Page 163 of Dark Romeo

“No,” cried Mercutio. He grabbed my hand, stopping me from dialing. “No cops.”

“I am a cop.”

“No other cops.”

“Merc,” I called him by the nickname I’d heard Roman call him, “if you want to save Roman, we need help. It’s too dangerous to do it alone.”

Mercutio shook his head and swore. “I knew I shouldn’t have come to you.”

“Merc, we are running out of time. Do you want Roman to live or not?”

He let out a curse. “He’s going to kill me…”

Us. He’s going to kill us for getting the cops involved. Better angry than dead. “At least he’ll be alive to kill us.”

He let go of my hand so I could dial. “You do what you need to do.”

I chewed my lip as the number rang, hoping to hell I was making the right decision.

My father picked up on the second ring.

I didn’t stop to chat. “There’s going to be a duel between the Tyrells and the Veronesis in Little Italy in less than an hour.”

“Where did you hear this from?”

“A source. We need to send a team there now to stop it from becoming a bloodbath.”

“A source?”

I withheld an exasperated noise. “A reliable source. Dad, we need to move on this now. I need a minimum of four units.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “I thought there was a truce going on between them.”

“Obviously it didn’t hold.” Why was he taking so long to agree to send backup?

“Dead Man’s Alley in Little Italy, you said?”

“Yes.” Finally.

“It’s abandoned there. Just a bunch of empty buildings overlooking the alley. No restaurants or commercial spots around the place.”

“Yeah?” Mercutio was frowning at me with a look on his face like, what’s taking so long. I turned my back on him. “So?”

“No innocents will be injured in the crossfire.”

“The Tyrells and the Veronesis will kill each other if we don’t stop them.”

“Perhaps that’s for the best.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about, Dad?”

There was a pause. A long, heavy pause where I held my breath, the hairs on my arm raising as the anticipation built. He sighed as if I was being slow. “Sometimes,” he said laboring over each word, “you have to know when to hold back, Julu. Sometimes you have to let nature take its course.”

Blood drained from my face. What the actual fuck? “Dad, you’re just going to sit back and send who knows how many men to their deaths?”

“They are criminals, not men. And I am not sitting back. I am allocating resources.”

“You have to send backup now.”

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