Page 89 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

“Stop it, Dante,” I said firmly, shooting him my best schoolmarm glare. “Forget this happened. It was a momentary lapse in judgment.”

He nodded somberly, his lean hips against the desk, one hand playing with the chain of the ornate silver cross he’d taken out of his shirt. He looked like an invitation to sin on an altar, the worst decision a woman would ever make, but the wicked gleam in his eyes promised he would make it worth her while.

“I’ll try my best to make sure your judgment lapses again,” he called as I turned on my heel and started for the elevator. “Frequently.”

I shook my head but didn’t turn around.

Only when I was safely ensconced in the elevator on the way to the garage and that gorgeous car did I hit my head back against the ornate gold scrolled metal wall and curse myself for the smile that broke free across my face.

When I touched my lips to force the expression off my face, I traced the feel of his kiss echoed there in my flesh and closed my eyes on a groan.

I was already on the legal team of and living with the most infamous mafioso of the twenty-first century. It was debatable, but I’d already started down the slippery slope of moral degeneration.

Maybe Dante was right about making the riskworthsomething.

Something more than my career and its success.

Something worth the cost of my soul.

If I was going to damn myself anyway, I might as well do it by sleeping with the Devil of New York City.

“Nice ride.”

I tossed my head to clear my face of my windswept hair and smiled at Ricardo Stavos as I closed the butterfly door and locked the car.

“It’s a…friend’s,” I explained with a lopsided shrug.

He grinned roguishly. “Sure, Elena, whatever you say.”

I shot him a look as I adjusted the Prada bag stuffed with papers and my iPad on my left arm. But still, I accepted his kiss on the cheek. Normally, I couldn’t abide such a lack of professionalism, but Ric was impossible to resist, and the kiss was part of his Ecuadorian culture as much as it was part of my Italian youth. In his early forties with dark brown hair he wore shorn close to his scalp, a deep tan all year round, and eyes that crinkled charmingly whenever he smiled, which was often.

He was the lead investigator at Fields, Harding & Griffith, and he mostly refused to work with associates. But he’d caught me smoking a rare cigarette outside of the Pearl Street courthouse one day, and we’d bonded over growing up in cultures where smoking was as normal as drinking soda was in America.

I was glad he was with me for this. It always made me nervous going to interview witnesses. One wrong step and it would be easy for a lawyer to end up having to testify against a witness in court, which would effectively end their participation in the trial.

But it was paramount we convince Ottavio Petretti to testify.

To our knowledge, he was the only living person other than the disappeared Mason Matlock to have been in or near his self-named deli the day Giuseppe di Carlo was murdered. Up until now, he’d flatly refused to talk to a single soul, but I was hoping a good old-fashioned dose of guilt and a little elbow grease would sway him.

“Let me have the first crack at him?” I asked Ric because even though I was the lawyer and higher up the food chain at the firm, he was vastly more experienced and incredibly valuable. I almost always deferred to him when we worked together. I had no problem taking the back seat if it meant I could learn how to be like those I admired one day.

He cocked a brow but nodded before gesturing me to proceed him up the sidewalk to Ottavio’s small bungalow home. “He’s going to be a hard nut to crack.”

I patted my purse and grinned at him. “The meatiest ones always are. Don’t worry, I have my bag of tricks.”

It felt good to walk up the cracked concrete stairs in my six-inch power heels and tailored gray houndstooth St. Aubyn suit. After the morning I’d had, defenseless against the inexorable pull of eyes darker than the night sky, I needed to be reminded of my own authority and independence.

Ric knocked on the door with a heavy fist, but I made sure to stand slightly in front of him so I was the first thing Ottavio might see through his foggy peephole.

A moment later, the door creaked open, and a true Roman nose poked out. “Don’t speak to cops or men in suits.”

“Good thing I’m a woman then,Signore Petretti,” I practically cooed.

When he tried to close the door, I wedged the toe of my pointed Jimmy Choo into the space between it and the jamb, effectively stopping his retreat. Ric followed my cue and slapped a hand on the door to push it intractably open.

Ottavio huffed as he was forced to back up. “You aren’t welcome in my house.”

“Are you going to call the police?” I suggested sweetly as we moved into the cramped, dark hallway. “I’m sure your neighbors would love it if you brought the cops around.”