by Sienna Blake
I shook my head.
“My parents hated Pappy when they met him. He was dirt poor. He was a welfare kid with an absentee father who grew up on the wrong side of Verona.” Nora’s eyes turned misty and unfocused as if she were remembering. “But I loved that son of a bitch. He loved me. I didn’t care what anyone said about him; I knew he was a good man. He loved me, supported me, protected me until the day he died. I still love him.”
“I never knew.”
Nora narrowed her eyes at me. “I know you, girlie. You ain’t stupid. If you see something in Roman, that means that he’s fit to spend time with. He’s a good man too. No matter what anybody says.”
I let out a bitter laugh. Would she still say the same thing if she knew he had killed to protect me? “What I think of him doesn’t matter. It will never work between us.”
“If the love is strong enough, it will survive anything.”
“Except that he doesn’t love me.”
“Bullshit.”
“He ended it, Nora,” I cried with a frustrated smack of my palm against my thigh. The physical pain helped to distract me from the one in my heart. “He ended it. Why would he do that if he loved me?”
“Because he’s scared.”
“I’m not that scary,” I muttered.
“He’s not scared of you.” Nora let out a sigh. “The most terrifying thing any of us can do is to fall in love. Why do you think they call it ‘falling’ in love? The greater the love, the harder we will fight against it.”
Roman and I had been pushing and pulling against our feelings, against each other this whole time. Had he been falling in love too? Was this why it was all so…terrifying?
That was ridiculous. We’d been fighting against each other because we weren’t meant to be together. This thought was a knife that sliced the raw wound open again.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, tasting bitterness on my tongue. I wiped under my eyes, angry at my tears. “He’s gone.”
“He’ll be back.”
I shook my head, my heart weighed down with the knowledge that even though I would never give up on him, he had given up on us. “No, he won’t.”
4
____________
Roman
A soft, warm hand slipped across my stomach as I slept.
Julianna.
My heart let out a thud. My bright angel had come back to me.
I let out a small groan as the hand slipped lower. A weight shifted over me, soft thighs slid on either side of my thighs. My cock stirred. Jules…don’t stop.
Something nagged at the back of my mind. She…felt wrong. There were too many angles. She wasn’t soft enough. She smelled wrong; the sharpness of too much spicy perfume hit my nose.
I sat up, instantly becoming alert. I grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands off me. She let out a soft, excited cry. The familiar voice sent a coil of annoyance through me. I collected both wrists into one hand and reached out to turn on the designer bedside lamp of my Tyrell-owned apartment. Apparently, a free-for-all apartment. The golden glow fell across a face I’d be happy never to see again.
Fucking Rosaline.
I knew I should have stayed at my mother’s place instead of coming back here. She was straddling my lap wearing a black leather teddy that barely covered her fake breasts in a series of straps that strung up onto a studded choker. Her hair was pulled into two pigtails and her heavily made-up face was pulled into a look of triumph.
My loving fiancée, I thought with a sneer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Rosaline gave me a look of fake innocence, batting her false eyelashes at me. “Can’t a wife surprise her husband in bed?”
“You’re not my wife,” I growled.
“Yet.” A lascivious look flashed in her dark, sinful eyes. She ground herself onto me, trying to get a rise out of me. Literally. That was never going to happen.
I pushed her aside, causing her to yelp, and damn near leapt out of the king-sized bed. I grabbed my steel-colored bathrobe, wrapping it around my half-naked frame. “How the fuck did you get in?”
She shrugged. “I had a copy of your key made since you were so rude as to not provide me one.”
How the hell did she get a hold of a key to copy? Mine hadn’t been out of my presence. “Whose key did you copy?”
She pouted her sticky pink lips.
“Rosaline?” I warned.
She crossed her arms. “Benvolio let me borrow his key.”
For fuck sake. I made a mental note to slap Benvolio upside the head the next time I saw him. Also, to get my locks changed. Abel had a key. Benvolio had a key. Now Rosaline. Apparently, my keys were candy that was handed out like it was Halloween.
