When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

I’d happily follow him to Hell if it meant being with him forever.

I opened my mouth to tell him as much when he pressed his forehead to mind and admitted, “I have to go.”

My heart stopped.

“I’m sorry, Elena, but we disabled the ankle monitor to get to you. They’ll notice within twenty-four hours.”

“You can’t go to jail,” I said instantly, fear pulling the words from me.

I’d just got him, just realized I even wanted to have him.

“No,” he agreed slowly, his thumbs rubbing the length of my cheekbones, gently over the abrasion my father had left on one. “I’m running.”

I blinked.

“I have a private jet out of Newark. It leaves in…” He checked his watch. “Just over an hour. I have to go. You know I didn’t kill Giuseppe di Carlo, and I had a plan for that too, but…” He shrugged. “This was more important.”

You were more important.

I didn’t know what to say or do. My entire world had turned on its axis in the past twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t see straight anymore. All my life, I’d run from the dark, only now I seemed unable and unwilling to escape Dante’s shadowy embrace.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I said pathetically.

His sigh fanned over my mouth. “I know, cara. I don’t want to leave you, but I must. Where I am going, it is not safe for you to follow. And even if it was, I would never ask you to leave your entire life behind. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be waiting here for you when you returned.”

There was nothing I could say to that.

It was true.

I couldn’t run away with Dante into the night like some criminal fairy tale. Where would we go? What would I do?

I was a lawyer with a career, a home, and a life here.

But how much of a life was it? a little voice whispered. How much had I been living before I’d met the black-eyed capo who had just risked everything for me?

“We’re dropping you off at your house,” Dante continued as he touched me, long strokes of my arms, into my sweaty hair, over my dirty clothes. Like he couldn’t stand the thought of not touching me again in a few hours, and he was shoring up his memories.

A sob lodged in my throat, and I choked on it.

“Bambi will see that you get all your things returned to you. Marco called Beau, and he’s going to be waiting for you there. I don’t want you to be alone after all this,” he continued, in full-fledged capo mode, organizing my life as if it wasn’t coming apart at the seams.

I said nothing.

My voice was lost in the depths of my tossing, storming gut.

So, I just pressed my entire body into his good side, turned my nose into his neck and breathed in his sun-warmed citrus and pepper scent.

We arrived at Gramercy Park too soon.

“Will you… can you call or contact me?” I asked as Chen pulled up outside the building.

I didn’t want to go in.

For the first time in my life, the sight of my brownstone made me want to burn it down.

Maybe if I did, Dante would have to take me with him.

“I shouldn’t,” he said, his face creased with pain and exhaustion, but those beautiful eyes so clear as they looked at me, so full of tenderness. “But I will.”

We stared at each other, caught up in the vortex that existed between us and always had since the moment I shoved him into a hospital wall and threatened his life if he hurt my sister.

He was right, what he’d said about us being made of the same stuff. We weren’t opposites, not even close. He was a chaos of contradictions, and I was a contradictory chaos, but that was why we worked. In all my life, the only person who had ever understood me despite my best efforts to stop them was Dante.

And now I was losing him.

I curled my hand into his blood-soaked black tee and yanked him so I could kiss him. Because I didn’t have words, I only had the fire he’d started inside my soul, and the only way I could share it was by sliding it like a present under his tongue.

He took it with a moan, eating at me, devouring me.

I never wanted it to end, and I whimpered when he pulled away.

But still, I didn’t have the words.

“Sono con te, lottatrice mia,” he said, “anche quando non lo sono.”

I am with you, my fighter, even when I am not.

My vision blurred as tears fell silently down my cheeks. I stamped a bruising kiss on his lips, wishing I could brand it there, and then I pulled away, already moving to the door.

“I’ll see you again,” I whispered thickly, the words more breath than sound.