When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  “If that’s all?” Judge Hartford asked. “I’ll see you all in court on April 17th.”

  I stood there mutely for a moment before Yara took my elbow and led me from the room. It was only when we were in the car on the way back to the office that I finally found my voice.

  “You knew this would happen.”

  Her sigh was long, an unraveling of weariness. “You’re still young, Elena. When you play with the big dogs, you learn they have very different rules.”

  “As in none,” I intoned. “Dennis O’Malley met with a known associate of Thomas Kelly, a mobster with ties to the di Carlo family, and nothing happens? The trial just goes on as planned.”

  “Why do you think I feel so justified using our own unscrupulous means?” Yara demanded. “This is how it’s done, Elena.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s fucked,” I proclaimed.

  “You’re worried about him.”

  I didn’t bother denying it, but I didn’t respond either, crossing my legs as I stared out the window at the snow.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much. You’re just entering this world, but Dante has been king of his corner of it for years. He knows what he’s doing.”

  I didn’t respond because the truth was, I was reeling.

  I was desolate because I felt I had let Dante down. I’d been so sure Seamus would lead me to something that could help him, but if anything, it had only made the entire situation worse.

  I was scared that Dennis would do anything to get Dante convicted.

  I was petrified he would win and Dante would spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary.

  I was horrified that a man I was coming to care for more than I was ready to admit was going to leave me.

  And I’d be alone again, somehow even more so than I was before.

  ELENA

  Later that evening, I was just packing up to leave work early because I hadn’t been able to focus since our return from the courthouse when my phone rang.

  I didn’t recognize the number, and wondering if it was Gideone di Carlo again, I almost didn’t answer it.

  At the last minute, I swiped to accept the call and put the phone between my shoulder and ear as I continued to pack up.

  “Hello?”

  There was a pause that sent chills down my spine.

  “Hello?” I repeated, my eyes scanning the bullpen for signs of anyone that shouldn’t be there.

  “I’m disappointed in you, cara,” Seamus finally said in a soft voice.

  My heart stopped. “How did you get my number?”

  “I have more than that,” he assured me. “I know where Mama is right now in Soho at her little restaurant. I know the address of Giselle’s apartment in Brooklyn…I’m looking at her right now, in fact. What a beautiful little girl Genevieve is.”

  My breath froze in my lungs. Could it be possible that Seamus was this evil?

  “What are you doing?” I asked slowly. “Don’t bother Giselle and her daughter.”

  “No?” He laughed. “Always trying to protect your family, even from your own dad. Even when Giselle stole your boyfriend. Poor little Elena. The family never did treat us right.”

  The ice melted into nausea as I thought about Seamus watching Giselle and Genevieve, both of them completely unaware.

  “You don’t want anything from them,” I reminded him. “What do you want from me?”

  “Clever girl,” he praised. “I want you to know that your little stunt today cost me big time. Kelly is furious. We got a delicate balance going right now, and you nearly broke that.”

  “You want an apology?” I couldn’t stop the incredulity from seeping into my tone. “There are a few I think you should get off your chest first.”

  “I didn’t want to have to do this.” His voice was sad, almost like a little boy filled with contriteness for doing something he shouldn’t. “But you gave me no choice. Instead of standing beside your father, with your family like I raised you to do, you turned your back on me, and now I have no choice.”

  “Just like you had no choice to sell Cosima,” I snapped. “She made you gamble any money you ever made? She made you so in debt to the Camorra that her beauty was the only chip you had left to play?”

  “Stai zitto about Cosima,” he roared through the phone.

  There was a moment of silence as he collected himself.

  “You’re going to meet me downstairs in ten minutes,” he told me, calm once more. “You’re going to get in the black sedan idling at the curb, and you aren’t going to disconnect this call until you do so.”

  “No,” I said simply.

  Another gusty, dramatic sigh. “Can you hear this, Elena?”

  There was a change in sound as he put the phone on speaker, the greater noises of the world around him apparent to me too. Distantly, I heard female laughter.

  “Giselle is enjoying showing her daughter snow for the first time,” Seamus narrated.

  There was a crunch of snow as he moved, the sound of that familiar voice growing louder.

  “Ma petite choux,” I could hear Giselle sing from somewhere too close to Seamus. “Look at you, loving the snow!”

  My belly burned as if I’d swallowed lit coal.

  “Don’t do this, Dad,” I asked him softly. “Please, just listen to yourself. That’s your daughter and your first grandchild right there. Stop this. If you stop this, it’s not too late. You can make amends to everyone. You can meet Genevieve properly, and we can have a relationship again.”

  He laughed, but the sound was broken and lopsided, ugly in my ears. “No…no, I know it’s too late for that. I’ve looked into the eyes of two of my daughters, and all I’ve seen is hate. You can’t fool me again, Elena. You might be a fighter, but you got that from me.” Then quietly, almost as if he didn’t know he even spoke the words. “I’m just trying to fight to stay alive here.”

  “I can help you,” I tried again, so desperate I could taste the metallic panic on my tongue. “Dante could help you.”

  I offered, and I knew in my heart he would. Even if they were enemies, Dante would help Seamus for Cosima.

