Page 9 of Dark Romeo

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.”

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