Page 36 of Dark Romeo

That was my father’s brand of justice. He was the judge, jury, and executioner.

The accused didn’t move. I could see several of his fingers were missing on each hand. I felt sick when I imagined the pain he must be in. I couldn’t let myself feel anything. Any show of sympathy could be the end of both of us. I steeled any emotion away, crossed my arms, trying to look bored and unaffected. “Is he dead?” I asked, hearing how cold and hollow my voice had become. For his sake, I hoped so.

“He’s told us that the Veronesis were not the ones who organized the hit on your brother,” my father said, ignoring my question.

“He’s lying,” Abel snarled as he snapped on rubber gloves. “All Veronesis are liars.”

“He eventually broke,” my father continued. “He admitted everything.”

Did he? Could any man withstand this kind of torture and not say whatever they wanted him to?

“As always, Abel got him to talk.” The pride in my father’s voice was clear.

I made the mistake of looking over to Abel. His eyes were fixed on me, glittering with amusement and…pride. The monster was proud of what he did.

“It’s an art,” Abel said, as he brushed tender gloved fingers across the bloody tools on the trolley. “To be able to inflict the maximum amount of pain on a human being without killing him.”

“You’re a regular Monet,” I spat out.

To my horror, the man moved, his head lolling back. Within the mass of purple, one of his black slits opened slightly. He was looking at me. “Please,” he whispered. Even through the unidentifiable mess of flesh and blood, his voice made him human.

Dear God. I swallowed down the bile lurching up from my stomach and bit back the sting at my jaw. This couldn’t be happening.

“How the fuck is he still awake?” I blurted out. This man should have passed out from the pain already.

I caught the proud smile on Abel’s face. “I always make sure that I have a ready supply of adrenaline. To make sure he won’t miss a thing.”

The needle and vials on the tray. The sick fucker. I turned away from Abel, unable to look at him anymore.

“What do you think, Roman? What should be his sentence?” my father asked. “For lying to us. For his part in your brother’s death.”

I knew my father only wanted one answer.

I regretted it the second I looked at the disfigured man in the chair.

“Please,” he whispered again.

Something good. I needed to hang on to something good.

From the darkness, Julianna’s face rose into my mind. I could see her clearly, the lovely sweet lines of her face, the sadness and love that shone in her eyes when she spoke about her mother. See, there was still love in this world. Still beauty. There was still goodness.

“Roman,” my father barked out. “What say you?”

I stood there, cold and uncaring, an actor playing a part on a stage, a part that I had been born and raised to play, Roman Tyrell, son of Giovanni Tyrell. In my mind, I was elsewhere, wrapped around Julianna with my nose in her hair and her laughter in my ears. I spoke my next line as if I had rehearsed it. “He deserves to die.”

My father’s face split into a real smile, a horrifying smile, thin and cruel. For the first time in my life, my father stared at me with approval, with pride in his eyes. I had finally gotten what I had wanted from him since I was a boy. And it only took giving up my soul. I could feel darkness seeping into my pores.

My father reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. He held it out to me. “You do the honors.”

Fuck. No.

Twenty-six years I’d managed to keep my hands clean. Twenty-six years I had managed to keep some of my goodness intact, some of my mother in me. I had hidden her in the cracks of me. I’d managed to protect her memory. Until now. If I pulled the trigger, if I took a life, the last of her would die. I would be reborn, remade completely in my father’s image.

The memory of Julianna thinned into a ghost and disappeared. I stood in this dark warehouse, the stench of shit and clotting blood clogging my lungs. Julianna wasn’t real. But the darkness was waiting as it had been all these years, like a hungry beast, to pull me into it.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I couldn’t let my father turn me into him.

I sneered and pointed to my shirt. “Do you know how expensive this outfit is? I’ll get blood on it. Make your dog do it.”

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