When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

“You bitch,” he shouted through the blood.

Kelly opened the door from the other room and popped his head in to check on us. “Is everything––”

Pop.

Pop.

They both froze. Kelly’s phone to his ear, and Seamus’s hands to his nose.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Even I recognized the gunfire.

It was close too, close enough that the neighborhood dog couldn’t hear the muffled shots. They were already just outside the house.

A grin sliced open my face like a raw wound. “They’re here.”

Kelly cursed, shouting for his men as he tossed his phone and grabbed the gun from his belt before dashing up the stairs.

Seamus stayed with me.

Calmly, he moved to the table in the corner again. I thought he was grabbing a gun, but when he turned there was a roll of duct tape in one hand. He moved closer to me and smiled through the mess of blood on his face. “Your capo is going to die today, Elena, and I’m going to be the one to kill him. You deserve it for choosing him over your own father.”

I opened my mouth to protest when he hit me again, this time a glancing blow to the same cheek. My jaw felt as if it came unhinged. Fire and tears flooded my eyes at the bright, brilliant pain. Before I knew what he was doing, he smacked duct tape on my mouth.

“Such a disappointment, cara,” he said sadly as he cupped the same cheek he had just hit twice. His thumb rubbed over my split cheekbone, my blood staining his skin. “I’m sorry I failed you and Cosima. You could have been so much more if I’d been given the chance…” He trailed off with a little sigh, then backed away.

I cursed at him from behind the tape, struggling against my bonds even though it hurt.

It was almost impossible to fathom the level of narcissism it took for Seamus to be able to spin his life story into a tragedy inflicted against him as the victim. My blood boiled as I watched him move to the table. He took a gun out of a drawer, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then put one finger to his lips as he slipped beneath the table into the shadows underneath.

Panic seized me in its electric hold as I realized his plan.

He’d known Dante would come for me.

He’d known he would get inside the house.

He’d counted on it.

He was going to hide in the shadows until Dante reached me and then kill him.

Pure, cold terror moved through me unlike anything I’d ever known before, not at the hands of Christopher or any of the mafiosos in Napoli.

I could only hope that Dante had stayed at his apartment, properly attached to his ankle monitor, waiting for his men to bring me back safely.

But a small voice in my gut told me differently.

This was the man who had taken murder charges instead of letting my sister go to prison.

He might not have loved me like Cosima, but we had a bond. He had promised to keep me safe.

He was the kind of man who would die before breaking his oath.

I knew in my bones he would come for me himself.

I listened over the harsh sound of the breath from my nose as the struggle continued upstairs. There was a crash of glass, pop-pops, and thuds overlaid by shouting in both English and Italian. It was impossible to tell who was beating who.

Then the door popped open at the top of the stairs only for a body to tumble backward, the man hitting each tread with a sickening thunk.

I craned my neck to see if I recognized the body and nearly cried when I didn’t.

Kelly and another man were next, running down the stairs to sink into a crouch at the base of them, their guns trained at the top.

We waited.

Upstairs, the struggle went on, but no one seemed close to the stairs.

Then there was a long, low creak like wood peeling from plaster. Kelly and his man looked over to the wall with the one small boarded-up window.

“Fuck,” Kelly yelled as the plywood was torn off and the glass shattered.

The man beside him fell to the ground, a bullet hole through his face.

A scream tore through me, muffled by the tape as I watched the life drain from him, blood pooling heavily along the floor toward where I stood.

Kelly fired off a round at the window, then cursed as more gunfire came from the top of the stairs.

My father, the weasel, continued to hide quietly.

“I’ll warn you once,” a voice said from the top of the stairs. It was cold, low as fog rolling down the treads. “You touch another hair on her goddamn head, I’ll rip you apart with my bare hands and then hand-feed the pieces of you to the neighborhood dogs.”