by Sienna Blake
I got up out of bed and threw open my window, the cool night air like a balm against my burning skin. My fingers traced the window sill. He slipped inside through this very window earlier. My skin prickled as I gazed down the fire escape that Roman had climbed earlier to get to me. Was he down there? Watching me? Was he in the shadows staring back up at me?
I tore myself away from the window and fell back into bed, squeezing my eyes shut and demanding that I sleep.
“My father is a difficult man. My family is…complicated. We have a family business and the politics… The politics are killer. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted to be my own person.”
“That’s very brave of you.”
“Or desperate.”
Could it be true? Did Roman Tyrell have nothing to do with Vinnie’s death? Or was this just what he wanted me to think? Was Roman Tyrell trying to manipulate me?
I recalled the desperation in his voice as he begged me to believe him. “Look past the last name I was given. You know me.”
I sat up in bed, my head spinning. What if… What if the world was wrong? What if the Roman I had met was the real Roman Tyrell? What if he wasn’t the monster everyone thought him to be?
“Thank you… For reminding me which side I’m on.”
Guilt stabbed at my gut. I had made him feel like a criminal tonight. I had to apologize.
Apologize, Julianna, are you nuts? He was still the prime suspect in Vinnie’s murder.
If he’s cleared of Vinnie’s murder, then you can apologize.
I couldn’t apologize. Even if he was cleared. I was a detective, the police chief’s daughter. He was the son of Giovanni Tyrell. I couldn’t apologize to him.
At least not publicly.
Roman and I could never be seen together, even if he were deemed innocent. We could never be friends.
Friends. As if Roman and I could ever just be friends. The ghost of the electricity I felt when he was near me coursed through my veins. Every time we’d gotten near each other we’d almost torn each other's clothes off.
I shook my head. Things were too complicated. My body had a mind of its own when it came to him. I couldn’t trust myself around him. Roman and I had to stay the hell away from each other.
31
____________
Julianna
“Detective Capulet.” The familiar deep voice called me.
I glanced up from my work desk. Police Captain Foster was standing at the doorway to the stairs, his thick eyebrows furrowed over his sharp gray eyes. He was only late forties, but the stress of the job had cut deep grooves into his forehead and dusted his hair with salt and pepper. Captain Foster had been almost like an uncle to me. He and my father had attended the Academy together. They had even been partners at one time.
“Yes, captain?”
“The chief’s office, now.”
Oh my God. My stomach dropped like a stone. Had someone seen Roman leaving my place last night? Had one of the witnesses from Club Luxe recognized me?
This was it. I was caught. What the hell was I going to say to the captain? To my father?
“Capulet?”
“Coming,” I called out automatically.
I pushed away from my desk, my breathing going erratic. Somehow I managed to follow him up the stairs. I felt like I was being led to the principal’s office, everyone turning to stare at me as I walked past, wondering what I did wrong.
I could turn around and run. Disappear. I wouldn’t have to face the consequences of my fated actions. Nor would I have to explain the intimacies I shared with Roman Tyrell.
The captain entered my father’s office and held the door open for me. This was it. Last chance to run.
A Capulet never runs from danger. A Capulet does their duty.
Running would only make things worse. And where would I go? All I could do was beg for forgiveness and hope I wasn’t fired.
I entered the office and stood just inside the room, flinching as the door clicked shut behind me. The captain sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk. My father, Chief Montgomery Capulet, sat behind his large desk, his palms flat on the surface amidst small neat piles of paper, a computer and a single photo frame. The frame faced away from me but I knew what it contained: a photo of me and my mother taken two weeks before she died.
My father’s narrowed eyes caught mine, the dark look on his face growing darker. A knot developed in my throat. How many times in my life had I seen that look on his face, that heavy disapproval, that bitter disappointment, that tightly controlled anger? It took every ounce of effort not to throw myself on his desk and beg for his forgiveness. Please still love me.
A figure I only just noticed, sat in one of the chairs facing my father’s desk, turned to look at me. It was Espinoza, a similar grim look on his face. Oh God. They were all here. The only people whose professional opinion mattered to me.
I walked like I was facing the firing squad to the only spare chair, right between the captain and Espinoza. I could feel all three pairs of eyes staring at me, burning holes through my lies like fire through paper. I fell into the chair, gripping my hands together in my lap and stared at the desk. I couldn’t meet anyone’s eye. I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment. The air was heavy and hot, my neck prickling under my collar as I waited.
My father leaned forward in his large brown chair, the leather creaking mournfully under his solid build. I swallowed hard, hoping that I would somehow find the right words. Time to bite the bullet. I looked up and opened my mouth to apologize. “Dad—”
“Where are we with Vinnie Torrito’s murder?” my father interrupted, shooting me a glare. He had a rule that I was never to call him dad or show any sign of affection at work.
I blinked. Was this what this meeting was about? Had my guilt forced me to jump to the wrong conclusions?
I realized I was still sitting in stunned silence when Espinoza spoke instead of me. “We questioned Giovanni and Roman Tyrell, as well as a few of their men. They all alibied each other out. So far we can’t find any holes in their alibis. The only thing we have is the traffic cam video showing one of their SUVs in the area during the time.”
