Page 70 of Dark Romeo

I was silent as Espo and I walked out of my father’s office. Why was my father so determined to pin the Tyrells for Vinnie’s murder? We had no evidence they’d done it. My father was instigating a witch-hunt to try to bring down all the Tyrells.

What if Roman wasn’t like the rest of them?

“Look past the last name I was given. You know me.”

* * *

Later that night, I tossed the empty Chinese takeout box into the trash can by my desk and stood up, stretching, nodding goodnight to a fellow officer as he walked past me towards the elevator. I scanned the empty workstations and darkened offices. Perfect. I was the last one on the floor. What I wanted to do, I didn’t want to do while worrying that someone might be looking over my shoulder.

I pulled my chair under the desk and opened an internet browser. Glancing around myself one more time, I typed in “Roman Giovanni Tyrell” and clicked search before I could change my mind.

The search results came up in an instant. There were articles from various social magazines about the European heiresses and trust fund babes he’d been connected with. I cast my eyes over the various photos of him at parties, in clubs, on yachts, a bottle in one hand, the other slung around a bevy of beautiful girls. My heart squeezed. Was I just another one of his revolving door of girls? How many more of them had he invited to Paris with him? And if he was used to dating heiresses, what had he been doing with me?

I closed the browser, a growing sick feeling in my stomach. I opened an email I’d received from an old colleague who was working for Interpol in Lyon, France.

Good to hear from you, Julianna.

Here’s everything we have on Roman Tyrell.

Jerome.

I opened the attachments. While Roman Tyrell had been in Europe he hadn’t been linked to any of the European Mafia families. He had been picked up no less than five times for drunk and disorderly behavior, and disturbing the peace, all of them from bar fights. He had a string of speeding tickets. Nothing more serious than that. Drinking, speeding and fighting. How had he graduated from drunken fist fights to torture and cold-blooded murder?

I found the witness statements to the fights and read through them. I frowned. They had all claimed that Roman had been defending himself or someone else. According to the gossip columns, Roman was the one who was supposed to have started the fights. He even bragged about it in an interview. Why would he do that? Why would he make himself appear worse than he was?

He’d been enrolled in a Criminal Law Degree at the Regent University, located in the green heart of Regent’s Park in London.

Criminal law. How ironic.

He’d pulled out of his degree the day of his return to Verona with only one semester to go. As far as I could see, he hadn’t transferred to another university closer to home. Why did he just quit like that?

I searched back through public records from before he left for Europe. He had attended St. Andrews Private School, Verona’s most prestigious high school. I had gone to the local public school and was a grade below him. Our circles would never have crossed paths, not until last Saturday.

I couldn’t get access to Roman’s school records without a court order, but I did have access to the files kept by the school police. He had a few reprimands in his record: truancy, fighting, problems with authority figures.

I sank back into my chair. To the world, Roman Tyrell looked like a violent, irresponsible playboy. I remembered the man I had spent the night with: charming, funny, insightful. The Roman that the world seemed to think existed wasn’t the Roman that I had experienced. How could it be possible that the world got it so wrong?

“My father is a difficult man.”

I pulled up the file on Roman’s father. Giovanni Tyrell, known Mafia boss, controller of the Tyrell empire, suspected of running drugs and guns from Colombia, his illegal activities covered up by his legitimate interests: property investments, clubs, restaurants and transportation companies. There was a suspected string of dead bodies in his wake, but with no convictions.

I chewed on my lip. Roman’s mother’s murder case file would be in our system. It would have been before our files were digitized so it’d be stored in the file room down in the basement. I wasn’t about to check out the files from the file room. I searched for newspaper articles online instead.

Maria Tyrell, Wife of Mobster, Murdered.

She’d been discovered by their housekeeper in her garage with her throat slit. No weapon was found at the scene.

My heart skipped a beat when I read the next few lines. Roman Tyrell, her youngest son, was discovered hiding in the corner of the garage covered in her blood. He may have been the only witness. He’d been treated for shock but was otherwise unharmed. He had been twelve.

Jesus Christ. I imagined a young Roman finding his mother dead in the garage. My heart cried for him. That was something no child, no human, should ever have to go through.

I would have been eleven. Old enough to remember. How did I not remember this? This was huge news.

I looked at the date of the newspaper articles. Of course. This was the same time as my mother had died so I’d fallen into a deep grief-hole where nothing else had penetrated. Fourteen years ago, Roman Tyrell and I were on opposite sides of the city, living in two different worlds, yet struggling with the same grief.

I kept reading further, my stomach twisting into knots. Roman Tyrell hadn’t told the police anything. He’d refused to speak to them even after the case went cold.

It had been a gang-related hit, the newspapers mused. Others, were more sensational.

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