Page 199 of Dark Romeo

Fuck you, God. Fuck you, heaven. You don’t deserve him. He was supposed to stay with me.

We were supposed to run away to Paris. To live out a long life of love and laughter and glorious heart-stopping sex and…babies. Oh God, our babies. My heart cried for the future we would never have, the home we would never get to make, the children we would never get to know.

I cried because he was stolen from me. He was stolen from this city that would never know him. They deserved to know him like I did. Roman turned on his family, singlehandedly ending the Tyrells’ reign of terror in this city.

My father repaid him by taking his life. My father was a murderer, no better than Giovanni Tyrell. Worse, because he hid behind a badge and a good name. My father—my father—had selfishly stolen Roman away from his world, this city, from me. My own father. The man who gave me life thought he had the right to take it away.

In my darkness, the storm raged around me. I shivered, naked, in the center of it. Anger and grief choked me, crushing my lungs. My insides ripped apart, as if my very soul was trying to tear itself from my body, to follow Roman into the afterlife. It hurt so much I doubled over, heaving in breath.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

“Julianna, my child.” A soft hand slid on my shoulder. Through my universe of pain, I heard Father Laurence’s voice. I reached for it like he was my lifeline. Father Laurence would help me.

I inhaled, loud and hoarse like a drowning woman. I had managed to find a sliver of air. A sliver of hope. I exposed my face to the Father, in all its broken rawness. “Please,” I begged.

He had to help me. He had to.

He gazed at me with such worry. “Please, what?”

“A gun.”

“What?” He drew back, a look of horror replacing his pity.

“They took mine from me.”

“Julianna—”

“Or a knife. I’m not fussy. A knife would hurt more and it would take longer to die than a bullet but…”

The Father made a wheezing sound and grasped at the pew in front of us. “You can’t be serious…”

I trained my eyes on him, my grief solidifying with purpose. “As serious as death.”

“Don’t be too hasty. You are young?—”

“I am young,” I spat out, my words bitter. “Which means I have to spend every minute of every hour of every day for the next sixty or seventy years waiting. Waiting until I can join him.”

“You… You will get over him.”

That was what my father said. He lied. He’d had never gotten over the death of my mother, his love, his soulmate. Look at him now, an old lonely, hateful, bitter shell of the man he used to be.

I would not become him.

I could not live with what he’d become.

I’d rather die.

“You do not know true love if you think I can go on without Roman. I won’t live as a ghost. Let me die like I should. Let me join him.”

Father Laurence shook his head. “I can’t. I w?—”

I grabbed the front of his shirt, my fingers twisting into his robes. “If you do not help me,” my voice was as hard as bullets, “I will find someone who will.”

He stared at me as I held his gaze, willing him to comprehend how determined I was.

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