Page 10 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“We’ll speak later,” Cosima whispered to him before adding in a soft voice to me, “Thank you, Lena.”

I tipped my head down in acknowledgment of her sweet words but otherwise didn’t respond. She had thanked me a dozen times already, and I had no doubt she would thank me a dozen more. This wasn’t the kind of case I’d ever thought to define my legal career on. I’d thought long and hard about going to work for the DA’s office or even the US Attorney’s office for southern New York. They did the kind of heroic work I’d idolized as a child in Italy, where the mafia was a matter of everyday life, and a behemoth entity the prosecutors and policemen were murdered frequently trying to take down.

But I wasn’t ashamed to admit my greed had won over my principles, and instead, I’d taken a job at Fields, Harding & Griffith, a top-five law firm in the city, the country, and even internationally with offices in London and Hong Kong. When you grew up poor, money wasn’t only a primary motivator; it was almost an obsession. I still remembered how it felt to get my first paycheck as an associate. My fellow law students complained about their lowly wages as a first year, but my yearly salary was already astronomical compared to the means we’d had in Naples. It was the first time in my life I’d earned more than minimum wage, and it symbolized what I hoped would be the first milestone in a long and storied legal career.

So, it was my greed that led me to the courtroom that day defending a man I didn’t like and didn’t believe for one second was innocent of the crimes he was accused of and many more besides.

Naturally, my eyes swept over the room to the right side where the US Attorney and his assistants manned the prosecution. Dennis O’Malley wasn’t a large man or even a showy one. He wore a simple, well-tailored blue suit with a striped tie in a muted green that I knew only from experience was the same shade as his eyes. There was silver at the thick hair over his ears, threading through the warm brown in a way that I’d always felt was very attractive, and he carried himself the way middle-aged men tended to, with a conservative grace and arrogance that made him even more attractive.

Dennis was forty-eight and one of the most successful prosecutors in the history of southern New York. Despite his shorter stature, he was classically handsome, cultured, intelligent, and ambitious. It was rumored that he was considering a run for the Senate, and the publicity this case would bring if he won would go a long way to ensuring he was a shoo-in for the position.

As if sensing my focus, Dennis looked up from his briefing notes and looked over at the table, his eyes snagging mine. When his eyebrows cut high lines into his forehead, I knew he was surprised to see me there.

“Why is that man staring at you?” Dante murmured, elbowing me softly in the side.

I glared at him quickly before returning to my case notes. “He isn’t.”

“A man knows when a beautiful woman is being admired,” Dante drawled in that bastardized accent. “It isn’t me he wants.”

Despite myself, a little snort escaped me. “Oh, don’t be jealous. He wants your head on a pike if that’s any consolation.”

Dante hummed, his fingers thrumming lightly on the hard thigh beneath his trousers. “Now, you’re just projecting.”

“I don’t want your head on a pike, Mr. Salvatore. I want it free and clear of these charges so that you might go about your life and we will never have to see each other again,” I quipped quickly as there was a collective stir of energy in the crowd seconds before the door to the judge’s chamber opened to reveal the man presiding over this arraignment.

I could still feel two pairs of hot eyes on me, Dante from the left and Dennis from the right, but nothing existed for me except Judge Hartford.

He was a tall, bullish man with a thick neck and a nest of coarse black hair gone to salt at the temple. His robustness was magnified by the high, wide judge’s bench he sat behind so that he seemed like an Olympian god preceding over his courtroom.

I’d done my research on him just as any good lawyer would have. It helped immeasurably to know who you were appealing to, and in this case, we had an uphill battle trying to convince pious, old-school Martin Hartford to let Dante out on bail.

He’d only been a young buck during the roaring mafia-crazed eighties, but he’d been there and done his time in the district attorney’s office. He was known to have zero tolerance for organized crime.

I was too green to speak to the judge myself, not in a case as important as this, but I could comb through every spoken word looking for loopholes and intel that might assist Yara in persuading the judge that Dante Salvatore, born as Edward Davenport, second son to one of the wealthiest peerages in England, was worthy of bail.

“The United States of America versus Dante Salvatore,” Judge Hartford began in that old-school radio announcer voice that made him seem slightly jovial when he was truly anything but.

I’d once overheard him say he believed thieves should have their right hand chopped off in punishment for their crimes as they still did in Dubai. He was archaic, and he was ruthless against those he deemed lifelong criminals.

The lead lawyers on each case were asked to identify themselves, but I remained in my seat as a lowly associate. My leg bounced with excited nerves beneath the table, a habit I hadn’t been able to kick since childhood.

Only when a broad, hot palm wrapped fully around the circumference of my thigh beneath the table did I freeze.

Dante didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed on the judge and lawyers conferring at the judge’s bench, but he gave my thigh another squeeze before removing his hand.

I was so startled by his boldness that my mouth was still hanging open when Yara returned to the table and shot me an unimpressed look.

Bill Michaels and Ernesto Burgos snickered very lightly under their breath beside me. They were my fellow associates on the case who were allowed in the courtroom, with many more enlisted behind the scenes. I liked Ernesto well enough when he wasn’t with Bill, but together, they loved to ridicule me, and no issue was too far for them to take their teasing.

Including the fact that my fiancé had left me for my sister.

For the third time that day, I’d been embarrassed by my client.

Anger coiled in my belly, a serpent caught in a snare desperate to burst free and strangle the first thing in sight. I fought through the madness, my fingers clenched too hard around my Montblanc pen, dragging controlled breaths through my nose the way my therapist had taught me.

It did little to help clear the fog of red tinting my vision when I darted another glance at Dante. He was staring at me from the corner of his eyes, his lips compressed just slightly as if he fought a smile at my expense.

It was official.