When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  I nodded. “Good, though I have a feeling that broken fucker has told us all he knows. Now, we know the di Carlos have a civil war brewing over leadership between the di Carlo brothers and Giuseppe’s underboss, Italo Faletti, and we can use that to our advantage.”

  Irrationally, I wanted Gideone di Carlo and his older brother, Agostino, to die horrible deaths just for approaching Elena, but I knew if I was going to back a horse in this race it had to be the younger di Carlos.

  There was an idea lurking at the periphery of my mind when I zoned out on the myriad of problems facing me. A solution to the feud Giuseppe had started with us and the Irish problem, even the irritating fact that the other heads of the five families in the Commission still didn’t accept me as one of their own.

  Could I wipe them all out in one fell swoop with a singular, explosive idea?

  It was still too murky to detail out loud, but if everything came together, including a certain icy redhead in her room upstairs, I could emerge from this cazzato trial with more power than I’d had even before it.

  I grinned at my men as I decided to set the wheels in motion. There was a mole in my operation, a fact I wouldn’t soon forget, but hopefully, this scheme would also draw them out.

  “Enzo,” I ordered, “Have Violetta Matlock brought close by and get Caelian Accardi’s information for me.”

  “The son of the ’Ndrangheta boss?” he questioned.

  Gaetan hit him on the back of his head. “Just do as the boss says, numb skull.”

  Enzo winced, then excused himself to make a call at the back of the room.

  “What’re you thinking, D?” Frankie asked from the coffee table in the middle of the room where he’d set up shop.

  The smile that overtook my face was as lethal as a weapon. “I think it’s time to shake things up a little. These motherfuckers think this is their world just because they were born on American soil. Let’s show them what it’s like to die in ours.”

  She was sleeping when I finally got the time to check in on her. I almost laughed at the image she made in the mammoth pale gray bed with a black silk face mask over her eyes and black foam plugs in her ears. Only Elena Lombardi would look like she was preparing for war just to take a simple nap.

  But there was no denying she looked exquisite in slumber, her classic features softer in repose, her mouth pink without the usual lipstick. I found I wanted to lean down to savor it with my own, exploring the small white teeth beneath those bow-shaped lips, sliding my tongue alongside hers to taste her dreams.

  I wondered with a fierce surge of possession that nearly stole my breath if she was dreaming of me. There was no doubting the powerful arousal she had felt watching me jack off in my office last night. It was there in the flush I could detect even though she was tucked in the shadows of the hallway, in the way her mouth bloomed open like a rose ready to be pollinated, her breath a harsh pant. She had been fucking captivated by me and by her reaction to me, almost scared and awed of the crackling chemistry between us.

  It was heady as fuck to know I could have that effect on a woman who had clearly never harnessed the power of her sexuality. My usual ironclad control was tenuous at best now, knowing that beneath that gorgeous, cultivated class lay the heart of a wanton, desperate for a man to show her how to navigate the world of pleasure and hedonism.

  I ached to wake her up just to see those wintry ocean gray eyes flare back at me, to test the edge of her tongue against mine and know whether it was as sharp as her words or soft like the tender heart she was so careful to guard.

  I wanted her, and I would have her, but Elena required a contrarian mix of forcefulness and care, my seduction a tightrope walk that could fail with even the slightest provocation. And I wasn’t more and more unwilling to fail.

  I moved closer to her bedside in order to move a thick lock of deeply red hair out of her face, rubbing the silken strands between my fingers as I did so. I leaned over to press a slight kiss to the surprisingly small shell of her ear, unable to resist.

  When I pulled away, the papers on the nightstand caught my eye.

  I was a curious man.

  And a criminal.

  It wasn’t in my nature to refuse myself much, and I found I didn’t even try as I reached out for the folded pages and opened them to read. I wanted to know what Elena had been in the hospital for. As her host, I felt it was my prerogative to know so I could take the best care of her. As a capo, I felt it was my right to know anything that happened under my roof to someone in my circle.

  I was not prepared for what lay in the neatly printed words.

  Anorgasmia.

  Cysts, fibroids, infertility.

  I couldn’t take my eyes from the page even though I knew I was crossing a line Elena would never have given me access to herself.

  Madonna santa, it was difficult to comprehend the life this woman had lived in her short twenty-seven years.

  A scumbag father constantly in debt to the mafia, the poverty that plagued so many Napolitano families, every single one of her siblings taking off to greener pastures while she remained in the hellhole of her youth.

  Then the new world, a boyfriend she respected, a job she worked hard for.

  Only for the boyfriend to leave her for her fucking sister. Only for some asshole mafioso to threaten her job by forcing her to move in with him because it suited his needs.

  And this.

  Issues with infertility and even the simple ability to orgasm.

  Tore always used to tell me not to judge someone before I knew what they’d been through to get to that point. Survivors came in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them came out on the other side of their trauma shiny and bright with hope and renewed optimism.

