When Heroes Fall

by Giana Darling

  Fuck me, but this woman could be sweet under that brittle shell.

  “I know,” I told her because I did.

  “I’m happy,” she admitted after a minute, almost bashfully, adorably girlish. “For a long time, I’ve felt as if I didn’t deserve that.”

  Her words nearly winded me. I squeezed her, wishing I could extract the poison of her self-loathing through sheer will. “Why wouldn’t you deserve that?”

  For a short pause, she seemed to drown in all the things she wanted to articulate but couldn’t. “I’m not a very nice person sometimes. I-I lash out at people when I’m hurt and say horrible things. When I found out about Daniel and Giselle, I told them both they would never be a part of the family, that I would always hate them. I meant it at the time, and a part of me means it still, but…I ended up alienating my entire family because of it. Even though I was the victim, I ended up acting in a way that made me the villain of the whole situation.” She shrugged soddenly. “It’s been hard to live with that.”

  “Not everything is so black and white, Elena,” I murmured as I slid a lock of her deep red hair between my fingers. “Between the hero and the villain, there is the anti-hero. A person who may do evil deeds and seem unscrupulous, but who, within their own set of morals, possesses a big heart and the willingness to protect that which they know to be good. I know you well enough now that whatever cruelty you gave those two stemmed from the fact that they didn’t love you enough to treat you with kindness.”

  Her sigh was accompanied by a shudder. “You can’t know that, for sure. But…I like that you give me the benefit of the doubt.” She tipped her head to the ceiling as if to confess to God. “It’s you that’s made me happy today. A man I thought I’d hate is now one of the men I most admire. I just don’t know what that means.”

  Her admiration felt like an anointment from God.

  “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” I assured her. “Happiness is the point.”

  She pursed her lips around her knee-jerk reaction to argue with me, then sighed. “You make everything sound so simple when it’s not.”

  She was right; it wasn’t. But lying there naked and cooling after some of the most intense sex I’d ever had, I couldn’t help but wonder if it could be.

  If there was a way to ensure we could be happy together for longer.

  Maybe even forever.

  ELENA

  It snowed the day we finally heard when Dante’s case would go to trial.

  April 17th.

  That unlucky number.

  The number of death.

  I sat at the table staring blindly out the window after Yara passed on the news. I should have been working, filing some of the cases a senior partner had given me to work on, or putting my plan for the bookie who had rolled on Dante into action.

  But I just sat there and stared out the glass as the first December snow fell on Manhattan and turned the calamitous, colorful city into a muffled world of white.

  I officially had an end date for the risk I was taking that could make my career or destroy it.

  An end date for my assignation with the capo.

  So why did I feel so…out of sorts? Gloomier than I had in months, since well before I’d moved into Dante’s vivacious home.

  Maybe that was it. I would just miss his company. I would miss his crew and our routine. I would miss Rora’s precocious chatter and inability to cook without making a mess. I’d miss Bambi’s sweet laughter and gentle presence. I’d even miss Tore, in a way, though we never conversed very much. I’d miss him because I liked to see the way he made Dante smile.

  I groaned, dropping my head to the conference room desk.

  This was not good.

  In the week since the car chase that had culminated in our tryst on his Ferrari, Dante and I had found time and reason to touch every day. He’d fucked me on the piano, in that colossal shower of his, and in his office pinned to the same bookshelf where he’d pressed that searing, significant little kiss to my neck weeks before. We came together explosively every single time.

  I knew logically it was because Monica’s procedure had worked. The painful, stunting cysts on my ovaries that had kept me from feeling anything more than lukewarm pleasure were gone. After nearly two years of intense therapy, I was finally in a good place with my body and my past.

  It could have been any man after that to make me orgasm.

  But it wasn’t just any man.

  It was Dante Salvatore, the black-eyed capo.

  How could I have allowed this to happen?

  I was in no way objective about him as a client anymore.

  In fact, I was in danger of losing my blind respect for the law and completely compromising my previous hardline views of morality because the truth was, they were not always properly aligned.

  Dante was one of the best men I knew, and I could admit that now.

  But he was also, without any doubt, a criminal of the highest order.

  The old Elena would have wanted him behind bars for life.

  The new Elena couldn’t imagine even a single day without him.

  It was a complete mess.

  Worse, I was worried about him.

  Worried that April 17th would come and Yara, the legal team, and I would fail to defend him properly. That the most vital man I’d ever known would be forced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

  I simply couldn’t fathom that, and I didn’t want to.

  So I found myself doing something incredibly stupid.

  I collected my purse and coat and left the office just after noon. A cab took me deep into the Bronx, to a heavily Irish neighborhood with a local watering hole called Father Patrick’s.

  I’d overheard Dante’s crew mention it in conjunction with Thomas Kelly, the Irish mobster.

  The man my father was working with.

  I told myself I was being stupid even as I paid for the cab and slipped into the cold air, the flurries falling densely now, so thick I could barely see across the street to the bar. I ducked into a little convenient store, bought a cheap, watery coffee, and stood at the window while I drank it. Watching.

