by Sienna Blake
“Roman, what have you done?” she said, surprise in her tone.
“Open it.”
There was a moment where the only sound was the tearing of paper. My stomach flipped as I waited for their reactions.
Nonna set the black suede box on the table beside her cup of tea before opening it. “Good lord.” She sank back into her chair with her hand over her heart. “Roman, it’s beautiful!” She stared at the necklace inside, a circle of metal links meant to be worn around the base of the neck. She brushed the stones set into the metal with a shaking finger. “Look at it sparkling. Roman, don’t tell me it’s real.”
Merc hid a snort with a cough.
I hid a smile. “I won’t, then.”
It was real. Pavé diamonds set in pink gold. But it wasn’t about the damn diamonds. I knew it would go with her favorite earrings, a pair she’d owned forever that Pablo, her deceased husband, gave her for their first wedding anniversary.
“Let me help you put it on.”
She held aside her white hair, soft like baby-fluff and cut short into a classic bob, as I secured the necklace around her neck.
“Oh,” she stammered. “It will go perfectly with those earrings from Pablo.”
I grinned. “What a great idea, Nonna.”
“Let me go look at them in my bedroom mirror properly.” She hurried out of the room.
Merc pulled his gold Rolex out of his demolition site of cardboard and paper. He raised an eyebrow at me, considerably less impressed than Nonna. “What the fuck am I going to do with a fancy gold watch?”
“You don’t like it?”
“Sure, it’s nice. But I won’t get two steps out of this house without someone trying to mug me for it.”
“Then pawn it, I don’t give a shit.”
He set the watch down and frowned. “You didn’t have to buy us anything.”
I felt pricks of anger across my skin. I fisted my arms over my chest. “I haven’t seen you in eight fucking years and I wanted to give you something.”
“You didn’t have to spend my annual salary on it,” Merc said quietly.
“I have money,” I said gruffly as if it were a curse. It was a curse. A shackle. I’d been receiving a generous monthly allowance from the man who had fathered me since I was sixteen. I hated every penny although I spent it all. “You two are the only two people I care to spend it on, alright? So shut the fuck up and say ‘thanks’, you ungrateful ass.”
Merc snorted but his demeanour softened. He slipped his new watch on his wrist before giving me a lopsided grin. “Thanks, man.”
I grunted back in reply. He knew it meant that I accepted his apology.
I sank back into my chair, wrapping my hands around my mug full of coffee, black like my heart. It was the same mug that Nonna always gave me when I came over. White enamel, large handle, chipped from use, always filled with hot drinks lovingly prepared for me over the years. Hot chocolate when I was a kid, coffee as I got older.
I looked around the cottage. The wallpaper of vintage white tea roses was even more faded than last time. It looked like a small roof leak had stained part of the ceiling. Some of the knobs on the cupboards had been replaced, making them all mismatched. The mantelpiece was filled with framed photos, some with me in them, and several bookshelves housed books with well-worn spines. The couch was covered with soft pastel throws to cover where they’d been worn thin, but they were comfortable and just large enough to hold the three of us. This place might not look like much, but it shone from my fond memories.
It was a stark contrast to my Tyrell family home, only a few blocks from here, a mansion of cold marble and white walls, stuffed with obnoxious, uncomfortable furniture. A home that I refused to visit. A home that I’d be happy never to step inside again.
I glanced over to Merc as he fiddled with his watch. I wondered if he ever knew that I had been insanely jealous of him growing up. This place was more of a home for me than mine was. These two right here were more family than I’d ever had after my mother died.
I glanced over to Nonna’s bedroom where I could hear her calls of appreciation as she admired the necklace in the mirror. There was something I needed to ask Merc before she came back in the room.
I leaned over to him. “Have you heard from your dad?” I said in a low voice.
Merc’s father, Tito “Goldfish” Brevio, had been an accountant who had worked part-time for my father. That’s how Merc and I knew each other as kids. Over a decade ago Tito was forced to testify against my family. He famously changed his statement in court and screwed up the prosecutor’s case against my father at the time. Then he disappeared, leaving Nonna to look after thirteen-year-old Merc at the time. Nonna had never forgiven Tito for abandoning Merc.
That’s how he earned the nickname Goldfish, because of his eight-second memory stunt in court. Some even speculated that it had all been planned by my father. Double jeopardy and all. After the Goldfish case was thrown out, my father couldn’t be tried for those crimes again. It was a nice big fuck you to the legal system which he’d evaded even to this day.
As far as Nonna was concerned, Tito was dead. His name was not to be uttered or spoken in this house. At least, not in front of her.
Merc glanced away. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
I stiffened. Merc used to tell me everything.
That was before you left him eight years ago.
“Come on, man,” I said softly, nudging his elbow. “It’s me.”
Merc let out a sigh and glanced at Nonna’s bedroom door before leaning in. “He’s around. Doing okay. Still underground.”
“He hasn’t surfaced yet? It’s way past the statute of limitations for him. The feds can’t charge him with anything now.”
“Yeah, but…” Merc paused and a look of guilt crept into his eyes as he glanced at me, then looked away.
“What? Spit it out.”