  He’d help Seamus for me.

  “Five minutes now, Elena,” he said again, his voice at full force, whatever moment of reflection he had succumbed to totally forgotten. “Don’t be late. I’d rather not have to interrupt Giselle’s day. Remember, don’t hang up. I’ll be listening.”

  He went quiet, but the connection didn’t drop, and I knew he’d muted me.

  I kept the phone pressed to my ear for a long moment as I fought not to cry.

  Get it together, Lombardi, I ordered myself.

  First, I sucked in a deep, stabilizing breath to clear some of the fearful fog from my mind, and then I stared at my phone. I could still text even with the line occupied.

  There didn’t seem to be any kind of quick fix for this situation.

  If I didn’t go, I couldn’t put it past Seamus to abduct Giselle and Genevieve. He’d done worse before, and he was between a rock and a hard place. Animals had chewed off their own limbs for less, and Seamus was just that— a cornered monster desperate to survive.

  No matter what happened between us, there was no way in any world I could let someone hurt Giselle and her baby.

  Absolutely no way.

  Even though tears burned the backs of my eyes because I honestly didn’t see how I would get out of this situation intact, I shouldered my purse, swung on my coat, and left the office.

  Adriano wasn’t waiting for me outside like he usually was even though I’d texted him fifteen minutes ago to tell him I was ready to leave. Worry twined with my panic and made me want to puke.

  Before I left the security area, I did the one thing I could to ensure the best chance of this working out.

  I texted Dante.

  And then I strode across the lobby, pushed through the glass doors, and held my head high as I moved toward the black sedan idling at the curb.

  Once, Dante had
lectured me about sacrifice, but I didn’t truly understand until I opened the door and slid into the interior of that car.

  “Hello,” Thomas Kelly said with a wide grin, and a moment later, he was on me.

  DANTE

  I was sitting at my desk listening to Roberto Brambilla detail his plan to use a local motorcycle gang to mule the drugs we brought in from the Basante family when a shudder seized my shoulders and wrenched at my spine painfully. My whole body seized with the sensation, then left in its wake a horrifying certainty.

  Something monumentally wrong had happened.

  My first thought was of Cosima and Alexander, so far away in England. My mind raced through theories, a bitter old member of the defunct Order of Dionysus who had escaped the judicial noose returning to kill them, an associate of Noel’s bent on revenge, to the more innocuous, a fall from Cosima’s Golden Akhal-Teke horse, Alexander in a motor accident.

  Tore was at his house in upstate New York for the week, and even though I’d just gotten off the phone with him, I sent him a text coded to ask if anything was amiss.

  I didn’t think of Elena until I was already calming down, having convinced myself premonitions didn’t exist, it was just a passing chill.

  The moment her name sounded in my mind, I knew with bone-deep certainty, something had happened to her.

  “Call Adriano,” I barked out to Marco, who was in the room with Roberto and me. “I want to know where Elena Lombardi is right fucking now.”

  The claws eviscerating my gut, reducing my insides to ground meat, told me they wouldn’t find her. I ignored the men in our meeting, opening the door in my desk to reach for my two cell phones.

  I had a text from Elena on one of them.

  Seamus was going to take Giselle and Genevieve, maybe Mama, too. I had to go with them. I know you’ll find me, capo.

  Xx,

  E

  Fury like I hadn’t known in years boiled my blood, eviscerating everything else in its path until I was a pure flame locked in human flesh.

  A moment later, Chen appeared in my office doorway, his skin whitewashed with panic and his mouth tight, that stretched leash on my control snapped, and I exploded.

  “Where the fuck is she?” I roared as I swept everything off my desk––computer, lamp, paperweight, stacks of money––and fisted my hands on the surface to lean over it into the men who filed into my office with their fucking tails between their legs. “Were you not supposed to keep an eye on her, motherfuckers?”

  “Si, capo,” Chen said in flawless Italian, his jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder the words made it out of his mouth. “Adriano isn’t answering his phone either.”

  “Figlio di puttana,” I cursed savagely as I ripped my hands through my hair. “Va bene, va bene, we are going to fix this. Get every motherfucking capo on the phone, Frankie. Marco, Chen, hit up Father Patrick’s. The bastardi Irishmen have taken Elena. Burn the fucking place to the ground if one of those assholes doesn’t give you answers. Jaco, you hit the streets. I want you talking to every goddamn person we know.”

  Everyone nodded except Jaco, who worried his lip between his teeth as he lingered in the door.

  “What’re you gonna do, Boss?”

  I pinned him with an impatient glare. “You volunteering to take my mind off it? I could use a punching bag.”

  His eyes widened slightly before he nodded and beat it out of my office.

  Then, I did what I hadn’t done the history of my leadership of the family.

  I called the Commission.

  “Accardi,” I said when Orazio, the head of the Accardi family, answered the phone with a staccato grunt. “A woman’s been taken. I need to mobilize the families to find out any info they can get on who might have taken Elena Lombardi.”

  There was a long pause filled with heavy, choking silence.

  “Dante,” he finally said in his nasal voice, disrespecting me by addressing a Don by his first name. “You misplaced your hot figa of a lawyer, ugh?”

