Page 168 of Dark Romeo

He looked down at his chest, at his lifeblood pouring out of him. “Man, it looks bad.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Don’t lie to me, it’s bad.” He coughed again, more blood bubbling up, and winced.

“Why did you come here, you son of a bitch?”

“Someone had to save…” he coughed again. More blood. He ignored my attempts to keep him quiet, to conserve his strength. “…save your ungrateful…” His eyes matted over as swift as a plague. There was no warning. One second he was here and the next…

“Merc?”

Another set of eyes flashed in my head, the rich, earthy irises now dead and black as burned grass. Mama? A strange cold numbness fell over me as I slapped Mercutio’s cheek, trying to wake him, my bloody hand leaving a smudged print just like a young boy’s finger painting. Wake up. Call me an ass. Yell at me. Tell me off, for fuck’s sake!

“Espo, stop!” Julianna screamed. She had launched herself between me and her partner, standing by me like a guard.

It hit me that the polished steel of Julianna’s gun was the same color as the matching sweaters that Nonna had once knitted for Mercutio and me. It had been the first Christmas I’d spent with them since my mother had died. He always got a new sweater. This was my first. Merc had scowled when Nonna had pushed it down over his head. I had pretended to make a fuss too, but I had worn that sweater every day until it smelled. Mercutio would never know that I still kept that stupid sweater, packed in a box in my mother’s apartment, now too small for me.

Nonna. My stomach twisted. How was I supposed to tell Nonna? How would I ever explain how I got him killed? How could she ever forgive me? All it took was a twitch of one finger. One careless, single movement. The entire futures of three people—Mercutio’s, Nonna’s and mine—were torn out of the pages of time.

My eyes focused past Julianna’s legs to Espinoza, towering like an executioner. “Stand aside, Capi,” he demanded. There was no remorse in his cold, hard voice. None. There was no paling of his skin, no slight quiver in his voice, like there had been in mine. He had been trained to kill. And he did his job. Who was the monster now?

“I won’t,” Jules said, widening her stance.

His face twisted in confusion, his eyes darting between Merc and me on the ground, and Julianna. He couldn’t understand why she was protecting us.

Mercutio was dead by his hand and he was confused.

This was his fault. His. Not mine.

A fury unlike any I’d ever felt before rose through me like a demon taking possession. I was no longer Roman but a demented succubus demanding what was right. Retribution. Justice. An eye for an eye. Mercutio’s soul was still hovering above us, torn from this Earth much too soon. It was only fair that Espinoza would be the one to escort him up to heaven.

Julianna’s gun glinted in her holster like the wink of an eye. Mercutio would never wink at me again. He’d never roll his eyes at me when I was being an ass. I snatched the gun from Julianna’s hip. It weighed nothing in my palm.

I saw Espinoza trying to aim for me, but Julianna was in his way. She would not move no matter how he screamed at her. He did not fire. He would not risk hurting Jules. For that I had to thank him. It was not enough to redeem him.

I had a clear shot of him under Julianna’s arm. I meant to aim for his heart. I meant to tear from him the thing he had torn from me. But my hands were wet with Mercutio’s blood and the nose of the barrel dipped. I pulled the righteous trigger. The second death crack sounded into the black, sticky night.

The hole appeared in Espinoza’s stomach and blood flooded his shirt. An eye for a bloody red eye. Julianna screamed, but it sounded so far away. She screamed as her partner began to fall, like a tree felled, heavy and straight.

The instant he hit the ground, all my brittle fury smashed apart like a vase, scattering into splinters, leaving me in consequences’ cold spotlight, tangled in the web of the blackened fate I’d spun myself.

Julianna let out a broken sob as she dove to Espinoza’s side. She placed her hands over his wound like I had done for Mercutio mere seconds ago. The pain of Mercutio’s death tore through me again, this time joined by the pain I saw on Julianna’s face.

I had shot Julianna’s partner. Her close friend. Her Mercutio. The gun dropped from my hands.

I am a Tyrell.

As if in answer, the night sky broke open with the scream of police sirens. I pushed myself up to my feet. I felt woozy, drunk from how the last minutes had scattered our four connecting lives in different directions.

The sirens were fast approaching. They’d be on us in minutes. Seconds. I stumbled towards Julianna, my empty hands reaching for her. Grasping for her. My life buoy, like a flash of honey hair over an angry black sea. If I could just grab hold of her.

Before I could reach her, Julianna grabbed another gun from her side, my gun that she’d taken off me. She pointed the single black eye towards me. An eye for an eye, until the world is drowning in blood.

Julianna had finally turned on me. We were finally on the two sides we were meant to be on. I had pushed her there. I wanted to fight it, to fight her.

I could not conjure any justification. I was a criminal and deserved to be treated like one. I lifted my bloody palms and tried to convey with just my eyes—my voice had been crushed in the sorrow clogging my throat—that I wasn’t angry. I understood.

“Jules…” I’m sorry.

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