I pointed at the door. “Get out.”
She crawled on all fours on my mattress, wiggling her ass. “Aww, baby, are you still mad at me?”
I snorted. “Mad is a temporary situation. Hatred is a better word for what I feel for you. Even that is being generous.”
She crawled towards me, giving me a shot right down her cleavage. “There’s a fine line between love and hate, baby.”
Jesus fucking Christ. “Rosaline, get the fuck out of my apartment.”
“Or what? You’ll call the cops?” she sneered.
I flinched at the thought of Jules breaking down my door to find Rosaline in my bed dressed like that.
She continued, “Besides, you can’t kick me out of my apartment.”
“It’s. Not. Yours.” I ground out. If only she was a guy so I could break her nose and throw her out the window.
“What’s yours is mine, remember?”
“Not yet.”
“But soon, baby. Soon.” She tweaked one of her nipples and let out a small moan.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah, well, until then, leave me the hell alone.”
“Are you sure about that?” She reclined on the bed, dropping her knees out so I got a shot of her black panties. Crotchless.
Dear God. It was past one a.m. I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. It looked like I wasn’t going to be getting my bed back soon either. I grabbed jeans, a dark t-shirt and my jacket. I would change in the damn elevator rather than stay here another second.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” I called over my shoulder. “You better not be here when I get back.”
* * *
“I don’t like this place, Roman,” Mercutio said.
“Why?” I slammed down another shot of whiskey and indicated to the lanky, bearded bartender to keep them coming. These days it seemed that I had to drink down a stomach-pumping level of alcohol just to get a buzz. Even then I never got numb enough. My head was slightly fuzzy from the booze, my body buzzing with hot, pressurized aggression. Aggression I hadn’t been able to release despite the daily pounding of my boxing bag until I dropped to the ground covered in sweat.
We were in a flashy club downtown called Covert or Espionage or something like that, a place with a dance floor that lit up from underneath. The clientele was mostly gyrating Barbies in crop tops and tight jeans, wearing lip liner the thickness of crayons, and overly tanned guidos with tight white pants and too many top buttons undone.
It was a place I never went to. Partly because I hated the kind of Eurotrash pop anthems they played at an ear-splitting volume. But mostly, I never came here because I wasn’t exactly wanted in here. It was a slip in management that I’d been let past the front door. A slip in management that I was sure they were about to regret.
Mercutio frowned at me. “What are you staring at?”
He turned his head towards the group of men in black jackets in the roped-off VIP area that I’d been eyeing since we arrived. Merc snapped his face towards me, his eyes wide with realization. “This is one of the Veronesis’ clubs.”
Indeed. We were deep in enemy territory. I’d told Mercutio not to come out with me tonight, but lately he seemed to have become like my second shadow. Anyone woul
d think that he was…worried I’d do something stupid.
“It’s a free country.” I slammed down another shot, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. There was only one Veronesi brother in here tonight, surrounded by his wanna-be goons, all dressed like him in black leather jackets and jeans, all with slicked-back hair. Just one would work.
Mercutio elbowed me to get my attention. “You don’t think I see what you’re trying to do,” he hissed.
I knocked his arm away. “What am I trying to do, Einstein?”
“You’ve been a suicidal prick since you broke things off with her.”
“Jules, don’t embarrass yourself any further. It’s over.”
“I’m going to marry Rosaline.”
“You thought that I loved you?”
I hissed under my breath as the heartless things I said to her echoed back in my head. Every cruel word was a knife I would have gladly taken myself. But they were doubled-ended blades, making twin wounds in both of us. The way her face had crumpled, the tears threatening to spill over, the way she had trembled; these memories were a whip that I punished myself with over and over again. I was an asshole and I hated myself for it. I deserved every foul, wretched thing coming to me.
“This is not about her,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, really?”
