When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

Alone.

God, I was so fucking tired of being alone.

“I can leave,” I offered as if I didn’t want to be there anyway while inside my chest, I burned.

Tore slanted me an assessing look. “We will go to the office. You and Yara stay with Dante and Augustus.”

Dr. Crown grunted. “Good, you’re distracting me. If you stay, don’t hover.”

I nodded, relieved I could stay to see if Dante would be okay. Cosima would want a report, I told myself, and it was my sisterly duty to stay so I could give her the full story.

The men filed out of the room, the one named Jacopo glaring at me before he rounded the corner and out of sight.

“Ignore Mr. Salvatore,” Yara suggested mildly, but her eyes were sharp on my face, peeling back my skin with scalpel-like precision to read things beneath it I wasn’t willing to share. “They call him Grouch.”

A wan smile tipped my lips. “Good to know it’s not just me. Is he Dante’s…cousin?”

Yara nodded as she finally took a seat with a sigh, rearranging her long limbs under her stunning black dress. “He is the son of Tore’s cousin, the same cousin who helped them establish their…business when they first moved here from Italy.”

“What happened to him?” I knew better than to ask questions about mafia dealings, but I was also a lawyer. My mind formed questions and hunted down answers the way a Rhodesian ridgeback stalked down lions.

Yara waved a hand, watching as Dr. Crown continued to administer care to Dante. “He was killed.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes because I’d obviously already arrived at that conclusion. I wanted to know the how, which was frequently much more interesting than the why of a thing.

“And this Kelly person?” I asked, shifting my weight on my heels as they bit into the soles of my feet. I was tempted to sit down, but I figured I should stay immobile, holding the bag of saline for Dante.

“You haven’t heard his name?” she asked, faintly surprised. “Thomas ‘Gunner’ Kelly is the leader of the Irish mob.”

“I was under the impression such a thing didn’t exist anymore.” I thought back to articles I had read about the demise of Irish gangs in America, about the diluted sense of Irish identity after so many years of integration and an influx of more powerful foreign criminal outfits like the Triad and the Mexican cartels.

“In my experience, criminal gangs are like cockroaches,” she said with a wry smile. “You stomp one out only to look over your shoulder and discover another.”

“And if you can’t beat them…” I dared to imply that this was why Yara had joined forces with a known criminal entity.

Yara stared at me for so long, my skin itched, and I fought the urge to squirm like a girl under her mama’s scolding gaze. “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.”

I didn’t tell her, though she wasn’t far off the mark. In truth, I wasn’t sure how to express the complicated tangle of contradictions that clogged my throat and made it hard to breathe.

I could have told her I wanted to fight injustice because my entire childhood had been rife with it. With people who were so poor they had no choice but to appeal to la mafia for loans and jobs and unrepayable favors. I understood why so many Italian revered the mafia as much as they feared it. It was a necessary component of their lives.

But a horrific one for some.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer so I could stop the mafia’s exploitation of the poor.

But then we moved to America, and I lost the threads of my dream and only saw the broader tapestry.

Become a lawyer.

My idealism was replaced with realism and capitalism.

Yara let me marinate in my conflict for a long moment before she dealt her deathly blow. “Some people argue that lawyers are more criminal than their clients, Elena. Perhaps it would make you feel better to know that there are more villains in this profession than heroes. It might ease your adjustment period.”

People had always led me to believe I was cold, but looking into Yara’s morally bankrupt gaze, I reevaluated myself.

“I would rather work with good people,” I said somewhat lamely, feeling lopsided and upside down.

Anxiety spiked in my blood as I realized that spending time with Yara and Dante was already taking a toll on my perception of good and evil.