When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

“The Camorra wanted you,” I said, thinking back on the other boys who were recruited as errand boys and messengers as early as eleven.

Seb nodded, his eyes distant as he played with my fingers. “How different my life would have been.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“No,” he agreed, pinning me with the full weight of his golden stare. “Mostly because of you. You always bore the brunt of those horrors for us. I haven’t thanked you in a very long time for that.”

I shrugged. “I can be annoying.”

When he laughed, I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. I was tired, and the pain was muffled by the meds, but my womb was cramping in a way that felt like being stabbed with a shard of glass.

But I didn’t feel a thing when I made my brother laugh for the first time in a long time.

“You can,” he agreed easily with that confidant nonchalance I’d always admired. “But you’ve had reason to be less than you should be.”

“My therapist doesn’t like me to make excuses,” I muttered somewhat petulantly.

He chuckled. “Therapists typically don’t.”

“You’ve been?” I was shocked by the prospect of my infallible, affable brother needing therapy. It seemed like the kind of forced introspection only the deeply unhappy were forced to seek.

He shrugged. “Secrets, remember? There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“A secret for a secret?” I suggested.

There was reluctance in the set of his stubborn mouth, but when I pointed out it was him who had said secrets had corroded our family dynamic, he agreed.

“You obviously know about Savannah Meyers, er, Richardson,” he corrected, referring to the older woman he’d dated briefly a few years ago. I’d teased him often about liking older women, perhaps callously, so I only held his hand and listened with an open face now. “I met her when I was driving for a Town Car service in London when I first moved over there. She was glamorous and elegant, like nothing I’d ever seen before. I fell in love with her before I even touched her.”

It was hard to listen to the throb of heartache in his voice. Sebastian was usually so full of sunshine and charm, laughter and easy affection, that seeing him haunted felt heretical.

He sucked a deep breath in through his teeth, sat up a little straighter, and pinned me with a somber stare. “It was through Savvy that I met Adam.”

I blinked.

He powered on. “When he showed up at one of my shows, I thought he was going to punch me for hitting on his wife. He didn’t. Instead, he propositioned me.” His free hand moved through the air like an agitated bird. “He was powerful, handsome, successful, but there was just something about him that called to me.”

Called to him like a wolf song in the night. The way something about Dante, about this life of his, called to me.

I squeezed his hand in understanding.

“I lived with them for a year before it went sour,” he said, his eyes lost to the past. “I tried to follow Savvy to America, but you know how that turned out.”

I did. The whole world did. The beautiful power couple that was the famous actor Adam Meyers and his pretty wife, Savannah, had suffered an acrimonious divorce. Almost immediately after, Savannah had moved to America and married the media tycoon, Tate Richardson.

“Seb, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I only lost one person I loved, and it felt like the bottom fell out of my world. I can’t imagine losing two.”

He didn’t deny that he’d loved them both, but he shrugged tensely, clearly uncomfortable.

“You know,” I said slowly, teasing him gently. “Beau has been my best friend for five years, and in his words, he’s ‘as gay as they come.’ I would never judge you for loving a man.”

“Just an older woman, then,” he asked pointedly.

I shrugged. “You dig. I dig. It’s how we’ve been for ages. I think I have you to thank for the quick wit that makes me a good lawyer.”

“You’re welcome,” he said magnanimously. “Cosima might suspect, but Giselle and Mama don’t know about Adam. No one does.”

Why did it mean so much more than the money or success I’d coveted for years to know that Sebastian had trusted me with such a secret?

“I won’t tell a soul,” I promised, then conjured up the word we’d used growing up when we were afraid in the dark, mafiosos at the door coming for our father. “Insieme, Sebastian.”

Insieme meant together.

The four of us together against the world.

Against the mafia and Seamus, even against the obliviousness of our poor, stressed mother.

Somewhere along the way, we’d lost that.

“Insieme, cara mia,” he repeated with the massive movie star grin that I’d seen on billboards and magazine covers in the past few years. “Now, your turn.”