Merc shrugged. “I think…I think he’s still scared of your father. What he might do if…”
I swallowed. My father was not a man to be crossed. “Do you think he’ll ever come home, then?” It’s what Mercutio had been dreaming of since he was thirteen, the only thing he ever asked for on every birthday and every Christmas.
“One day, he’ll come home,” Merc said quietly. “One day.”
4
____________
Julianna
He had such damn deep-set eyes. Too dark. Annoyingly intense. The way he had looked at me. Like I was prey. His gaze rolling so obviously over my body, not even bothering to hide that he was imagining doing all sorts of wicked, unwanted things. My body flushed. Completely unwanted things.
And those lips. The most beautiful wide, thickest lips I had ever seen wasted on a man. I bet they’d feel terrible against mine. I bet he’d be a bad kisser. Totally unskilled. Not that I was imagining him kissing me.
And that voice. So rough and indecent. The way he had demanded my name. Demanded that I meet him again tonight. So shameless. What kind of woman did he think I was? If I had any sense I’d go to the club tonight just to tell him off for being so…so…presumptuous.
“Julianna, you okay, honey?”
I glanced up from my dinner plate of fettuccine marinara to my father’s concerned face, his thick, bushy salt-and-pepper brows furrowed over familiar whiskey-colored eyes. Those were my eyes. I looked like my mother—same curvy build, same long hair that couldn’t decide if it was honey or wheat, same full bottom lip—but I had his eyes. Once upon a time, when my mother’s love painted color on his cheeks and injected his smile with warmth, he would have been handsome. Since she died, the lines had deepened into a permanent frown and a set of purple shadows remained under his eyes.
I forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
His frown didn’t smooth out. “You sure? Because I’ve been talking to you for a few minutes now and you’ve just been staring at your dinner.”
I pushed my plate away. “I’m not hungry.”
“Is it…because of today?” he said, a little quieter.
My heart tugged. I may have lost my mother, but my father lost the love of his life. Despite how busy my father was, I knew he would have remembered Mama’s birthday today. He never forgot things like that when she’d been alive. Despite being so furious with him earlier, I knew that part of the reason he buried himself in work was to keep from remembering her and hurting even more.
I reached out across our small wooden dining table to grab his hand. “A little. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said.
“I miss her,” I admitted.
His fingers squeezed mine. He looked like he was about to say something when his phone on the tabletop by his elbow began to ring. He pulled back his hand and answered it. “Hello?” Sorry, it’s work, he mouthed at me. Of course, it was. His face pulled into a frown. “What? Where?”
I sighed and stabbed at a piece of pasta. I already knew that our family dinner was going to get cut short.
When my father hung up, he was already pushing his chair out. “Sorry, honey. They need me to manage some stuff at work.”
I dropped the napkin from my lips. “Do you need me to—”
“No,” he said a little too abruptly. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not a homicide?”
He paused. It was. Bastard. “I already have Pierce and Ramirez on it.”
I crossed my arms as the familiar argument began to swirl heat around under my skin. “You’re never going to give me a chance to prove myself, are you?”
“When you’re ready.”
“Ready?” I yelled. “I’ve been a detective for over six months and you haven’t let me handle a single case.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Not any real cases. I’m stuck going through paperwork and old cold cases.” I hovered around him as he gathered his things. “I scored the highest on my detective’s exam in the whole damn state.”
“I know. But…you shouldn’t be working today.”
“Then by the same argument, neither should you.”
He let out a sigh as he grabbed his jacket from the hook near my front door. “Julianna, I don’t want to argue about this now. It’s an election year and the mayor is putting the pressure on me to get the streets cleaned up.”
“So, it’s another gang-related homicide.”
“I can’t discuss the case.”
I slammed my palm on my front door, preventing him from leaving. “You hate that I’m a detective.”
His features turned sour. “You’re my only daughter. You should have gone to law school. Your mother, God rest her soul, would hate the idea of you putting yourself in the firing line of killers and rapists. She’d be turning over in her—”
“You hate the idea. Mama would have been proud that I followed in your footsteps.” It was a shitty thing, using my dead mother as a point of argument between us. Neither of us could ever seem to just let her rest.
“You’re damn right I hate the idea!” He took a deep breath and let it out, his face softening. “There are some bad, bad people out there in the world, Julu.” I couldn’t say my name properly when I was learning how to speak. I could only say Julu. My parents thought it was adorable. The nickname stuck even as I grew up. “If anything ever happened to you…”
I would not be swayed by his attempt at a guilt trip. After my mother died, my father became so protective it was stifling. He yelled and spat and threatened when I announced I was moving out after I graduated high school. Again when I announced I was joining the police academy. There was nothing he could do because at eighteen I was legally an adult. Even now at the age of twenty-five, he hated that he couldn’t wrap me in cotton. He still wanted to keep me caged and “safe”.
“Why do you think I became a detective? To put those bad people away. I’m trained to do just that.”
“Honey—”
“Put me on the next major homicide case or I’ll transfer to another city. No, I’ll transfer to another state.”
He flinched, a growing panic clear in his eyes. I was the one card that I could play. “You wouldn’t.”
