Page 105 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Is he… a member of the Family?” I asked lowly, wondering if that was why she had gone to such lengths to hide her plea for help.

I didn’t care who it was hurting her and scaring Aurora. I’d do everything in my power to get them free of the bastard.

Her nod was slight, but it was the fear in her eyes that settled it for me.

“Can you tell me who it is?” I pressed softly, leaning forward to gently tap her knee with my fingers. “It could help me keep you safe.”

Frantically she shook her head. “No. I don’t want to tell you who it is. We don’t have that attorney-client silence thing, right?”

“No,” I admitted. “If it’s a problem with one of Dante’s men, it would be a conflict of interest for me. And it’s a domestic case, so I’ll have to refer you to someone who covers that area of the law.”

“Okay, that’s kinda what I figured,” she admitted. “I don’t know many law types, and you’ve always been so good to Aurora and me. I just knew you would help.”

Her praise warmed me, and I felt horrible for my momentary bout of jealousy.

“Have you considered asking Dante for some time off so you can get away while we sort this out?” I suggested. “It might get ugly with this guy before we can file a restraining order.”

“I could do that if it gets bad,” she agreed. “But I hate to leave Dante in a lurch.”

“He would understand,” I promised because I knew he would.

The heartless capo I’d made him out to be at our first meeting was only a mirage. The real Dante might have had the flat black eyes of a criminal, but he had a heart of gold for those he cared about.

“Why do you think this man is acting this way toward you now?” I asked curiously.

She winced as if she had hoped I wouldn’t ask that. “It’s tough for me, you know? Even though he’s doing some…bad stuff, I care about him.”

Growing up, many of the girls I’d gone to school with had ended up married to Camorra foot soldiers, and many of those had gone on to be beaten, raped, or neglected by their husbands. I hated the thought of pretty, sweet Bambi under the hands of some thuggish creep.

She hadn’t said it was her boyfriend, but it was easy enough to read between the lines. Only powerful love would keep her from turning him in even though she knew what he was doing was wrong.

The thought hit a little too close to home, so I smiled thinly and pressed on. “I understand but, Bambi, you and Aurora need to come first. I’m going to call my friend Tilda at another law firm and get her on your case. She practices family law, and she was one of the top in our class at NYU, so she will take good care of you.”

“You’re taking good care of me,” she corrected, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “I can see why Dante admires you so much.”

“I could say the same thing,” I offered, pushing that pang of jealousy aside because Bambi was a good woman, and I wanted her to know she deserved more than this schmuck of a boyfriend.

Her answering smile was weary as she waited for me to go through my phone. I had just hit send on Tilda’s number when Bambi chilled me to the bone by adding, “Oh, ask her if she knows how to draw up a will, okay?”

I loved New York the second I arrived in the city, and that appreciation had only deepened over the years. The place was teeming with humanity, not just the bodies in the streets but the countless thoughts and actions of men made into towering buildings and cultivated parks. It was such a mortal city, riddled with flaws like cramped alleyways filled with crime and sin, and glories like the sunsets that spilled through the cracks of the manmade cityscape, illuminating even those dank hovels in its golden light from time to time.

Much like the red-headed Italian woman who haunted my thoughts, she was a chaos of contradictions I wanted to spend my life untangling.

When something interested me, I threw myself into the pursuit of knowing it as deeply as I could. I was in the middle of one such endeavor now with Elena, but I’d already spent years delving into New York City’s quirks and histories to better understand them.

To betterusethem.

I was standing in a place that was the fruit of that research currently, deep beneath the parking garage at the base of my Upper East Side apartment building. I hadn’t picked the apartment for its character or the neighborhood for its good schools.

I’d chosen it because of its history, the thing that made it precious to me.

The defunct subway station Track 83 had been one of the first stations built in the early 1900s, and service was closed in 1954. There were many such old metro stops forgotten to history beneath the city, the Old City Hall and Track 61 beneath the Waldorf-Astoria being two of them that still allowed some degree of public access for spectators.

No one knew about Track 83 beneath the Smith Jameson Building except the previous owner of the building, who was now deceased, a man at the city planning record hall I had on payroll, andme.

It was my sanctuary, an outlet from the cage of my apartment so many floors above. It seemed fitting to own the penthouse, my own personal Mt. Olympus, and the subterranean tunnels that threaded through the entire network of New York City’s underworld.

This was where I conducted the business the probation office didn’t see, and Elena couldn’t hear.