When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

They would all be wrong.

It was simple.

I was the son of an evil man.

There was a difference between a bad man and an evil one.

A bad man was corrupted by the influence of his upbringing or surroundings, by the people he associated with, and perhaps by the choices of other people in a position of power over him.

An evil man, a man like my father, Noel, was born a different kind of being than most others. A man whose natural expression was violence and whose moral compass wasn’t so much broken as never formed at all. A man who thought and felt only of himself and his need to sin.

Noel Davenport might have been a duke of the fucking realm, but he was a criminal, a murdering sociopath of the highest order.

As his son, was it any wonder I’d drifted into crime myself?

Of course, it was Noel who drove me out of the British moors I’d grown up in, from the well-heeled society of my fellow Oxbridge graduates and peers to the dark, shifting dens of immorality in Italy’s southern mafia stronghold.

But it was easy for any man to blame his choices on someone else.

Yes, Noel drove me from England and my birthright as a wealthy, ennui-laced aristocrat. But I made the choice to hitch my cart to my “uncle” Amadeo Salvatore’s criminal enterprise.

Honestly, I loved life. I love the pleasures to be had in it. The sex, the food, the bloody good wines, and all those highs were only amplified by the edge of danger and fear that my existence in the underworld lent to my life. I lived every day like it was my fucking last, and I’d learned that from my mother.

Chiara Davenport, the Italian beauty who’d been seduced by Noel into moving from Italy to the cold, wet lands of England where he neglected her, abused her, and then, ultimately, murdered her.

There.

My entire history summarized neatly. I was a thirty-five-year-old man with a degree in psychology and a job that relied wholly on my ability to perceive others. I knew who I was, what I wanted, and how I was going to get it.

But as I stared at Mason struggling, as if that would free his sister, I had a flash of misgiving as the high, smooth contralto voice of a certain ice queen lawyer infiltrated my thoughts.

You might have no problem beating a man or threatening his family if he goes against you, but I’ve been the daughter of that man, and I’ve been that child who was threatened.

I growled at that voice and banished it to the farthest reaches of my mind. I didn’t need Elena Lombardi’s judgmental voice in my head urging me to fuck up this situation even further. It was my last night of freedom before being tethered to my fucking apartment, and I needed Mason Matlock to break like cheap plastic.

“Feel like telling me what I want to know?” I asked Mason in a hard rumble. “Or should I tell Adriano to use that knife on the softest places a woman has?”

Mason swore savagely at me in English, so far removed from his ancestry that he didn’t realize Italian curses were far superior. “You wouldn’t dare.”

I raised a brow at him, then coiled quickly to land an exact punch to his left kidney. His breath exploded from his lips, bloody spittle flying over my black shirt.

“There isn’t much I wouldn’t dare to do,” I told him somberly as he coughed and fought to breathe through the pain. “And, Mason, any man of honor would do all that was in his power to save the life of an innocent loved one, si?”

“Yes,” he hissed, glaring at me from under his sweaty hair.

I nodded. “Yes, which is why I must do this to you and yours. Cosima was in a coma because of your actions. And actions have consequences. This is yours, and if you don’t tell me what the fuck the di Carlos have planned for me, this will be sweet Violetta’s too.”

Mason slumped against the ropes and loosed a thready sigh. “I don’t know much.”

“Boh, why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” I suggested mildly. Walking over to where Frankie and Jaco sat, I dragged one of the extra metal chairs across the concrete with an ear-splitting screech so I could sit in front of Mason. I pulled my gun from its holster under my arm and held it loosely between my knees as I braced my forearms on my thighs to smile up at Mason’s bloody face. “Let’s start with the names of the men who shot out Ottavio’s, hmm?”

He balked, his eyes trained on the heavy gun in my hand. “I only know the name of one.”

I inclined my head magnanimously. “That will do, for now.”