I lifted my chin. “I won’t have my career stifled because I’m your daughter and you want to protect me.” There. I said it.
“Julu, you’re my only daughter.” The hitch in his tone sent a stab of guilt through me. “You’re the only one I have left.”
Was I being too hard on him? Was I being unreasonable? My resolve began to soften. After my mother died my father had dove into his work and never resurfaced. His efforts had earned him promotion after promotion until he was promoted to the top position in the city as Verona’s chief of police. But it meant that his friendships had suffered. He had no family left, except me. He hadn’t even dated again as far as I was aware. If I left Verona…
I shoved this thought away. I could not let him guilt me into giving up my dream. I wasn’t a scared little girl. I was an adult with a gun and a badge.
I stepped in front of the door, blocking his way out. “Dad, I’m not a child anymore. I can protect myself. Let me work real cases.”
“You haven’t seen the horrors I have,” he said in a reverent whisper I knew was meant to scare me. “You haven’t seen how dark the human psyche can get, how twisted…”
“I can take it.”
“Once you see those things, you can’t unsee them.” He shook his head. “It’s my job as a father to protect you.” He didn’t look like he was going to budge.
Neither was I. I straightened to my full height and looked him right in the eyes. “You can either let me work as a homicide detective here, under your command, under your…protection,” I chose my words carefully, “or you can watch me do it from another state.”
A look of surprise flashed across his face. Then his features softened. “You’re as stubborn as she was,” he said, a hint of affection in his tone. He sighed. “Fine. The next major case is yours.”
Finally. I couldn’t stop the grin from bursting across my face. I lunged for him and wrapped my arms around him in a hug. “Thanks, Dad.”
He kissed my forehead. “Stay safe, baby girl.” Then he left.
I let out a huge breath and leaned against the inside of my front door. I did it. I had won that argument. I would get my chance to work on a real case. So why did I suddenly feel so anxious? This is your chance to prove yourself, Julianna. Don’t blow it.
I ate the rest of my dinner alone, staring at my phone, the clock on my wall ticking loudly into the room. I lived alone in a rented apartment on the top floor of a five-story building in Verona’s east side inner city. It was a cozy apartment, old wooden floors that creaked, heating that was temperamental in winter and the occasional drunken row heard from the streets below. But it was mine.
I had filled it with a mix of decent second-hand furniture, like my comfy two-piece chocolate leather couch, and cheap basics, a light wooden dining room set and DIY-shelves.
My father hated that I lived in the inner city; he still lived in our old house in an outer suburb, a safe, respectable and utterly boring neighborhood. I understood why; the towering chaos of buildings bathing the city in shadows, the dirty, well-worn streets jammed full of smells, the unknown hidden in the dark corners. Perhaps, it was all these things. But I saw the raw uncut gem underneath.
I felt a thrill every time I walked the streets, each corner beckoning with possibilities or something new to be discovered. I felt the city humming away around me, even at night. Here, I felt a part of something. The inner city was Verona’s beating heart, as tough and black as it was. It was gritty and alive and...real. And I loved it.
My phone dinged as I chewed on my pasta. I swiped it open with my pinkie.
Unknown: Remember. 10pm. Club Luxe.
It was sent from a private number. No signature. Who…?
Roman. It was from Roman. A little thrill shot up my spine like a tiny electrocution. He hadn’t just forgotten about me. He still wanted m
e to meet him. The nerve.
How did he get my number? A memory of him picking up my phone at the graveyard flashed through my mind. He’d held on to it for a long time. At the time, I had been so distracted I hadn’t thought anything of it. He must have texted himself my number or something. I should feel indignant. I did feel indignant.
I glanced up at the clock. Twenty past nine. If I dressed now I could be there on time. Club Luxe was only twenty minutes away in the trendy downtown area. In less than an hour I could be seeing him again. My body seemed to vibrate awake at the thought.
No. I wouldn’t go. He obviously wanted certain things from me and… and… giving in to these feelings, however nice they might be, were for other women. Not me. I had a reputation to uphold. A career to focus on. Paperwork to do.
I placed my phone face down on the table so I couldn’t stare at the screen and returned to my food. My appetite was gone. My eyes kept being drawn to the phone, tiny butterflies fluttering around my stomach.
I still hadn’t replied to Roman’s text. One, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to tell him I wasn’t coming. And two, I thought it better not to reply rather than get dragged into a debate I was scared I’d end up giving in to.
I pushed my half-finished dinner away and grabbed my phone. My finger hovered over the message reply button.
Dammit. I wasn’t replying, remember?
I opened my recent calls. The only two contacts that came up were my father and Luiz Espinoza, the partner I’d been assigned to when I made homicide. I hit call on Espinoza’s name before I could change my mind. I chewed my lip as I listened to the ring tone. I needed a distraction. Something to take my mind off intense eyes and electric touches.
He picked up after three rings. “Espinoza,” he yelled into the phone, muffled thudding and thrashing of an electric guitar in the background.
“It’s me,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Yo, Capi,” he said, using his nickname for me. “I’m at Dixie’s. The No Name Band is playing tonight.”
I frowned. “Why don’t they have a name?”