When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

“Oh, Ms. Lombardi,” he drawled, making fun of my formality even though we were virtually strangers and he was my client. “I am the most honest man you’ll ever meet.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

A slow blink as he scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Because you do not see me in color. You see what you want to see.”

“Are you telling me that you’re innocent of these charges?” I pushed.

He inclined his chin. “I did not kill Giuseppe di Carlo.”

“Oh? And I don’t suppose you know who did?” I asked, my voice saccharine.

Suddenly, he seemed tired, his big bones heavy beneath his frame as he sagged slightly and loosed a sigh. “It has been a long day, Ms. Lombardi. Ms. Ghorbani has already informed me my arraignment is tomorrow. Why don’t we get to the point of why you came all the way down here to see me like an animal at the zoo.”

I bristled. “Excuse me?”

“You came down to see what kind of monster your sister had taken for her pet. Well, here I am. I hope I lived up to the nightmarish hype.”

I stared at him with narrowed eyes, scanning the broad forehead notched with frown lines and the stubborn, almost weary set of his ruddy mouth. It was easy to fall into the trap he laid, to buy into the mirage he so skillfully wove that said he was a bad man with wicked intentions and nothing more.

But I knew more about Dante Salvatore than most.

I knew that this mafioso had been born the privileged second son of the Duke of Greythorn, and therefore, he’d been educated at the best schools in England and rubbed elbows with a more sophisticated kind of criminal as a boy than he did now in the Camorra. I knew that his father had murdered his mother and wondered if such criminality could be passed through the blood at the same time that my heart panged for the young man he’d been when he’d lost both his parents in different ways to the same offense.

I knew my sister called him the brother of her heart. That she swore up and down he was one of the most loyal and loving men she had ever known. That he would die for her.

Such fierce loyalty resonated with me.

Most girls might have dreamed of white weddings and Prince Charmings, but over the years, I’d learned the futility of such cotton candy daydreams.

All I valued now, desired now, was steadfast loyalty.

And I had to credit this man with that, even if I wanted to hate him for representing every villain I’d ever faced in my childhood.

“All monsters were men once,” I finally allowed, swallowing hard because maybe the same could be said of me. “It’s your choice, Mr. Salvatore, which you want to be after I help get you out of this predicament.”

He settled comfortably in his chair and spread his hands wide, chains rattling. “Maybe after all this, you’ll understand that you don’t have to choose between one or the other. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we have the capacity to claim both sides.”

“And look how that turned out for him,” I retorted.

Dante’s grin was lazy and wicked, one blunt-tipped finger smoothing over his lower lip, back and forth like a hypnotic pendulum. “What a game this will be.”

“Game?”

“It’s usually so easy to corrupt people. I think you might prove a challenge.”

Anger and a hint of nausea rolled through me. I wasn’t corruptible. I was many bad things, I could admit. I had a vicious temper when wronged and held a grudge until the end of time, I didn’t have a talent for making friends, and I wasn’t good at taking criticism or teasing.

But I knew right from wrong.

“I am not a game, Mr. Salvatore,” I informed him, my words clinking to the metal table like ice cubes as I stood and gathered my things. “Nor is this case against you. I know you’ve spent most of your life on the top of the food chain, but nothing is a bigger predator than the United States government. They’ve spent multimillions investigating and prosecuting mafia cases before, and I have no doubt they will again. So why don’t you stop focusing on me and begin focusing on how in the world you are going to fool a judge and jury into believing you are anything less than a villain.”

He remained silent, those spilled ink eyes watchful and depthless as they mapped my progress to the doors where I summoned the guard to let me out. It was only when the whirl of metal clogs spun and released, the doors shuddering open, that his words drifted after me like arid smoke.

“You watch too many movies, Elena. In real life, the villain always wins because we are willing to do anything to succeed.” He paused as I did in the doorway. “I think you know a little something about that.”