When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

Once, I’d fancied myself in love with Cosima. Truthfully, any red-blooded man would fancy themselves in love with her at some point, maybe even from just looking at her exquisite face across a room.

It wasn’t her looks that did it for me.

Beauty was easy. I was a handsome man, a powerful one with money to boot. I could have fourteen gorgeous women in my apartment within the hour if I so desired.

Beauty was boring.

What interested me about women, about Cosima back in the day, was the intricacy of the structure beneath the façade. She was made of steel rods and titanium beams with a mind like a three-dimensional chess set.

A lifetime of deceit, duplicity, and tragedy coupled with a degree from Cambridge in psychology had given me finely honed X-ray vision. It was easy enough to see beneath the skin of a person to the bones of what made them unique.

Elena was not such an easy study.

She was elegant from the column of her swan-like neck to the tips of her high-heeled shoes, but there was also an odd nervousness in her manner, an alertness to those around her that spoke of her desire to adapt and conform, to please everyone at any cost.

In my experience, insecurity like that was corrosive, and given what I knew from Cosima about Elena’s past actions and mistakes, it didn’t surprise me she was known as a bitch.

I didn’t mind working with a bitch.

In my humble opinion, they were underrated.

Cutthroat, whip smart, and ruthless were all characteristics anyone in the underworld needed not only to thrive but also to survive.

And I had no doubt after all the stories from Cosima, but more, after seeing that haunted look in her eye when I’d asked her about sacrifice only hours earlier that Elena Lombardi was a survivor.

“You have that look on your face,” Tore noted as he joined me at the ledge.

“Mmm?”

“The look of a man figuring out a puzzle,” he surmised. “More specifically, the look of a man trying to figure out a Lombardi woman.”

My lips twisted wryly. “You’d know all about that.”

“I am an expert,” he agreed easily with that quintessential Italian gesture, a shrug so small it was almost a tic. “I hope this time it is not my daughter who has caught your eye.”

“Contrary to popular belief,” I drawled, “I do not have a death wish. If Alexander believed my love for his wife was anything but platonic, I’d be dead already.”

Tore’s laugh was full of praise for a man who’d once campaigned to murder him. If he could understand anything, it was possessiveness, and Alexander’s totalitarian ownership of Cosima pleased him because it meant she would always be safe in his company.

As a man with many enemies, this was reason enough to approve of a son-in-law.

“So, Elena,” Tore said, turning his back to the stone wall to rest his elbows on it, his dark gaze fixed to my face. “She intrigues you.”

“The way one villain might intrigue another,” I allowed. “Cosima thought she was doing me a favor in making Elena swear to take on my case, but I have this portentous impression she will do more harm than good.”

“Cosima says she is a very good lawyer, no?”

I inclined my head. “A good lawyer in general is not good enough for me. I don’t need a prudish, judgmental woman caught up in Family affairs.”

“No,” Tore agreed. “Get Frankie to dig up what he can on her.”

I was already shaking my head. “She’ll be as clean as a fucking whistle. No, she will be a consummate professional, I’m sure, hardworking and loyal.”

“Then I do not see the problem.”

“No,” I agreed uneasily, staring down at the illuminated wine; the very same glossy shade of deep red echoed in Elena’s unusual hair. “But you see, I am not a professional, and there is something about all that studied perfection that makes me eager to break her.”

Tore’s grin was a slicing movement across his broad face. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and chuckled darkly. “You are facing prison, Dante. I say, have fun with the girl. Hell, make her cry, get her to quit, whatever you want. Just don’t let it get back to Cosima, or she’ll castrate you herself.”

I smiled mirthlessly at the truth of his words, but I couldn’t quell the feeling like shaken soda overflowing inside my chest cavity. The feeling that was all itch and acid and not at all pleasant that had something to do with Elena Lombardi.

My fucking lawyer.

Tore had been right before. It was the way I felt when normally faced with a seemingly impossible situation and problem. The urge to break apart the pieces and glue them back together in a way that worked for me was nearly impossible to resist.

And at my heart, I was a hedonist.