  Seamus Moore was a drunk and a gambler.

  As a child, I could remember walking up to him passed out on the kitchen table surrounded by bottles. I’d always ushered him to bed before the others woke up, but the scent of hard liquor was burned into the grain of the wood table.

  If this was where his crew hung out, he’d be there, even at just after one in the afternoon.

  I only waited for forty minutes when I caught sight of vivid red hair tucked into a black knit cap. He moved quickly, braced against the wind, pausing for a moment at the bar door before ducking inside.

  I sucked in a deep breath and called the number I’d looked up on my phone.

  “Father Patrick’s,” a gruff voice answered. “What?”

  “I’m looking for Seamus.”

  A pause then a disgustingly phlegm-filled sniff. “Not my problem.”

  “No,” I agreed. “But he might be interested. Tell him it’s his daughter.”

  Another pause, then, “Wait.”

  I waited, picking at a hangnail on my thumb until it bled, red running down to the inside of my wrist, staining my cream coat.

  “Cosima?” Seamus said, a little eager and breathless.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “I doubt your favorite daughter would bother with you after you sold her to repay your gambling debts.”

  “Elena,” he said, this time on a sigh. “Of course, it would be you. The only one of my children with more balls than sense.”

  I didn’t have a response for his inaccurate statement, so I just cut to the chase. “I want to make a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “Have you gone deaf in your old age?” I asked sweetly. “A trade. I have information on the Salvatore borgata I think you would find…interesting. In exchange, though, I want to know what kind of relationship you have with the di C
arlos.”

  There was a little pause, and then he said suspiciously, “Don’t jerk me around, Elena. I’m not some il novellino. I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers.”

  “Then you should recognize a good offer when you hear it,” I countered calmly.

  “Why are you doing this? You told me you hated me, never wanted to see me again. Now you’re offering to help out your dear old da?”

  “No, I still hate you,” I assured him. “But I hate Dante Salvatore more. He’s unscrupulous and evil.”

  The words felt bitter on my tongue, but Seamus wanted to believe me so badly that he took the bait even though it stunk.

  “We should meet,” he decided. “Phones are too sketchy. You could be recording me for all I know.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Bethesda Terrace at six tonight. I expect you to bring evidence I can use.”

  “You want to use it to put the di Carlos away?” he guessed on a laugh. “That’s my girl. Never happy with what you have, gotta go for more.”

  His words burned in me because before then, they’d always been true.

  I’d never been content.

  Not even at the height of my relationship with Daniel as a shiny new associate at Fields, Harding & Griffith.

  It had taken losing everything to realize how empty I’d felt as I chased and chased for more. I’d never taken the time to appreciate those things I already had. I’d let my relationships with my siblings’ waste away. I’d prioritized my career so much I’d never made many friends, and I’d let the only wonderful man I’d ever wanted slip through my fingers because I was always running from my fears.

  This time, I didn’t want more.

  This time, I only wanted to keep what I had.

  “I’ll see you at six,” I told Seamus, and then I hung up.

  But I didn’t leave the little Russian-owned convenience store.

  I waited for another twenty minutes until the familiar redhead ducked back out of the bar and headed west down the street.

  I followed him.

  It was actually much easier than I would have thought. His overlong red hair and beard were an easy beacon, but the snow made visibility difficult, obscuring the faces of the people in the streets. It was a busy enough neighborhood that I wasn’t the only one behind Seamus, heading away from the Bronx toward Madison Avenue Bridge.

  Of course, I was never going to turn on Dante.

  The thought of it made my stomach cramp.

  But my dad, the same man who had sold his own goddamn daughter into sexual slavery, didn’t understand the concept of loyalty, so he had believed me all too easily.

  I had counted on that same lack of dependability to lead my father to betray me. So I wasn’t surprised when he huddled under the awning of a gas station just beside the bridge and waited.

  I did too, from across the street pretending to window shop at a discount furniture warehouse.

  I assumed he was meeting the di Carlo brothers or Thomas Kelly.

  But I was not prepared who did pull up to meet him.

  A sleek gold Bentley pulled into the gas station and up to a pump. Moments later, a man got out of the car and rounded the hood to pump his own gas.

  He wasn’t tall or particularly striking, but I knew who it was even from across the street, traffic and snow obscuring my vision.

  His brown hair was swept back in its usual side part, the long black trench mostly obscuring his signature blue suit. He had the look of someone in power, an officer in the military or a police captain, his face almost austere in its sternness.

  Dennis O’Malley.

  The United States Attorney for the Southern New York District.

  I blinked and breathed, too shocked to function, as Seamus meandered over to the pump station and leaned against the other side, pulling out his phone as if to text someone. But I could see his mouth moving.

  Dennis was meeting with Seamus Moore.

  What. The. Fuck?

  When we’d spoken about my dad, he seemed so unaware of his past, his criminal history, but here he was having some kind of cloak and dagger meeting with him after I’d called to say I was going to snitch on Dante?