“That’s purely circumstantial. It’s not enough.” My father growled and leaned back in his chair, the hinges protesting. “What about witnesses?”
I couldn’t believe my luck. No one had found out about Roman and me. Yet, a small voice in me whispered.
I cleared my throat and spoke up. “We’ve canvassed the area around the body dump but no one saw anything. Or at least if they did, they’re not speaking to us.”
“Any trace on the body?”
I let out an easier breath. “No trace. Whoever committed the crime was a pro and knew to clean up and wear gloves.”
“And the slug?”
“It’s not a match to anything in the system. We haven’t found the gun. Uniforms have searched all the dumpsters in a three mile radius to the body dump.”
“We won’t find the gun. Even if we do these bastards are too smart to have it lead back to anyone.” My father swore. He rarely swore in front of me. He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, and rubbed his face with his hands. “I’m getting pressure from upstairs to stamp out gang activity, which means putting Giovanni and Roman Tyrell away. We haven’t been able to pin anything else on them. This murder is our best chance.”
“What if,” I spoke up, “what if it wasn’t the Tyrells?”
I felt all three sets of eyes focus on me, burning holes in me. I regretted my words immediately.
My father’s lips pressed together. “Don’t be stupid, Julianna. Jacob Tyrell was killed two weeks ago by the Veronesis. Now one of Veronesi’s men has turned up dead. Of course, the Tyrells were behind this kill. If they didn’t pull the trigger, then they hired the man who did. This has the potential to lead to a full-scale war. When that happens, too many innocents will get pulled into it, they always do. We cannot let this escalate. We need to find s
ome way of pinning the Tyrells for this murder.”
I frowned. “What about Jacob Tyrell’s murder? Shouldn’t we be focusing on that case as well?”
My father stared at me. “That is not your case.”
I bit down a rise of annoyance. “If these two cases are related, it might help us to have a look at the case file for Jacob Tyrell’s murderer.”
My father shook his head. “I already have people sifting through that evidence. There’s a hell of a lot of it. Your job is to focus on putting Giovanni and Roman Tyrell away. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Espinoza and I said together.
My father directed his next comment straight at me. “Don’t disappoint me.”
My stomach tightened. “I won’t, sir.”
“Good. Now get out of here and find me something to pin on those Tyrell bastards.”
I was silent as Espo and I walked out of my father’s office. Why was my father so determined to pin the Tyrells for Vinnie’s murder? We had no evidence they’d done it. My father was instigating a witch-hunt to try to bring down all the Tyrells.
What if Roman wasn’t like the rest of them?
“Look past the last name I was given. You know me.”
* * *
Later that night, I tossed the empty Chinese takeout box into the trash can by my desk and stood up, stretching, nodding goodnight to a fellow officer as he walked past me towards the elevator. I scanned the empty workstations and darkened offices. Perfect. I was the last one on the floor. What I wanted to do, I didn’t want to do while worrying that someone might be looking over my shoulder.
I pulled my chair under the desk and opened an internet browser. Glancing around myself one more time, I typed in “Roman Giovanni Tyrell” and clicked search before I could change my mind.
The search results came up in an instant. There were articles from various social magazines about the European heiresses and trust fund babes he’d been connected with. I cast my eyes over the various photos of him at parties, in clubs, on yachts, a bottle in one hand, the other slung around a bevy of beautiful girls. My heart squeezed. Was I just another one of his revolving door of girls? How many more of them had he invited to Paris with him? And if he was used to dating heiresses, what had he been doing with me?
I closed the browser, a growing sick feeling in my stomach. I opened an email I’d received from an old colleague who was working for Interpol in Lyon, France.
Good to hear from you, Julianna.
Here’s everything we have on Roman Tyrell.
Jerome.
I opened the attachments. While Roman Tyrell had been in Europe he hadn’t been linked to any of the European Mafia families. He had been picked up no less than five times for drunk and disorderly behavior, and disturbing the peace, all of them from bar fights. He had a string of speeding tickets. Nothing more serious than that. Drinking, speeding and fighting. How had he graduated from drunken fist fights to torture and cold-blooded murder?
I found the witness statements to the fights and read through them. I frowned. They had all claimed that Roman had been defending himself or someone else. According to the gossip columns, Roman was the one who was supposed to have started the fights. He even bragged about it in an interview. Why would he do that? Why would he make himself appear worse than he was?
He’d been enrolled in a Criminal Law Degree at the Regent University, located in the green heart of Regent’s Park in London.
Criminal law. How ironic.
He’d pulled out of his degree the day of his return to Verona with only one semester to go. As far as I could see, he hadn’t transferred to another university closer to home. Why did he just quit like that?
I searched back through public records from before he left for Europe. He had attended St. Andrews Private School, Verona’s most prestigious high school. I had gone to the local public school and was a grade below him. Our circles would never have crossed paths, not until last Saturday.
