When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love Duet #1)

by Giana Darling

I didn’t respond because I wasn’t thinking about golden eyes. I was thinking about a pair of steel ones as hard as armor and wondering just what kind of instrument I’d need to break that metal barrier in two.

They would all be wrong. It was simple. I was the son of an evil man.

Honestly, I loved life. I love the pleasures to be had in it. The sex, the food, the bloody good wines, and all those highs were only amplified by the edge of danger and fear that my existence in the underworld lent to my life. I lived every day like it was my fucking last, and I’d learned that from my mother.

“This is what you must understand, Elena. They are wrong. Women bear the trials of their men, the delivery of their babies, the weight of their families. Women are extraordinarily strong. So, you must trick the men into giving you power. Do not tell them you are strong, and do not fight them with words because words can be undone. Fight the injustice with action, lottatrice mia, because action can be understood in any language, by any man.”

“I’m wearing heels bigger than your dick, so if this is a pissing contest, I think it’s safe to say I win,”

I was the child of a sinner, and sin was in my blood.

I wanted to be the kind of a woman who was called a hero, but I’d spent most of my life being called a villain. If enough people treat you like a villain, you become one.

He was too…vital to contain. For the same reason I avoided going to the zoo, I wanted to avoid the sight of Dante trapped in a steel box.

needed the win so I could get out from under the shadow of my family, their accomplishments and pitfalls, and stand strong in the limelight as my own person.

I backed up slightly only to bump into the desk, suddenly trapped by his large body as he bore down on me. My heart raced, leaping and bounding over the hurdles of fear, anxiety, and something like desire that cropped up in my chest.

“But you will obey me, nonetheless. Not because you respect my authority, but because you won’t do anything to risk your position. One call to Yara and she’d order you to do anything I asked.”

She was the only person who was never disappointed in me, the only one who believed in my goodness and rooted for me no matter what. She was the only one who stayed resolutely by my side when Daniel left me for my own sister.

“This is what I like very much about Dante,” Mama continued. “He is like his brother, Cosima’s husband, yes? They are who they are. No lies, no masks. Dante Salvatore is exactly who he made himself to be.” I am the most honest man you’ll ever meet. Dante’s words unwound from my memory and laid out before me beside Mama’s, and I had to admit they both had a point. There was no pretense. Even when Yara and I had encouraged him to act the gentleman, to dress like the saint he would never be, Dante remained true to himself.

Because the truth was, I was intrigued by Dante in a way I’d never been with another soul. He was such a contradiction in terms, a puzzle that my lawyer’s mind couldn’t help but want to piece together.

He reminded me that sometimes, life didn’t have to be such a competitive sport.

I looked dangerous, dramatic, and powerful. Confident.

I sucked in a breath, nearly choking on my wine as my gaze widened at the sight of her. Ah, to think I’d thought she had lacked the inherent sensuality of her sister Cosima. I was more than happy to be proved so spectacularly wrong. Ammazza, she was glorious.

She looked like some heathen goddess of sex and war, conquering the room with her allure with every step she took toward me. Toward me.

With any other woman, I would have given in to instinct and surged forward to claim that red hair with my fist and that red mouth with my own. I would have steered her toward the nearest room with a door and fucked her against it, rending that red dress in two so it stained the floor like spilled blood, leaving her naked for my ravishing.

But there was something hypnotic about her, a cold pull like the magnetism of the arctic poles.

Despite myself, I wanted to see if the infamous ice queen would melt under my tongue.

“I could lose my license for having the type of ‘fun’ you consider appropriate.”

“You and I may have different ideas of morality, but I’m sure I do not have to tell you about the concept of omertà. Silence between brothers is a holy thing.”

It was a heady thing to know I could make the ice queen burn.

I was beginning to understand the intricacies of her character, despite her best efforts to remain aloof. At first, it was difficult to like Elena Lombardi. She was constructed like a work of modern art, all sharp angles, rigid lines, and dominant sensibilities; beautiful and intriguing but difficult to understand. It was only upon further reflection and intense study that the impact of her beauty moved through you, as complicated a feeling as she was a woman.

