When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

So, I admit, I didn’t try that hard to resist.

“Bene,” I agreed suddenly, clapping my hands before I rubbed them together in anticipation. “I have little time left as a free man, so I better make good use of it. Are you coming?”

Tore’s mouth twisted wryly. “I thought the time when you needed hand holding to seduce a woman had passed.”

I snorted. “I was talking about going to the hanger to visit the first of our problems, vecchio. I just came from her house, Tore. I’m not some eager young stronzo. I don’t want to fuck her. She doesn’t look like she could even take my cock, let alone enjoy it. I just want to fuck with her. I have a feeling she’ll be a challenge, and I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

“Not since Cosima,” Tore noted with faux nonchalance, but he was a cunning old man, and there was a glimmer of intrigue in the golden eyes he’d passed on to his daughter.

I didn’t respond because I wasn’t thinking about golden eyes.

I was thinking about a pair of steel ones as hard as armor and wondering just what kind of instrument I’d need to break that metal barrier in two.

DANTE

Mason Matlock was strung up with rope from the ceiling of the airplane hangar we kept out near Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey. He’d been there for a very long time, left to hang like a butchered cow being drained of blood. Mason too was being bled out, slowly and carefully by a thousand cuts from the blade of my right-hand man, Frankie.

I stepped through the cool pool of congealing blood as I crossed the asphalt to stop before Mason’s slumped head. His clothes hung off him in ribbons, some fabric saturated in warm blood, other pieces dried to his skin from past injuries. He was a beautiful tapestry of what could happen to a man if he fucked with the Camorra.

If he fucked with me or mine.

My leather-gloved hand snapped out to smash against Mason’s cheek, slapping him so hard he woke from his semi-comatose state. His head jerked back as a groan exploded from his pale lips.

“Wakey, wakey, brutto figlio di puttana bastardo,” I said with a sinister smile as he fixed those bloodshot eyes on me, his pupils dilated with pure terror. “You ready to talk to me yet?”

I’d learned early on that the two most powerful motivators in this life were fear and love. I’d grown especially talented at manipulating both in my enemies, even using one to heighten the other if necessary. Mason Matlock was a spineless stronzo who had nearly gotten Cosima killed because of his capitulation to his uncle Giuseppe di Carlo’s desires, but he had no fear of bodily harm. This wasn’t unusual. Most men who grew up in the mafia were inured to violence.

I wasn’t deterred.

If physical pain didn’t break him, perhaps emotional brutality would.

So, when Mason muttered something in the negative, I was ready.

When I snapped my fingers, Jacopo stepped forward to hand me a phone with a video already presented on the screen. I grabbed Mason by the chin and forced him to look at it.

“This is your sweet sister, Violetta, isn’t it?” I purred as I forced him to watch the footage of his younger sister gagged and tied to a chair, struggling to avoid the hands of my man, Adriano, as he ran a knife gently down her cheek. She jerked, and the metal cut into her flesh, blood beading like a string of ruby across her jaw.

“You motherfucker,” Mason barked, finding the energy to spit at me. I wiped it off my cheek with a flick of my fingers. “You fucking motherfucker! She has nothing to do with this.”

“She does, actually,” I argued. “She’s the niece of Giuseppe di Carlo, the same man who tried to fuck with Cosima and therefore, who tried to fuck with me. You di Carlos have been so far up my arse lately trying to fuck up my deal with the Basante cartel that I figured I should return the favor.” I paused and studied the video with him. “Violetta does have a fine arse.”

Mason thrashed against the coarse ropes even though they dug into his shoulders and back. The movement opened old wounds, causing his skin to weep red tears.

I studied him without emotion. A psychologist might have called it dissociative behavior. They might have blamed it on one of three popular schools of criminal theory like the Chicago School or strain theory that postulated my tendencies were rooted in poverty, lack of education, or cultural pressures. But I was a Cambridge graduate in psychology, the son of one of the wealthiest peerages in the United Kingdom.

They might have explained it away by using subculture theory—that I was a privileged white boy acting out against societal mores.