When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

He sucked in a deep breath and shuddered before whispering, “They…They have a mole in your outfit. Apparently, he’s been working for them for a little over a year.”

A shot rang out, echoing in the cavernous hangar. Mason screamed, but the bullet only skimmed past his right ear, barely nicking the flesh.

The vibration of the shot rang through my head, loud and buzzing.

A mole.

A fucking goddamn traitor.

Traditore. Piagnone.

Rage scoured through me, ripping up the inside of my chest like talons.

A borgata was a hierarchical organization, in most ways and in most families more like a company than an organic community. But it was also family.

Especially for me.

The pathetic little lost boy whose mother had been killed by his own father, whose own brother didn’t believe him when he’d cried wolf, who’d been stranded in a country that wasn’t his own.

Italy had embraced me the way darkness consumed sight, swallowing me up intractably in her shadows. Tore became my father, his Soldati my brothers and cousins and uncles.

To find out now that one of them had gone against a bond that was meant to mean more than blood set my soul on fucking fire.

I’d end them.

Not just because they were a threat to my business, to my freedom, and my family, because a man who turned against those who had protected him, hand-fed him success, wealth, and love, deserved to be run through with the cold blade of my fury.

In the mafia, sometimes the only honor to be found was in revenge.

And I was going to make sure whoever the damn mole was would pay with every drop of his blood.

ELENA

When I was little, my mother told me something that unexpectedly etched itself in my soul and became both a burden and an instinct I bore for the rest of my life.

She said to me, “Elena, lottatrice mia, you are just a girl in a very large world that owes you nothing. Not one thing in your life will come easy. This is the way of girlhood in Napoli. I wish it was not so. I wish I could have given you a better start, but understand, every woman must be a fighter, Elena, because history has tricked men into thinking women are less.” Caprice gripped my face in her hands so tightly, I remember thinking she might pop my head like a crushed watermelon. “This is what you must understand, Elena. They are wrong. Women bear the trials of their men, the delivery of their babies, the weight of their families. Women are extraordinarily strong. So, you must trick the men into giving you power. Do not tell them you are strong, and do not fight them with words because words can be undone. Fight the injustice with action, lottatrice mia, because action can be understood in any language, by any man.”

A young girl in Italy was not typically encouraged to pursue “male” careers like lawyers, doctors, or policemen. A woman I grew up with became a mafia prosecutor, one of the most dangerous professions in the country, and when she was killed by a car bomb on the way to work one morning, the community said it was sad but avoidable… if she had stayed home and had children like the rest of them, she would have been safe.

I didn’t want to be safe. I wanted to be brave and bold in the only arena I’d ever felt capable in—my job.

So even though I was only a fourth-year associate at Fields, Harding & Griffith, I already had a reputation in the office as a ruthless fighter. I went to bat for my clients with a single-minded ferocity that shocked most people because outside of the courtroom, I was polished, prim, and ultra-feminine. I was only given relatively low-profile and pro bono cases the more senior associates and partners didn’t want, but no cases were too little to give my all to.

Perhaps because I hadn’t known much kindness or luck in my life, I appreciated all too much how poignant small acts of service and valor could be.

Sometimes, unfortunately, the silk blouses, high heels, and red-painted lips and fingertips confused my male co-workers into thinking they could condescend to me.

“So, Lombardi, you got saddled with the Salvatore case,” Ethan Topp said as he leaned against the glass wall of the conference room where I was working.

I didn’t look up from my research on historical mafia trials in the southern New York District to spare him a glance as I said, “Saddled with the same case you practically begged Yara to work on?”

There was a brief silence then, from my periphery, I saw as Ethan pushed off the wall and leaned over the glossy black table, attempting to use his size and masculinity to cow me.

“You know, you can be a real bitch,” he sneered.