After I’d left Jules, I found myself at Mercutio’s place, punching the gym bag he kept in his garage. It took only seconds for him to come out and casually ask me what was up. I had spilled my pathetic guts to him, a moment of pure weakness. Something I was regretting now.
Her, her, her. Why did everything have to come back to her? Why couldn’t she leave me the hell alone for one goddamn minute. The only peace I seemed to get was when I was throwing punches. I did not want to be throwing punches at my best friend. The Veronesis, on the other hand…
“I just wanted to try out a new place,” I lied. “I guess it was just fate that we ended up here.”
“Fate?” Merc gave me an incredulous look. “You’re kicking fate in its teeth.”
“So what if I am? It’s my life.”
“It’s your life?” Mercutio grabbed the front of my jacket. “You selfish prick—”
“Well, well, well.” A cold, gruff voice cut through us like butter. “What do we have here?”
Mercutio let go of me and spun. Standing before us was Dante Veronesi, built like an Italian soccer player with lean, muscular limbs, the peek of a tattoo showing on his forearm from his jacket pushed up to his elbows, green eyes under heavy dark brows, a permanent scowl on his face. Of all the Veronesi sons, Dante was the dangerous one, the ruthless one, the reckless one, the one you’d never turn your back on. He was the one I had hoped to run into tonight.
He had a man flanked on either side of him, both shorter and stockier, but less scary-looking than Dante, the bulges under their jackets a sign that they were both armed to the teeth. Merc and I were outnumbered. Instead of being scared, a shot of adrenaline rushed through my veins like I’d taken a hit of cocaine.
Merc, the idiot, stepped in between us. “We don’t want any trouble. We were just leaving. We didn’t realize this was your club. No disrespect intended.”
“I don’t know, Merc,” I said, pushing him aside and glaring defiantly at Dante. “I knew this shithole was Veronesi territory as soon as I smelled the inside of it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mercutio muttered.
Dante’s lips curled, his entire face contorting with anger. “You have some nerve coming in here and running your mouth. I think someone needs to teach you some manners.”
I plucked a pink umbrella from a cocktail that a passing woman was carrying. “Who?” I waved the umbrella at Dante. “You and your entire boy band?” I flicked the cocktail adornment at him. It bounced right off his nose.
“You son of a bitch.” Dante lunged at me.
Before I could get off a punch, several strong arms grabbed me from behind. More of Dante’s men must have come up behind us. If I hadn’t been so stupid, so blinded by my self-destructive urges, I’d have realized he might have arranged that.
I readied myself for Dante’s hit, but it never came. For some strange reason, Dante’s men were holding him back too. “Dante,” one of his men hissed with a warning. “Not now.”
My eyes followed their line of sight. There was a slightly older man, dressed too formally for a club, walking around slowly, his eyes sharp and peeled, looking at everything except the girls gyrating on the dance floor. An undercover cop.
Dante leaned in and stabbed a golden-ringed finger into my face. “You are one lucky motherfucker. Any other night and your head would be hanging from that chandelier.”
“You’d try. That’s as far as you’d get.”
He snorted, dismissing me with a hand. “Get him out of my sight.”
This was not ending here. I elbowed one of the men who was trying to shove me towards the exit and lunged towards Dante. Unfortunately, the other guy was still hanging on to me. “I challenge you, Dante Veronesi!” I yelled as loudly as I could. Everything seemed to freeze. I swear I heard gasps all around me. “You. Me. Outside. Right now.”
Dante glanced around, his gaze finding the undercover, then leaned in. “You want to duel outside my club. Right when there’s an undercover cop in here? Do you think I’m stupid?”
“You could have fooled me.”
Dante nodded his head. “I see. This is a trick. We duel and the pigs swarm this place. They’ll have grounds to investigate further until my family is brought down.”
“No. No cops. You and me, outside.”
Dante laughed. “You want a duel, so be it. But not here. Midnight tomorrow in Little Italy. Dead Man’s Alley.”
