Page 150 of Dark Romeo

I still felt his eyes on me when I was awake.

Sometimes I thought I caught his scent on the breeze.

Despite my grief, the cruel world just kept turning. The sun kept rising and falling. The waxing and waning of the moon marked the passing of weeks. Other people found love, got married, had babies. Other people hugged their families: mothers, fathers, husbands at the end of their work day. My pain remained motionless, a crystalized ball in my chest while I stayed numb around it.

I shouldn’t mourn a man who admitted he’d killed another. Even if it was to protect me. I shouldn’t want a man who broke another man’s neck in front of me. Even if it was to stop me from being raped.

I shouldn’t.

But I did.

Roman had only done what I’d secretly wished to do. To wield a sword of justice. To play judge and executioner to the scumbags who escaped punishment. No one was any worse off with them gone. They had deserved it. Nobody could ever convince me otherwise. I had held the hand of too many victims, heard the broken sobs of too many of the victims’ families, watched too many shattered souls trying to rebuild their lives again after being destroyed.

So, no. I didn’t mourn the scumbags that he’d killed. Knowing about Roman’s involvement didn’t make me want him any less. The truth was, I had fallen in love with Roman Tyrell and I didn’t know how to crawl out of love. Every time it felt like I had made progress, I would be reminded of him and I’d slide right back down. It was an irreversible love. An unbreakable love. Completely unconditional. Beautiful and terrible all at once.

The leaves began to turn. The nights became colder, cold enough to need blankets on my bed. I kept a brave face on. Lacey occupied my lunchtimes at the station. Espo kept driving me to and from work. My father took to eating dinner at my apartment several times a week. On weekends, Nora sat on my couch and tried to coax me to come out to the markets and the movies. Sometimes I went, just to keep up the front that I was okay. Mostly, I didn’t and we just stayed in nursing cups of tea while she chatted animatedly, being content to let me stay silent. I was surrounded by people who cared about me. Still, I managed to feel like a ghost. I walked through my days chasing distractions, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d misplaced something important.

It was only at night, in the silence, that I was unable to hold back the tide and thoughts of Roman rushed back in. The night breeze blew in the smells of the city through my open window, but they didn’t bring him.

I missed him with an ache that burrowed down to my soul. I missed his touch. The way he smelled. The way my world shrank down to just us when we kissed. Every day that went past was one day closer to the time when another woman would make him her husband.

* * *

Rosa Sanchez looked smaller than she was. Her head hung, staring at the floor as she walked, her shoulders rounded as if she were trying to hug herself, her thin, oversized gray sweater swimming on her slim body. She sat in front of me on the old worn couch in the witness interview room, knees pressed together under her long skirt, a cup of plain black tea untouched before her.

“Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Sanchez. I know it must be hard.”

She didn’t answer. She kept glancing past me, out of the glass window facing the interior of the station, where her three girls were being kept entertained by Espinoza. They were six, eight and twelve. The two youngest were laughing shyly into their collars at the faces that Espo was making and the way he clambered over the chairs. The oldest just stood there, mouth pinched, watching him with wary cynicism.

Espo would make a great father one day, if he ever settled down. What kind of father would Roman make?

I shook that question off, turning back to Rosa. Back to my job. “Your girls are fine,” I said in a soft voice. “See?”

Rosa looked over at me, meeting my stare for the first time since she arrived. I could still see the mistrust in her black eyes, her arms crossed over her body. That was understandable. I was a cop. Her husband had been…a questionable man.

I pressed on. “We just need to ask a few questions about Eduardo.”

“Eddie,” she corrected in a timid voice. “He used to hate it when anyone called him Eduardo. Only his mother called him—” She stopped speaking suddenly, flinching, her eyes going to the door as if she expected he would burst through at any minute.

She tugged at her sleeve, covering up the purple and yellow mottled bruise around her arm. Understanding knotted around my stomach. She had all the signs. The bastard. My insides simmered. If Eddie wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.

I slapped myself internally. You’d kill him, Jules? This was not what good people thought. This was not how good cops reacted.

“When did you last see Eddie?”

Rosa chewed her lip. She didn’t answer.

I leaned in. “You can talk to me,” I said softly. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

A laugh burst out of Rosa’s mouth, which she tried to stifle with her fingers. She dropped her hand into her lap. “I know he can’t,” she said, her eyes suddenly shining. “The bastard’s dead.”

I was missing something. “Of course.”

“He was home earlier that night. He got a call during dinner. He left without finishing. Around seven thirty, I think. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

“What did you do?”

She frowned. “We ate dinner, me and the girls. Washed up. Put the girls to bed. Fell asleep around eleven.”

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