When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

Of course, she wasn’t mistaken. Yara knew everything that happened in the firm, and Daniel leaving me for my sister had been water cooler gossip for weeks.

Still, I inclined my head as I smiled thinly in response.

She paused, seemingly thinking through something I knew she had already decided. “Well, as Mr. O’Malley seems to have a…curiosity around you, I think it would be appropriate if you were the one to deliver our motion to suppress personally.”

I blinked at her then dared to speak my mind. “In the hopes my feminine wiles might soften him?”

Yara’s mouth tightened with something like a smile. “I believe a personal touch is always best. Leave after lunch and then swing by Mr. Salvatore’s apartment to make sure his tracking bracelet has been properly set up.”

It was menial work, something one of the paralegals could have handled, but I had a feeling Dante Salvatore was a high-maintenance client, so I didn’t complain. My involvement in such a high-profile case could mean the difference in reducing the finish line at partnership in the firm from ten years to three years. I’d have the edge against my peers for in-house competition for cases, and it would make the name Elena Lombardi well-known in the criminal law circuits.

So, I nodded at Yara and began to collect my papers to stow at my desk in the associate bullpen without another word.

The office building of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York was an old concrete building, weathered and outdated compared to the towering chrome and glass skyscraper that housed three floors of Fields, Harding & Griffith. The lawyers within typically didn’t wear three-thousand-dollar shoes and bespoke suits like my fellow associates, but they weren’t driven by monetary success the way us sinners uptown were. They were the heroes of the legal profession, taking little gains while making moves against big bads who needed taking down.

A little corner of my heart yearned to be included in their echelons, to be the good guy and the hero bringing down the tyrants and bullies.

Instead, I’d sided with the wicked and the unlawful by defending behemoth companies and individuals using their wealth and prestige to mask their own villainy.

Prestige and power.

In some ways, I was no better than Dante Salvatore and his lot.

I told myself my pro bono work helped to balance the scale. That I volunteered at the Bronx YMCA every month and donated ten percent of my monthly paycheck to a childhood domestic abuse charity.

But in my heart, I knew the truth.

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

I was too proud to go unnoticed in my profession, too greedy to accept pennies, too envious to be content with what I had at any given time, and too aroused by power to let it slide through my fingers.

The romantic idealist and the calculated ice queen, the two sides of my personality that often flipped like a coin whenever I was faced with a new path in life. It seemed the latter won much more than the former.

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.

So when I was ushered into USA O’Malley’s office by his harried assistant, I set my face into its icy mask and prepared to protect the rights of my criminal client even though it unsettled my heart to do so.

“Ms. Lombardi for you.”

I stepped out from behind the secretary as I was announced and stopped in the middle of the large antiquated room with the peeling plaster, my hands clasped at my front over the handles of my Prada purse.

“Good afternoon, Mr. O’Malley,” I greeted coolly.

He barely spared me a glance before addressing his assistant, “Thank you, Mrs. Nanquil. That will be all for now.”

I tried not to bristle at his negligence as she closed the door behind her, and Dennis went back to his task on the computer. Indignation soured the back of my tongue, but I refused to beg for attention so I only stood there demurely as he finished his work.

Once done, he leaned back in his chair with a sigh, tossed off his thick black-rimmed glasses, and folded his arms over his chest. He was a good-looking older man, one who, under other circumstances, I probably would have found attractive. As it was, I found his posturing incredibly annoying.

His eyes fell down my body once before locking on my own. “Elena.”

“Ms. Lombardi, if you please,” I corrected as I finally moved forward to collect the papers from my bag and lay them on his desk. “Ms. Ghorbani asked me to deliver these personally. As you may know by now, we have filed for a speedy trial, and we are moving for a pre-trial notion to exclude the testimony of Mason Matlock given after the shooting. As you know, he is related to the deceased Giuseppe di Carlo and had reason to lie for the Family. His statement was taken without a lawyer present at the scene of a violent crime where trauma could have clouded his thinking. As he is now nowhere to be found, we cannot corroborate his words or cross-examine them.”