When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

I hadn’t made him happy, not like her.

And God, that burned like frostbite emanating from my arctic heart.

“One day,” Cosima said so softly, so quietly, as if she was afraid to spook me. “I know you’ll find a man who makes you forget every fear you’ve ever had, who soothes all the ragged wounds you’ve had to endure in your life, who makes you feel more alive than you ever have before.”

“Like Alexander and you,” I said with a tight smile, happy at least she had found that.

No one deserved that kind of love more than the most loving woman I knew.

“Like Alexander and me,” she agreed. “Don’t be afraid of a rough start, either. Sometimes, you are too quick to judge. Give things time to develop. Lord knows I hated Xan before I fell for him.”

A hiccough moved through my chest as I remembered the real reason for my call.

A man I’d thought was hateful who I was beginning to question might not be so awful after all.

“Cosima, you know I’m happy to finally repay even one iota of what you’ve done for our family,” I began, acknowledging the fact that she and Sebastian had provided for our family since they were teenagers, that they had been the ones to move us to America and get us out of that Neapolitan stink hole. “But I need to know, what is your relationship with Tore and Dante?”

The pause that followed was filled with words in a language I didn’t understand. I was thrown back to childhood when Seamus had relentlessly taught all of us English, my siblings catching on quickly, but my own mind lagging behind.

I was tired of the language of secrets.

“I need to know,” I pushed. “I’m representing him, Cosi. I need to know the facts.”

“You want to know,” she argued, but she wasn’t angry, just weary. “You’ve always wondered, but now, you finally want to know the truth. Even if it’s horrible.”

“Yes,” I whispered, my eyes unseeing as I stood in the middle of the bustling coffee shop imagining what horrors my sister had endured for our family. “Tell me.”

“I won’t tell you the whole story over the phone, Lena, but I’ll come to visit. It’s been a while, and this is something I should tell you in person. But as far as Tore and Dante are concerned…they’re my family. I know you have bad memories of the Camorra and you hate everything they represent, but those two men are two of the best I’ve ever known, and they’ve proved that to me too many times to count. I trust them with my life and my heart, and I’d trust them with yours.”

“What really happened that day at Ottavio’s?” I demanded, leaning forward as if I was in front of her, bearing down on her to squeeze more of the truth from a woman who was as porous as a stone. “Is Dante trying to protect you by not giving his alibi?”

A brief hesitation so quick it shot past like a shooting star.

Then, so solemnly it felt like a vow spoken by a monk at prayer. “Dante is always trying to protect me.”

Does he love you? I suddenly wanted to ask, the question burning up my chest like gasoline-lit tinder.

Does he love you? Does he love you? Does he love you? my inner voice screamed.

But I didn’t say anything.

I wasn’t sure why, but it might have had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t deal with the knowledge of another man showing me some level of attention only to find one of my sisters far superior.

Not that Dante liked me.

I was just a game as he’d told me from the very beginning. A game of corruption.

But my chest, it burned and burned.

“Be careful, amore, you are a lawyer for one of the most powerful criminal families in the country. I hate to put you in danger, but I know you are strong enough to endure. It brings me peace to know the smartest woman I know is protecting the bravest man and vice versa. Don’t do anything foolish and watch your back.”

A shiver sank pointed teeth into the back of my neck and dragged down my spine, leaving me flayed with fear. Suspiciously, I looked around the coffee shop as I picked up my coffee from the station.

It was only because I was looking that I saw the flash of red.

Red like a flag tossed before a bull.

Instantly my back went up, and my fight or flight impulse surged through my limbs.

“Cosima, I have to go,” I said before hanging up the phone and dropping it into my purse.

My eyes were still trained on that red.

A deep red that was almost black.

The same color as my own.

Seamus Moore continued to stare at me through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the coffee shop with the faintly interested expression of someone considering a work of art.