Page 136 of Dark Romeo

I typed in Roman’s burner phone number and hit search, my eyes glancing around me as the results triangulated.

The software made a small noise indicating it was done. My eyes slid to the screen. Nothing. The satellite couldn’t locate the phone number. His burner phone was either off or there was no reception wherever he was. Dammit, Roman, where are you? I made a vow to head to his secret apartment tonight after work if I still hadn’t heard from him. If he wasn’t there, I’d go to the Tyrell apartment.

“Capi!” Espo yelled from behind me.

I jolted, closed the trace down on my computer and spun in my seat.

Espo jogged up to me, waving a piece of paper, his face flushed, his eyes bright. He didn’t seem to notice my nervousness nor did he stare at me with suspicion. That was a relief. I pushed away my thoughts over Roman and forced a smile. “You look like you just won the lottery.”

“You know that witness at the gas station?”

I frowned. We’d canvassed the gas stations and convenience stores around the area where Eddie’s body was found. One of the gas stations had turned up a witness who’d claimed he’d seen a car and two men stopping there just before time of death. The security cameras at this gas station were fakes, so no tape. “Yeah?”

“Just got his artist’s sketch.” Espo slammed the paper down on my desk and stabbed at it with a thick finger. “Who does this look like to you?”

My stomach turned over itself, the pencil lines on the artist’s sketch blurring before me. This could not be happening. “Who?” I asked, even though I knew.

Espo leaned in, his eyes glittering with excitement. “Roman Tyrell.”

ROMAN

____________

Two days earlier...

I made the mistake of checking my phone after Julianna had fallen asleep in my bed. I found a message waiting for me.

Giovanni: Tomorrow we have something important to do. Be ready at 6am. Abel will fetch you.

Fetch me. Like I was a stick he liked to throw around. I imagined smashing my phone. I imagined burrowing myself into Julianna so deep that he’d never find me. I imagined disappearing into the far corners of the earth; all I’d need was Julianna by my side.

Only she’d never run with me, she’d made that much clear. Verona was her home. Who the hell was I to her?

Tomorrow we have something important to do.

These words filled me with a cold dread. Whatever it was that my father had planned, it would not be good. Our father-son outings ended in guns drawn or someone dead. Each time a little bit more of me blackened. Each time a little more of me became accustomed to his brand of “justice”. I could sense Darkness lay waiting for me, softly laughing, fingernails clicking.

I couldn’t sleep after that. My mind folded over and over, arguing for me, against me. The cold truth frosted over my heart as the cold dawn crept ever closer. I couldn’t escape who I was.

“Something on your mind?”

I turned away from my boxing bag to find Julianna standing at the door to my gym. Shit. I hadn’t meant to wake her. Then I noticed she was dressed. “Where are you going? At three in the morning?” I couldn’t help the accusation in my voice.

“I got a call from work. They’ve found a body.”

Today she would be solving a crime. Today I would be committing one. The reminder of how different we were slid into my gut, injecting me with self-loathing. She tried to hold me but I pushed her hands away. She didn’t deserve my filth on her clean skin. “I’m sweaty,” I grunted, like the creature I was.

A small crease appeared between her brows. “Will I see you later?”

I remembered my hands, the blood under my fingernails after the night I shot Vinnie Torrito. I remember the foul, wretched creature I had morphed into afterwards. Whatever my father was going to have me do today would be worse; I could feel it. I could not let her see me afterwards. Not until I had pulled myself together. Not until I had scraped the remaining gentle, warm pieces of me back into place, patting them down like pieces of clay to cover back up the rotten black core. I said nothing, promised her nothing.

I watched her face fall, her pain evident from my cold dismissal. Didn’t she realize how bound I was to her? She had me. She ruled me. Couldn’t she see that it was all for her? It was so painfully obvious to me.

I couldn’t let her walk away with doubt in her heart.

I went after her. “Jules.”

She turned, her hand on the doorknob. I grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to meet my crushing lips. The growing sense of doom sizzled like a poison in my blood. I kissed her as if her lips held the antidote to death. I kissed her as if it was the last time. I had only borrowed her. One day soon I would lose her.

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