A fire built in my gut, a slow burn that built deeper and deeper than the ache in an overused muscle. Sweat beaded on my brow, but it had more to do with the effort to restrain myself from savagely taking her mouth with mine than from the dance.

He was just so potent, so vivacious and full of passion that to see him depleted felt absolutely wrong.

I was shaken as much by his sudden illness as I was by my lapse of judgment in dancing with him. My only defense was flimsy at best, but true enough, I had to admit it to myself. I’d never known a man who exuded such raw, palpable sexual energy. Being around him, with the full glory of his attention pinned only to me in a room full of nearly a hundred affluent and beautiful guests, was heady. The walls I’d erected between myself and the male species felt battered and war-torn against the force of his charm, and before I’d known it, I was dancing with him. Dancing like I hadn’t in years.

I should have known when Yara was so easy with Dante’s familiar treatment of me. She was not just representing Dante in this RICO case. She was their consigliere. Not “other.” She was Family.

“If all people were pure, Elena, there would be no laws. When we become lawyers, we are disbanding our perception of right and wrong in order to do our job to the fullest extent of our capabilities. Anyone who gets into law to defend the weak and innocent will inevitably become heartbroken and disillusioned.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Do not tell me you, the woman they call a gladiator in the courtroom, became a lawyer for such a nonsensical reason.”

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.

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.

“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.”

Seamus was trash, and he deserved to be taken out. If I’d had a gun, instead of a canister of mace, I might have.

“And if you think to fuck with me again, the Devil of New York City himself will come for you, and I won’t stop him when he does.”

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.

She rolled in like a northeasterly winter storm, the air crackling with static, the wind through the open patio doors kicking up a gust as she powered out of the elevator and stalked on the harsh clip of her heels into the living room where I sat waiting for the thunder and lightning to fall.

Indignation turned her delicate, overtly feminine beauty into something hard and deadly. It shouldn’t have turned me on to see such rage in a woman. It never had before, but something was deliciously wild about her energy like this, a static restless hunger I felt echoed in my own blood. She was fucking magnificent.

There was such a thin line between love and hate, just as there was between heroism and villainy. It all depended on the circumstance and perspective.

Because I knew no one had ever broken Elena Lombardi. That fucker Daniel Sinclair hadn’t even come close. I’d grown up around horses in England, learned to ride about the same time I learned to walk, and I knew all about the wild, willful beasts. Elena reminded me of an Arabian, she had all the raw power and majesty of the stead, but someone had mistreated her, taught her to bite and shy away from the rider. I knew with the right training and a patient master, she would be glorious.

“No,” I agreed in a low purr. “You aren’t a soldier or a slave. You are a fighter, my fighter until you’ve won this war with me. But I am the general, Elena, and the sooner you get used to taking orders from me, the better.”

“I am capo dei capi of the New York City Camorra. If you do not know how to obey, I will teach you.”

Good, the beast inside me growled, loving the sight of vulnerability in her gaze. Fear me.

This woman who was barely alive made me feel like a live wire, a lit fuse raw with power.

All because the ice queen didn’t realize it yet, but the thaw had started and soon, so fucking soon I could almost taste her––something warm and plummy like wine––on my tongue. Soon, she’d be mine.

Elena Lombardi was an acquired taste, something to be appreciated by only the most refined palette, the most exquisite mind. As deep and brilliantly complex as expensive Italian wine, and the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to drink her down like a glutton and force her to be mine.

“Oh, Elena, be careful cursing around me,” he purred darkly, moving just a little closer. “I like the sound of something dirty in that red mouth.”

He was astoundingly magnetic, a perfectly formed monster of a man.

“The sound of ‘please’ from your lips sounds even better than a curse,” he murmured, stepping closer to raise a thumb to the edge of my mouth.

I was too aesthetic not to appreciate beauty in its many forms, even heathen ones like Dante.