  Dennis started speaking, prompting me to remember why I was there in the first place. I tugged off my leather glove with my teeth and raised my phone to take a video, my thumb tapping the photo button as I recorded. It wasn’t the best quality and, if I hadn’t seen Dennis’s face hundreds of times in the past few years, maybe I would have had a hard time identifying him. But there was no doubt in my mind who that man was.

  Fury sparked in my gut and more than a little outrage.

  I’d been indignant when Yara had turned out to be corrupted by the mafia, but it made sense. Fields, Harding & Griffith were among the top firms in the city, but they were all notorious for taking on unsavory clients. They were about money and the bottom line, not putting the right kind of bad guys away for life.

  But Dennis…

  Dennis represented an institution and an aspect of law I’d always admired. He was supposed to put criminals behind bars, not associate with them outside of the courts.

  It was a shocking betrayal even though Dennis himself didn’t mean anything to me.

  It was the betrayal of my own ideals, this construct I’d created like a house of cards in my own mind. The good guys versus the bad guys.

  I’d allowed myself to be teamed up with the bad ones because I’d been told I was bad all my life. First by Seamus, then Christopher, and when my own family shunned me for my treatment of Giselle after she and Daniel cheated on me.

  I’d allowed that for myself because I felt I deserved it, but I’d secretly always wanted to be one of those good guys.

  And now I was faced with the fact that it was all an illusion.

  Dennis was just as motivated to win as we were. His greed and pride had corrupted him just as easily as the Irish mob had.

  For one long moment, I was deeply disoriented. I didn’t know how to evaluate anything or anyone anymore.

  On the one hand was Dennis, a man who was renowned for putting criminals away, who was making a bid at the senate on the basis of his superhero record.

  And on the other was Dante.

  The most infamous mafioso of the last twenty years, a man who was on trial for a murder I knew he hadn’t committed just as I knew he had committed others.

  I realized I had this idea of a hero as someone who was socially accepted, someone who was revered by the masses. But heroism didn’t always arrive dressed in white and topped with a halo or on the back of some shining steed.

  Heroism was about your willingness to right wrongs, to sacrifice your own comfort and safety to affect change when you crossed something that needed changing. It was assuming responsibility for people who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves.

  It was about being brave enough to live life by your own rules and accepting who you were, flaws and all.

  I stood on that snowy corner for a long time after Dennis and Seamus parted, letting my entire world view crumble at my feet, and when I felt my skin frozen but my blood on fire, I felt lighter than I had in years.

  I gave the footage to Yara.

  She didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she’d raised a single dark brow and called for an emergency meeting with the prosecution before Judge Hartford.

  I was giddy as we cabbed to the courthouse, my thigh bouncing with nerves the entire way.

  Yara didn’t seem to share in my excitement. If anything, she seemed oddly morose, her eyes, when they met mine, almost sorry.

  I didn’t understand until we were in the judge’s chambers.

  Martin Hartford was wearing a suit, sitting in one of two leather chairs drinking a glass of brown liquor when we were allowed entry to the room.

  In the other chair sat Dennis O’Malley.

  I frowned at him as he tipped his own glass to me.

  “Scotch?” he offered with that handsome stock smile,
wooden around the edges.

  “What is this?” I asked even though it wasn’t my place to do so.

  “Martin and I were just catching up when you called,” Dennis explained mildly. “We’re old friends. What’s it been now, Marty? Twenty-two years?”

  “Twenty-three,” he corrected.

  “Twenty-three.” Dennis pointed at one of the old photos on Judge Hartford’s wall. “That’s the two of us as lowly first years at the DA’s office. We both worked on Reno Maglione’s case.”

  Reno Maglione was one of the most prolific turncoats in American mafia history.

  “We’ve been putting away the scum of the streets for a long time,” he continued, raising his glass for the judge to click it against his own. “Here’s to many more years, my friend.”

  Beside me, Yara sighed softly.

  “You met with Seamus Moore today,” I accused, shocked by the proceedings. “We’re demanding a mistrial on the basis that you’re directly involved with the Irish mob.”

  “He was an informant,” he said with a shrug.

  “That is not the proper way to meet an informant,” I reminded him, feeling heat build under my skin. “We will call you to testify to that fact on the stand, and you will be forced to recuse yourself. A lawyer representing a case cannot be a witness in the same trial.”

  “Very good, Ms. Lombardi.” He laughed. “A plus student indeed. Only, this isn’t a mock trial. This is real life and real court. I’m certainly not going to recuse myself from this case. If we win this, I’m well on my way to being the next state senator.”

  I looked at Judge Hartford incredulously, but his face was entirely placid.

  “Fitzgerald’s term as mayor is almost up,” Dennis told us slyly, leaning forward to clap the judge on the knee. “I think Marty would be a shoo-in.”

  Oh my God.

  I couldn’t believe this.

  It was beyond comprehension.

  This was the kind of thing that happened in Italy, not in America. Wasn’t it?

  From the look on Yara’s face, it wasn’t.

  There was corruption everywhere, and it seemed I’d just been too willful and naïve to see it.