I couldn’t get access to Roman’s school records without a court order, but I did have access to the files kept by the school police. He had a few reprimands in his record: truancy, fighting, problems with authority figures.
I sank back into my chair. To the world, Roman Tyrell looked like a violent, irresponsible playboy. I remembered the man I had spent the night with: charming, funny, insightful. The Roman that the world seemed to think existed wasn’t the Roman that I had experienced. How could it be possible that the world got it so wrong?
“My father is a difficult man.”
I pulled up the file on Roman’s father. Giovanni Tyrell, known Mafia boss, controller of the Tyrell empire, suspected of running drugs and guns from Colombia, his illegal activities covered up by his legitimate interests: property investments, clubs, restaurants and transportation companies. There was a suspected string of dead bodies in his wake, but with no convictions.
I chewed on my lip. Roman’s mother’s murder case file would be in our system. It would have been before our files were digitized so it’d be stored in the file room down in the basement. I wasn’t about to check out the files from the file room. I searched for newspaper articles online instead.
Maria Tyrell, Wife of Mobster, Murdered.
She’d been discovered by their housekeeper in her garage with her throat slit. No weapon was found at the scene.
My heart skipped a beat when I read the next few lines. Roman Tyrell, her youngest son, was discovered hiding in the corner of the garage covered in her blood. He may have been the only witness. He’d been treated for shock but was otherwise unharmed. He had been twelve.
Jesus Christ. I imagined a young Roman finding his mother dead in the garage. My heart cried for him. That was something no child, no human, should ever have to go through.
I would have been eleven. Old enough to remember. How did I not remember this? This was huge news.
I looked at the date of the newspaper articles. Of course. This was the same time as my mother had died so I’d fallen into a deep grief-hole where nothing else had penetrated. Fourteen years ago, Roman Tyrell and I were on opposite sides of the city, living in two different worlds, yet struggling with the same grief.
I kept reading further, my stomach twisting into knots. Roman Tyrell hadn’t told the police anything. He’d refused to speak to them even after the case went cold.
It had been a gang-related hit, the newspapers mused. Others, were more sensational.
Did Roman Tyrell Kill His Own Mother?
My stomach turned as I read, unable to stop. Police believed that Roman Tyrell held the key to solving his mother’s murder. Why wouldn’t Roman speak up? Was he protecting someone? Or was he the one hiding the violent secret? Like father, like son.
I swallowed my anger down. How could the papers even speculate that a twelve-year-old boy could do something like this? Roman Tyrell had not even been a teenager before this city began to persecute him, all because of who his father was.
What about Maria Tyrell? Roman spoke of a gentle, kind woman when he spoke about her. I stared at a black and white photo of Maria. Her thick dark hair was a wave that tumbled over her shoulders, framing a sweetheart face. She had been a beautiful lady with a wide warm smile; the same smile as Roman’s. My heart clenched.
I dug through the digital records and found the file on the massacre at the docks where Jacob Tyrell, Roman’s brother, had been slain. The “dirty docks massacre”, the newspapers had called it. I glanced around, making sure I was still alone before I began to click through the crime scene photographs. A single gunshot wound on each body, a V slashed into each of their chests. It had been without a doubt a professional hit.
Except for Jacob.
Jacob Tyrell, wanted for murder and gone underground for four years, had been found dead in a converted apartment on the top floor of one of the buildings. There was a V on his chest like the others, but he’d also taken a beating before he had died. An entire clip of bullets had been release
d into his torso and he had a stab wound to his leg. It had been personal. It left no doubt that the massacre had occurred to target Jacob.
So much violence. How much blood could a man’s life be bathed in before the darkness began to soak into his soul?
Roman’s words to me kept echoing in my brain. “My family is…complicated. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted to be my own person.”
This was why Roman had left Verona all those years ago. This was why he wanted to return to London after his brother’s funeral. But he hadn’t returned to Europe. He stayed in Verona. Why had he changed his mind? Had he given up trying to fight his family legacy?
Or was there some other reason?
Maybe we were looking at this wrong. Maybe, it wasn’t his father who was lying for Roman, but Roman who was lying for his father.
I slipped into the empty tech room. One side of the room was covered in large monitors, a curved control station with more buttons, panels and keyboards than a spaceship command center. I had spent hours in here beside the techies, scouring through traffic cameras around Vinnie’s dump site. I knew how to handle the controls, at least enough to be able to access the city’s traffic camera footage. If I could somehow trace Roman’s steps from the hotel to wherever he went that night, maybe I could prove that he hadn’t been with his father. Maybe I could tear his father’s alibi apart.
In the interview, Roman had said that his friend Mercutio had picked him up and dropped him off at his father’s. From a DMV search of Mercutio Brevio, I knew that he had a black Ford Taurus registered to him. I wrote his license plate number on a piece of paper beside me.
I couldn’t see which way Roman had left the hotel. We hadn’t gotten the security tapes from the Marriott Hotel yet as we were still waiting on a court order. Assuming Roman had been headed to the airport, they would have turned right out of the hotel. I pulled up a map on the city’s traffic cameras on one monitor and then located one that I suspected might have caught a glimpse of him.