropped me off on his way home to his wife and children. A tiny flash of disappointment flared in my chest when I didn’t see Dante in the living room or kitchen, his normal haunts late at night. There was a restless energy coursing through me I wanted to satisfy with the bite of our banter, the feel of those deadly hands lightly touching my flesh.

  The truth was, I wanted to play, with our minds if not our bodies, knowing how dangerous it would be to tumble over that last hurdle and into bed with my client.

  With a mafia don.

  I got ready for bed feeling oddly deflated as I washed my face and applied my seven-step skin care, as I massaged lotion into my body and read my requisite thirty minutes of news before bed.

  It did not surprise me that I couldn’t sleep.

  Not with Dante lodged in my consciousness like a splinter.

  With a ragged sigh, I threw off my eye mask, tossed my earplugs to the nightstand, and slid out of bed. I decided a nightcap was the only solution for my insomnia, so I padded down the dark halls to the back staircase and down to the kitchen. There was only the faint light from the streets spilling in through the floor-to-ceiling windows to light my way in the black-on-gray-and-white spaces, but I managed it.

  I was opening the fridge when I noticed the faint glow of light coming from down the hallway.

  My heart tripped over the excitement that collected in my chest, and before I could think through the impulse, I walked down the back hall toward the light.

  It came from the office near the end of the hall. The door was just barely ajar, but through the gap in the wood, I could hear everything I needed to.

  A faint, growling moan.

  My body went white-hot then ice cold as I realized what could be happening behind that door.

  Was Dante fucking someone in there?

  Agony spun through me like a tornado, ripping up the foundation of confidence I’d found I’d unwittingly built around my relationship with the capo. I blinked hard against the disbelief that he would be with another woman when it had seemed so wonderfully apparent he wanted me in his bed.

  Clearly, I’d forgotten myself.

  I wasn’t some siren like my younger sister, Giselle, capable of enchanting men with her song, luring them to her depths even if it meant a rocky death.

  I wasn’t a sensational beauty like Cosima, so radiant inside and out even a blind man would want her.

  I’d been with two men who had both found me a disappointment, even if, in
the end, they’d been a disappointment to me too.

  Why would a man like Dante Salvatore with his raw, tangible magnetism and almost animalistic energy want to bed me?

  I couldn’t even come.

  Shame spun its path through every inch of my body until I had to brace myself or fall into my weak knees. I caught myself on the frame, but my shoulder caught the door, knocking it open a little more.

  Just enough to see into the clearer shadows of the interior.

  My breath caught, the cyclone inside me falling flat like the eye of a storm.

  Because Dante was inside lounging totally naked in a deep suede chaise before the bookshelves in the corner of the room with the dregs of whiskey sweating in a glass on the side table and a jar of lube beside that, the cap still open.

  But he was entirely alone.

  And those strong hands threaded with veins I found myself fantasizing about far too often were wrapped around the obscene length of his cock.

  He was jerking off.

  I was arrested by the sight of him like that. His big body sprawled in the seat, his thickly muscled thighs spread wide to accommodate his hands, one pulling hard and slow at his shaft, the other cupping his lightly furred sac. He had his head thrown back against the pillows, neck corded with tension, wine-stained red mouth lax with pleasure. All that golden olive skin glimmered like oiled bronze in the low light of the single lamp, illuminating the scene. The hair that dusted his broad, steeply defined chest and under his naval in a dense line to his trimmed groin was ridiculously masculine, highlighting his rugged masculinity as much as it provided a delicious contrast for his beautifully carved form.