  Some of them ended up like Elena, fractured and glued back together through sheer resolve and tenacity of spirit.

  Was it any wonder the world thought this woman was a bitch?

  With all she’d been through, it was a miracle she ever smiled.

  I thought about the night with Aurora, when Elena had transformed before my eyes. It was like watching a bear emerging from hibernation, foul-tempered and faintly aggressive with the outside world, turn to her cub and suddenly become all warmth and love.

  The smile she’d given Aurora, the way she’d made her feel strong just by bestowing a playful nickname.

  That was the night I discovered the true, tender underbelly of my fighter and decided, irrevocably, that I needed to have her.

  Not just have her to own her, because a woman like Elena couldn’t be owned and that was part of her powerful charm.

  I needed to have her to understand her. To have the privilege of unwrapping layer after layer until I got to the heart of her. Once, I’d thought her soul would be frozen through, an icy vessel used only to pump blood through her body, but I was beginning to understand the truth.

  Elena Lombardi had so much heart. She was overfull with emotion, and she had no idea how to hide that vulnerability from people unless it was behind a mask of icy indifference and cool disdain. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust others with that tender, swollen organ so much as she didn’t trust herself to use it.

  What a fucking tragedy.

  I stared down at her sleeping face feeling my own heart shift in my chest, the tectonic plates of my life fluctuating to accommodate a new presence there, one I didn’t intend to let go.

  At that moment, I had no thought to my borgata, my responsibilities, or the risks associated with having a romance with my lawyer, a woman who hated so much of what I loved.

  I considered only the magnitude of the challenge I was setting for myself and the eagerness I felt setting out to conquer it.

  To conquer her.

  Because I resolved in much the same way I resolved to solve my mother’s murder and resolved to save Cosima from the Order of Dionysus that I would show Elena Lombardi what it was like to live and love freely.

  And I’d do it by loving her.

&nbs
p; First, I just had to trick her into letting down her shields long enough to let me try.

  ELENA

  I woke up because someone was sitting at the edge of my bed with their hand on my cheek. Immediately, I thought it was Dante, but the scent was off. The hand was rough tipped and broad like a man’s, but the fragrance was all spice and musk, not the bright tang of lemon and pepper I recognized as Dante’s.

  When I pushed back my eye mask, I was shocked to see my brother, Sebastian, seated on the bed beside me.

  I hadn’t seen him in a few months, but that wasn’t unusual. He’d moved to Los Angeles to be closer to a film project late last year, and though he visited often, I didn’t always make the time to see him, and he didn’t always ask. There was no bad blood between us, as there was with Giselle and me, but there was a…wariness. We both had demons, and ours were too incompatible to play nice for long.

  But seeing him there in my room, still shaky from the anesthesia and emotional from the impact the surgery would have on my life, I felt, to my horror, tears spring to my eyes.

  “Patatino,” I whispered through my thick throat before I carefully tried to sit up higher on the tower of pillows to prop me up at a forty-five-degree angle.

  His grin was gorgeous, but then again, everything about the twins was pure beauty. I cataloged the way his golden eyes creased at the corners into charming crow’s feet and how his wide, full mouth pulled apart in a perfectly symmetrical smile. His black hair was long on top and short on the sides, a trendy haircut for one of the hot young actors of our day. He looked handsome, of course, but also a little lost somewhere in the depths of those tiger yellow eyes.

  “Hey, Lady.”

  I’d honestly forgotten that nickname. It had been so long since he called me that affectionally, Lady Elena or Signora Elena, because I was always badgering him about manners and decorum while he was growing up.

  I was sore, and it was fabulously out of character, but I gave in to the impulse and gently leaned forward to wrap my arms around my little brother.

  He laughed in my ear softly as he hugged me back, holding me to his strong chest as if I was a child. I could still remember when he had his growth spurt at fourteen years old. One day, he was this scrawny little kid, shorter and thinner than me, and the next moment, I was craning my neck back to look him in the eyes. The tears stubbornly refusing to leave my eyes alone swelled in my ducts and rolled slowly off the edge of my lids onto my cheeks.

  “Hey, hey,” he hushed, his familiar lightly accented baritone smooth and soothing. “What’s this about, hmm? I don’t think I’ve seen you cry in years.”

  I laughed a little weakly as I pulled away from him to dry the drops on my cheeks with my fingertips. “I want to say it’s the drugs, but I’ve been a little…off lately. I guess it took me off guard how much I’ve missed you.”

  It hurt to see the surprise on Seb’s face, but I knew I deserved it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told him I missed him, let alone that I loved him or was proud of him.

  And I was.

  So proud of him.

  So in love with the man he’d grown into against all the odds.

  Tears burned and burned in my eyes, but I didn’t let any more fall.

  “I’m happy to see you too, sorella mia,” he finally said with a genuine grin, reaching out to tug on a curl. “It’s been too long.”

  “It has,” I agreed before it occurred to me that we were in Dante’s Upper East Side apartment. How the hell did Sebastian know I was even here? “How are you here?”

