When Heroes Fall (Anti-Heroes in Love 1)

Ottavio leaned forward, bracing his hairy forearms on his thighs to get a better look. I watched the magic of my sister transform his grumpy features into something softer, his eyes warming as they studied the photograph.

“Cosima,” he almost whispered. A finger uncurled from his fist to gently touch the print. “È una ragazza bellissima.”

“Yes, she is very beautiful,” I agreed, smiling at him when he caught my eye to show him that I meant no harm. “Of course, I’m biased because she is my sister.”

His wiry eyebrows shot up on his forehead, and if he’d still had a full head of hair, they would have disappeared into it. “You?”

I laughed lightly, not offended at all. “We don’t look much alike.”

He scratched his chin as he studied me, his demeanor still relaxed, Cosima’s magic still working to make him forget the real reason we were there. “A little in the eyes.”

“Grazie,” I said earnestly because it felt good, always, to be compared to her. “She is beautiful inside and out.”

“Si,” he agreed with a vigorous nod. “She came to my shop very often, your sister, and she always ate an entire plate of my wife’s tiramisu. I do not know where she put it. So skinny!”

I laughed again. “She can eat like a horse.”

He nodded, his eyes closed with solemnity. “Yes, this is very good. She was a good girl, Cosima. Always told people to come to Ottavio’s. Just seeing her in the window was good for business, drew in all the neighborhood men.”

“Mmm,” I hummed in agreement before I frowned and made a show of rifling through my bag before producing yet another photo that I stared at for a moment. When I finally turned it to face Ottavio and placed it on the table before him, he reeled back in his chair, his mouth open and pursed raggedly like a bullet hole blown through his skull. “You seem to have admired her. I’m surprised you let men do this to her in your own shop.”

This photo depicted my sister on the yellow-tinged linoleum of his deli, her hair a curling mess like spilled ink around her head, ribbons of brilliant red blood pooling around her prone body from the three bullet holes torn through her torso and the one that had grazed her skull, splitting flesh open to the bone over one ear. There was so much blood that she seemed to be floating in it, her face almost peaceful in her comatose state.

It was a jarring, ghastly contrast to the previous photo of her smiling and whole that lay beside it.

Ottavio looked at me with his mouth still open in horror.

I nodded as if he’d spoken because I’d felt much the same way when I’d first seen the photos. “Three bullets to the torso, one to the head. Did you know she was in a coma for weeks?”

He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Do you know why they did this to her?” I asked, my tone hardening with every word I spoke, weaponizing them to kick the man while his defenses were down.

Another tiny shake. Sweat beaded on his thick upper lip and dripped down the side of his mouth. He licked it up unconsciously.

“Did you know they would do this to her?” I asked, subtly changing my question.

We weren’t on trial in court before a judge. I could lead the damn witness as much as I wanted to.

And I was going to lead the horse straight to the hay.

“They don’t tell men like me anything,” he muttered, his eyes back on the photo of Cosima.

“You have a daughter nearly Cosima’s age. Rosario, isn’t it?” I knew because Ric had done the homework for me. “Does she know her father let this happen to someone else’s daughter?”

“I did not want this to happen,” he finally barked, breaking out of his stunned stupor. “No one wants these things to happen, capisci? Who am I, simple Otto, to stand between those men and what they want, huh?”

“What did they give you for your silence? A grand, two?” Ric interjected, his words like gunshots.

One by one, they found their way into Ottavio’s round chest. He jerked at the impact and placed his hands over his heart as if to protect it.

“You are estraneo, an outsider. You know nothing,” he practically spat at Ric.

“But I do,” I told him, shifting into Italian, leaning forward to tap the horrible photo of Cosima. “I know the horrors of the Camorra because I lived them while I was a girl in Naples.”

“Ah, si, then you know,” he said, almost eagerly, yearning to alleviate his guilt. “You know to talk is to die.”

Continuing in Italian because I didn’t exactly want Ricardo to know how far I was taking things, I said, “I know that good people die every day because they don’t stand up for the things they know are wrong. An innocent man is being accused of murdering Giuseppe di Carlo and his thug because no one will say a word. Is that just?”