  The case on my phone creaked and then cracked sharply in my hand as I squeezed it in my fury. “No, Accardi, she’s been goddamn taken. She was snatched by the Irish. If they torture her, we’re all in hot shit. So, mobilize your goddamn soldati and get me some information.”

  “This sounds like a personal problem, bimbo,” Accardi drawled, having the balls to call me the Italian equivalent of kiddo. “Deal with your own shit like a real man.”

  And then, the stronzo hung up on me.

  Within thirty minutes, every single one of the other Dons had done the same thing.

  Frankie was in my office to report at the end of the last call with Maglione, and he watched dispassionately as I ripped a Picasso painting from the wall and broke the frame over my knee.

  “Got a call back from Thumper Ricci,” he said while I stood there panting, trying to control the fury rolling through me like the waves off Napoli in the stormy winter months. “Said one of his men saw Elena over in the Bronx by Madison Ave Bridge this afternoon. Said she was watching two men talk at a gas station.”

  “Cazzo, Francesco, I need information now,” I barked.

  “I know, boss,” he said, completely unthreatened even though I felt one second from breaking someone’s neck.

  Elena was taken.

  After I’d fucking promised her I’d keep her safe, after she’d finally given in to this simmering, fucking sensational pull between us, and I’d already betrayed her.

  Just like the other bastardi in her life.

  “D, I know you’re angry enough to power a nuclear bomb right now, but you gotta get your shit tight. We need to use our brains here, not our brawn, and you are not doing that by trashing your office.”

  I glared at him for a long moment, blowing hot air through my mouth, irritated with both of us because he was right.

  I had to channel Elena’s interminable cool.

  This wasn’t the time to rip things to shreds. I could do that when I found the motherfucker Irishmen holding her.

  Without saying a word to Frankie, I grabbed my cell and made two calls.

  Caelian Accardi and then Santo Belcante.

  They both agreed to help with limited soldiers. We didn’t want to blow our long game before it had even begun. But I was grateful for their help, and it wasn’t something I’d ever forget.

  This was why I’d met with them.

  Because the Old Guard was stuck in the past, antiquated and close enough to death to merit a little push in the right direction.

  The Dons, all of them, would die for this one day.

  “We’ve got everyone looking,” Frankie told me. “Liliana and her crew even went out. We’ll find her. I got an algorithm searching through traffic cam and security footage right now.”

  I raked a hand through my hair, almost pulling out the strands.

  There was no way I could stay in this goddamn cage while Elena was out there waiting for me to get to her.

  “It’s time.”

  Frankie blinked at me. “No, I told you, I can disable the anklet, but I can’t get it back online. You’ve got one shot at leaving here, D, and you won’t be coming back.”

  “I know.”

  We stared at each other for a long minute where I imagined each tick of the clock.

  “You doing this because of Cosima or because of the girl?” he finally asked.

  I almost winced because not once had Cosima crossed my mind. “Elena, you fool.”

  He nodded curtly. “Fine, come into the living room. If you want to fuck all our plans to high hell for a woman, God knows I’m not in a position to stop you.”

  I got a call twenty minutes later.

  “Boss,” Marco said. “I found Addie. He’s in rough shape, but he can talk a bit. Told me four of them jumped him when he was coming back from the john at lunch. He was in the Subway across the street from Elena’s office. Around five fifteen.”

  “Get him to Dr. Crown,” I ordered, and then I hung up. “Is it
ready?”

  “As soon as we know where we’re going, I’ll remove the SIM card,” Frankie explained as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Beside him, a mesh wire cage the size of a microwave. “Put the tracking beacon in the Faraday Cage, and I’ll spoof the network so it sends the GPS location from the apartment as if it was never removed.”

  “Va bene,” I said even though I didn’t know the finer intricacies of the plot. I trusted Frankie to know what the hell he was talking about. “I want our crew ready to go the second we get news.”

  “They’re ready.”

  “And the plane?”

  “Fueled and ready at Newark. Bobbie Florentino is already onboard getting things prepped.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll find her, D.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Boss?” Chen said into the phone.

  I was pacing, the anklet heavy around my left leg as I stalked around the apartment answering phone call after phone call that led nowhere.

  “What?”

  “We found Kelly’s piece. She went into Father Patrick’s and got talking to Marco, liked the look of him.” He laughed coldly. “She took him to the back for a blowie, and I was waiting. Me, she didn’t like so much.”

  “What did you get?” I growled impatiently.

  “Nothing on where he lives, but apparently, he took her to a friend’s once in Marine Park. Somewhere on East 34th.”

  “Start knocking.”

  I called Daniel Sinclair.

  “Hello?” he answered, his voice as coolly polite as Elena’s could be.

  “This is Dante,” I said brusquely. “I don’t have time to talk, but I wanted you to know. I think it’s a good idea you get home to your wife if you aren’t already. You can’t get there in good time, I’ll send a guy.”

  A pause then the sounds of someone quickly gathering their things. “I’m on my way. She’s safe for now?”

  “Yeah.” Thanks to Elena, but I wouldn’t tell him that.