When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

I was a nervous wreck by the time we pulled up to the curb, my palms sweating profusely as I paid the fare and entered Monica’s building. By the time I got to her floor, my forehead was cold with anxious perspiration, and when Monica came out to greet me, she frowned.

“Nervous?” she asked gently, taking my hand to lead me to the private waiting room. “There is no reason to be, Elena. I’ve done these procedures hundreds of times. After all, I’m the best in the city.”

I laughed weakly as she meant me to, following her into the room and sitting in the deep suede chair waiting for me. “I don’t mean to doubt you. I’m not nervous about the surgery, really. Just what it means for afterward.”

“Ah,” she noted, nodding sagely as she collected my chart. “I understand that. Do you have an appointment to talk to Dr. Marsden following your recovery?”

I nodded even though I didn’t think my therapist was equipped to help me deal with decades of sexual trauma and scarring.

“You’re strong and brave, Elena. I see very good and passionate things in your future,” she said with a wide smile. “I’ll have the nurse come in and explain things to you. Please change into this gown and robe. I’ll see you in the OR.”

Brave.

The word echoed in my head, a reminder of Dante’s benediction for me to be brave with him.

Coraggio.

I smiled tightly at my doctor and my friend as she left and tried to breathe deeply.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about Dante and his indecent proposition.

If this operation worked, I would be able to experience pleasure like I had never had before, not even with Daniel, who I knew logically had been a good and generous lover.

If Dante could light my icy flesh on fire with just the touch of his lips to my pulse point, how would he make me feel with those lips on other parts of my body?

I thought about it all through the check in with the nurse and then as I followed her down the hallway to the operating room.

I came to the inevitable conclusion that Dante would be a gregarious lover, throwing himself into my pleasure the way he seemed to throw himself with singular intensity into everything he did, but that didn’t mitigate the risks.

The fact that I could lose my job.

Though just living with him could do that, the devil on my shoulder whispered. So shouldn’t I make the risk worthwhile and get something more out of it?

No, it was the other threat, the one I hadn’t been able to ignore that night in Dante’s office pressed to the shelf of books by his hand on my throat and his big body at my front.

The threat to my heart.

After the tragedy of Christopher and Daniel, I didn’t have anything more in me to give. I’d felt so much all my life I’d resolved to feel nothing at all. For years, I’d kept my heart black, my lips red, and my personality ice cold.

I didn’t need anyone to be fulfilled, and I didn’t trust anyone to try.

So, it was ridiculous to consider changing any of that for a man like Dante.

A man on trial for murder who could spend the next twenty-five years to life behind bars if I didn’t do my job to the full extent of my capabilities.

I couldn’t trust a mafioso with my life or my happiness.

To do so was suicide.

So why did I secretly yearn to, and why did that yearning feel like a crime I was committing against myself?

“When you wake up, Elena, you’ll be a new woman,” Monica promised as the anesthesiologist held the mask to my mouth and told me to breathe deeply.

I wanted to argue with her, but the gas was already pulling me under.

I wanted to tell her I was happy with the woman I was, and I was terrified of becoming anyone else.

But then I passed out, and when I woke up, my first thought was of a mafioso with eyes like the velvet black New York sky.

DANTE

I was in a meeting with three of my captains when Marco appeared at the door to my office and tipped his chin.

Elena had returned.

The urge to go to her immediately was surprisingly powerful, but I tamped it down with the iron will I’d been born with as a Brit, then cultivated as a capo.

She would need space to get settled, and I’d already had Bambi clean her sheets, put a box of tissues, a bottle of water, and some saltine crackers by her bedside just in case. She’d be fine until I finished business.

“It worked,” Gaetan was saying with a massive grin. “Heard through the grapevine that Moore and Kelly went at it over Elena staying with you. Apparently, the figlio di puttana has some kinda heart ’cause he straight-up refused to do anything that could hurt his precious daughter.”