  The humor fled from his face, replaced by an uncharacteristic scowl. “Dante answered your phone when I called earlier to see if it was cool I stayed with you at your place for the weekend. He told me you were in the hospital and just got out. Why didn’t you tell me, Lena?”

  I worried my lower lip, wishing I had on even a stitch of makeup for some armor between me and the acute scrutiny of those golden eyes. “It was minor.”

  “Lena,” he warned. “Are you kidding me? Do you remember when you practically tore my ear off because I didn’t tell you Leone Valeria broke my index finger?”

  I pulled his right hand into my lap and pinched the misshapen middle knuckle. “It never did heal right.”

  “No,” he said with an eloquently raised brow. “It didn’t. It’s been a long time since you’ve told me about any of your pain, Lena.”

  I looked down at his tanned hand in my own, tracing the lines on his palm the way I’d done when we were children. He and Cosima both had the same long emotion line bisecting their upper palm. They’d always been more emotionally intelligent than Giselle and me, always ready with the right words and the right kinds of hugs.

  “I have a therapist now,” I explained, still avoiding his eyes.

  “You’ve always had a brother,” he offered. “Some people say I’m wise beyond my years.”

  I laughed. “It doesn’t count when you say it to yourself in the mirror, Seb.”

  “Hey, self-validation is important too,” he quipped easily before sobering and enfolding my hand in his. “I used to think we were such a close family. It took me a long time to realize that we are a collection of strangers pretending to be family. We’ll never know each other well enough to love each other properly if we keep secrets the way we have.”

  I winced slightly as his words hit the bull’s-eye. “Ouch, Seb, take care, will you? The drugs aren’t that strong.”

  “I am,” he countered, not to be deterred, that famous Lombardi tenacity setting his face to stone. “If you want to share with me.”

  Gingerly, feeling the sharp pangs in my abdomen, I leaned back against the tower of pillows to stare at the elaborate molding on the ceiling and blew a burst of air between my lips. “How long do you have?”

  In response, Seb stood up, kicked off his leather boots, and crossed to the other side of the bed so he could lever himself on top of the covers beside me. Once he arranged the pillows to his liking and propped a hand behind his head, he turned to face me with an expectant eyebrow raised.

  For some reason, I was sick with nerves even though I knew rationally Sebastian wasn’t going to ridicule me for the myriad of fears that kept me up at night and made sleep nearly impossible.

  He was my brother.

  That should mean something.

  Only Giselle had taught me, and maybe I’d taught her, that it didn’t mean much.

  It hadn’t always been like that, though.

  When I was very young, I had many friends in our neighborhood, clusters of boisterous children whose mamas grouped together as they did in the open doorways of houses chattering as they hung laundry from the line and occasionally tended to various pots on the stove. This was when I was too young for true memory, so I’d often wondered how much of these hazy images I made up to soothe myself when I got older.

  By the time Giselle was born, Mama and I were no longer part of that tight-knit community of Italian mothers and their babies. They knew us for what Seamus had made us.

  Outsiders not to be trusted; a family whose words were no good.

  In a place like Napoli, where almost everyone was poor and the Camorra ruled, your word was the only currency that really mattered.

  And Seamus had robbed us of it.

  So when Giselle was born, red-headed like me in a sea of dark-haired youth with little freckles on her cheeks she’d taken from our Irish father, I loved her instantly. I felt profoundly, or as profoundly as a four-year-old can, that Giselle was my gift from God. I constantly badgered Mama to hold her, feed her, brush the fragile, silken tangle of her curling flame-colored hair. I cooed to her in Italian, sweet little rhymes I made up and stories about foreign sister princesses who might one day be queens.

  It was so long ago, yet even now, sitting in Dante’s apartment with Sebastian at my side, a lawyer at a top-five firm with a gorgeous house of my own in Gramercy Park, almost as far removed from the past as I could possibly be, I felt the ache of
those emotions like a latent echo in my chest.

  I’d always wanted to love Giselle, but life had conspired against me, as it often did, to ruin whatever good there was between us.

  I wondered if there was any wedge more destructive to the bond between two sisters as the love of a shared man.

  No wonder the love and attention of two was our utter demise.

  My mind was on her, on our family, so I started there.

  “Do you remember me when we were young?” I asked him, reaching over to grab his hand because suddenly I needed comfort, and touching him was the only way I could find it. He wrapped his fingers around mine and squeezed. “Tell me about the Elena you remember.”

  Sebastian didn’t laugh or tease the way he usually might have. Instead, he considered me. “You were like our second parent. Seamus was never around, and Mama was working in the restaurant in town, or depressed, lying in her room, or out looking for Dad. You were always bossing us around, getting us ready for school, making sure we were clean and doing our homework and in bed before nine.” He shook his head. “It was annoying then, but Cosima and I have talked about it a lot since. How grateful and lucky we are to have had you keeping our noses clean.”

  “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.