When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

“Fermo!” he groaned, head lolling.

“I’ll stop when you tell us what I want to hear,” I offered reasonably as I wiped his blood off on his equally dirty shirt.

“It’s true,” he whimpered softly through his split lips. “They paid us to hit Otto’s. Agostino and Gideone. It was the first step.”

“And the second?” I pressed, flipping a knife out of my sleeve to scrape the blood out from under my nails.

His eyes darted madly between the knife and my face, then over to Accardi and Belcante. “They were gonna kill you and go for the others.”

“How?” Santo demanded, stepping forward until he was at my side, looming over him. “You tell me how, or I’ll use Salvatore’s knife to skin you alive.”

“They were gonna blow up your deal with The Fallen MC,” he panted, bloody spittle drooling down his chin. “Apparently, they got an in with the New York chapter.”

Santo cursed savagely.

“And the Accardi family?” Caelian drawled from behind us as he began to saunter forward, lighting a cigarette.

Carter went quiet.

Caelian sighed, took a drag of tobacco, and then leaned over to blow it out in Carter’s face. “You have one chance to tell me.”

The sharp, acrid scent of urine perfumed the space as Carter pissed his pants, the heavy steam dripping from the chair he was tied to.

Still, though, he didn’t talk.

He was a decent foot soldier.

But no match for three furious capos.

Caelian shrugged almost casually, then reached forward to grasp Carter’s face in one hand while he put the cigarette out with the other…straight on the inner corner of the di Carlo soldier’s eye.

His scream echoed throughout the cavernous space.

“He was gonna take Ravenna,” Carter shouted, neck straining as he fought his bonds. “Take her and rape her and marry her.”

Anger rolled through Caelian, and for the first time since I’d known the bastard, he looked every inch the ruthless mafia don his father was.

“I’ve heard enough,” he decided, looking over his shoulder at me. “What are you suggesting, Salvatore? I imagine you have a plan.”

I grinned at them both. “I do.”

After they’d left, I’d let my inner crew into the sanctum and given Adriano a crack at Carter to make sure there wasn’t any information I might have missed. I was pleased. The shit show my life had become in the past year was slowly beginning to untangle itself.

I had a plan for the di Carlos.

A plan for the Irish fuckers.

And a plan for Elena, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“How could you trust those bastardi?” Jacopo muttered from over my shoulder as I surveyed the trunks of weapons we kept stored in one corner of the abandoned station.

I straightened gradually before turning to stare down the few inches into my cousin’s face. We weren’t blood relations, but I’d always treated him like a brother, a close confidant. Sometimes, it meant he wasn’t as respectful as he damn well should have been.

“I have my reasons,” I said opaquely even though I knew it would frustrate him.

Life itself seemed to frustrate Jaco, which was why everyone called him Grouch. It irritated me that he was always the victim, whining about his lot in life when he’d been born with a silver fucking mafia spoon in his mouth. His father had loved him before he was killed by the Ventura Mexican cartel for attempting a side hustle outside of the family’s schemes on their territory.

We hadn’t gone to war with them over it.

Emiliano had made his bed when he went against the family interests, and he had to lie in it, six feet beneath the ground.

Jaco hadn’t liked it, but then, I couldn’t blame him.

If anyone hurt Tore, I’d rip him apart with my bare hands. But the difference was, Tore would never be so stupid as to act against the borgata.

So, I put up with Jaco’s surliness and his need to badger me about every single fucking thing I did because his parent had been killed, and that was a wound that didn’t heal.

I knew from experience.

“I wanna know them,” he pressed, pushing his overlong black hair behind his ears. “Those are fucking rival capos, Dante. Maybe this house arrest has made you pazzo….maybe that woman has.”

“That woman?” I asked quietly, my entire body coiled.

He didn’t sense the threat I posed, as always, too riled up by his own antics. “Si, quella donna. You’ve been goin’ crazy for her since the first. She’s a goddamn lawyer, D. They’re one step up from scumbag cops. You can’t trust the bitch, and I’ve stayed quiet about it long enough. She’s fucking living in your place? Where the magic happens? You’re asking to be put away for life and then this stunt with Accardi’s reject son and the Santo bastardo?”

He was shaking his head so he didn’t notice me lash out at him, grabbing the thick column of his neck in the palm of my hand and squeezing as I lifted him to his toes. His eyes bugged out with shock, hands flying to scratch at my grip, mouth flapping like a dying fish.