Mercutio inhaled sharply. “Roman, you can’t—”
“Done,” I said.
Dante grinned. “See you then. Unless you chicken out beforehand.” He waved his hand in dismissal. I let myself get dragged away.
Mercutio and I were thrown out of the club into the back alleyway. It stank of piss and the sole streetlight had long since been broken.
“This is real leather, assholes,” I yelled at the retreating bouncers as I brushed down my jacket. They didn’t bite. Looked like I wasn’t getting my fight tonight. I was resigned to taking it out on my boxing bag later. Again.
The door to the club shut, cutting the music down to a dull thumping. “Do you believe those guys, Merc?”
Mercutio stood there staring at me, a stunned look on his face.
I let out a sigh. Time for the lecture. “What?”
But he didn’t yell or rage or rant at me as I expected. It would have been so much easier if he had just yelled. Instead his face crumpled into one of disappointment, lancing me right in the gut. Why was it so easy for everyone to be disappointed in me?
“Roman,” he said. “What have you done?”
5
____________
Julianna
Espinoza and I hadn’t been making any headway on the Eddie Sanchez case. We had a body but there was no workable evidence. There were no witnesses to the actual shooting and no weapon.
We got our hands on security footage from a pawn shop across the street from the Sanchez apartment. We saw Eddie take off in his car at around seven thirty, just like Rosa said. Rosa never followed him out. She was scratched off the list of suspects.
That left only Roman Tyrell and the unreliable witness who saw somebody like Roman at a gas station several miles away from his actual murder site. It was thin evidence, at best.
My cop instinct kept wanting to blurt out Roman’s confession. It kept bubbling up onto my tongue at the most inappropriate moments. I knew Roman had killed Eddie. I knew it had been him at that gas station. I knew he somehow manufactured that insurance policy so that Eddie’s family would be taken care of after he died.
It didn’t stop me from missing him. It didn’t stop me from loving him.
It was past ten thirty. We’d
both just clocked off work. Espo was driving me home. For the first time in a few weeks, we didn’t just drive in silence.
“I’m telling you, it’s a tragedy,” Espo said from the driver’s seat.
I leaned back in the passenger seat as Verona’s downtown flashed by, flexing my toes in my black leather work boots. “Why can’t Lacey and Jasmine from toxicology be lunch buddies?”
“Jasmine will put Lacey off me forever. You know how girls like to talk.”
“Oh, right. Didn’t you date Jasmine for like, three minutes, a few months ago?”
Espo let out a low hum. “Best three minutes ever.”
I made a face. “Ew. I don’t need to know.”
Espo rounded the street onto my block. “Dammit, I knew it would come back to bite me on the ass.”
“You don’t get any sympathy from me, man whore.”
“But you can do damage control. She’ll listen to you. I know Lacey will say yes to a date with me if you put in a good word.”
“Which I won’t do because I actually like her.”
“Oh, ha ha, wise guy.”
I let out an easy laugh. Espo and my relationship had been strained when Roman was in my life; Espo knew I was hiding something. Partners had to trust each other with their lives. Hiding things eroded that trust, putting our lives at risk.
Bantering like this almost had me convinced that we were back to normal. Almost.
He pulled up near my building. There was an awkward pause.
“So, er,” I asked as casually as I could, “you want to come up for dinner?” Truth was, I missed Espo. I missed our easy friendship. Everything was so confusing, so conflicting, so damn hard in my life. I was tired of hard. I missed easy. “Chinese food courtesy of my personal chef, Ming’s?” I may or may not have deliberately mentioned the name of Espo’s favorite Chinese takeout.
Espo pressed his hands to his heart. “Ah, Ming. The one girl who never lets me down.”
I ignored his hidden jab, even as it snapped against me like a rubber band. “So, Ming’s, then?”
“Sure, that sounds great.” Espo’s phone began to beep. He let out a groan. “If this is a dead body, I will kill someone.”