Page 193 of Dark Romeo

I choked back a gasp. A final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Joan. Joan from the taped conversation in my mother’s case file. The one I couldn’t find a file on. My mother had been talking with Maria Tyrell. Maria wanted to testify against Giovanni in exchange for a new life for her three children.

My mother showed up dead in an alleyway a few hours after Maria Tyrell was killed. This was not a coincidence.

Nobody connected the two deaths at the time because they were two very different women, so far apart in their social circles, both killed in two different parts of the city, each with a different MO. A break and enter gone wrong. A random mugging in an alleyway. A knife. And a gun. Even I hadn’t connected these two deaths for this very reason.

I leapt to my feet. “You son of a bitch.” I only saw Giovanni Tyrell, the edges of my vision fuzzy and black around him. “You had my mother killed.”

“What?” I heard Roman cry, his voice sounding so far away.

“Your mother,” Giovanni snarled at me, “shouldn’t have tried to take my wife away from me and her boys. She filled Maria’s head with such nonsense. She turned Maria against me. She deserved her bullet.”

“You know, you look just like her,” Abel said to me with a cruel smile. “Such a strong woman until she was begging for her life.”

Abel had shot my mother. He had staged the fake robbery in the alleyway where she was found.

“She was a good woman, a loved woman.” I began to blubber as my heart tore into pieces. “You had no right. No fucking right.” My gaze narrowed to the gun on Roman’s hip. I didn’t care that I was surrounded by men with guns who would fire back. Rage flared around my body, gripping me tightly in her burning hands. I was reborn out of the flames like a phoenix, a creature of justice. I would avenge my mother.

I lunged for Roman’s gun, snatching it from his hip. I swung it towards Giovanni. The warehouse filled with the sound of weapons being drawn and hammers being cocked. There were at least five guns, now pointing their cruel black eyes at me.

“No!” Roman lunged in front of me, shielding me with his body.

I screamed at Roman just as Giovanni yelled, “Don’t shoot!” His face turned red as he spat, “Don’t you dare shoot my son!”

A violent crash sounded in stereo. The windows burst in as if a bomb had gone off on all sides. Guns appeared at the openings. Shots rang out and wood splintered as bullets ricocheted around the room like ping pong balls.

“Jules, get down!” Roman yelled at me, shielding me with his body as I dropped to the gritty ground. The smell of hay and dirt hit my nose.

Giovanni’s men ran for cover, yelling, returning fire. It was an ambush. The Veronesis? Or…the police?

How did they know we were here?

In the chaos, Roman and I had been forgotten. We could try to make a run for it.

Something glinted to the right of me. My vision zeroed in on the barrel of the rifle pointed at Roman from one of the broken windows. From the outside, the police wouldn’t know the difference between Roman and all the other Tyrell men.

“Roman!” I screamed.

He turned. The rifle fired, the barrel kicking back. Everything seemed to slow.

I saw the bullet hit before it did. I saw the nightmare before it began. In that split second, the life I thought I might have was torn from me. Our future, the one with Roman and me in it, happy, together, disintegrated. I could do nothing, helpless, as it unfolded.

The bullet hit Roman. It hit him, but I could feel it ripping through me.

He fell to his back on the ground, grabbing at his stomach, looking down as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, a rush of blood soaking his clothes. He lifted his head, his eyes caught mine. A cold rush flooded over me like I’d just crashed through the ice into a watery grave.

“My son!” Giovanni Tyrell rose from behind a crate, screaming in a battle cry. “You shot my boy, you bastards.” He turned to fire, getting off a couple of shots before the first bullet hit him. Three stains appeared on his chest as he toppled to the ground.

The firing seemed to fade around me as I kneeled beside Roman. His stomach was a bloody mess. “Oh God, Roman.”

His eyes caught mine. I saw resignation in them. “It’s bad.”

“It’s not so bad,” I lied.

“Jules, listen…”

“No.” I pressed my mouth to his to shut him up. My hands clutched at his stomach, trying to stop the bleeding. “Help is on its way. Just hang on.”

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