Page 41 of Forbidden Girl

Panic. The crowd of mourners transforms into a herd of terrified human cattle. Some of them start running, and those are the ones ripe for picking. My dad feeds on fear and chaos. He loves it.

Jules. I don’t see her mother or father. Most of the crowd has disbanded, but she’s frozen in place; the only movement around her is from the breeze blowing through her loose blonde hair. Motionless, she is the perfect target for one of my dad’s minions. I haul ass to her, fighting against my instinct to drop to the ground and crawl. “Juliet!” I scream. It’s louder than I thought a human voice was capable of being, more thunderous than the gun blasts.

She sees me but, in her horror, doesn’t recognize me. I rip the sunglasses off my face and the wig from my head, throw them to the ground. Rowan, she mouths.

Shells are flying all around us, ricocheting off tombstones, tearing flesh from bone. People are screeching in agony. I don’t have the luxury of gentleness. I tackle her. She lands on the soft, springy soil with viciousness. I manage to cradle the back of her skull in my hand and absorb the worst of the blow. I examine her body for injury, for blood, for anything abnormal, any blemish to her perfect, beautiful skin.

“Are you okay?” I ask. She has the collar of my dress in her tiny fists. Her face is pale, and her blue irises are being swallowed by dilated black pupils. “Juliet, are you hurt?”

“No. No, I’m okay.”

“Thank God. Thank God.” I cling to her so firmly that I can feel her frenzied heart beating against my ribcage as if it were my own.

We’ve fallen behind a granite obelisk. We’re well-concealed. She’s safe enough for the moment, but the gunfire is getting louder. They’re closing in. They’ll find her. Or maybe the Calloways have started shooting back. I don’t know. I can’t see. I don’t give a fuck either way; all I care about is Jules. I have to get her out of this cemetery.

“Stay down.”

She cleaves to my forearm. “Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me. You’ll di?—”

I palm her cheeks. “I won’t, my love. I won’t die. Not today. We’re both getting out of here alive.”

My words are not a salve. I have to pry myself from her grip.

I peek around the corner of the tall grave marker to take a gander at the horror show unfolding. One of my father’s douchebags, William, is sprawled on the lawn twenty feet from my position. He’s bleeding from two holes in his chest. One down. Not too far from his position, my dad and Jeremy—the other fuckface he brought with him—are taking cover behind a mausoleum, now and again peering out and shooting wildly at nothing in particular.

To my immediate left, Patrick Calloway is on his haunches, stooped behind a marble headstone, returning fire in the intermittent silence. His wife is beside him covering her ears, hands soaked in the blood of a man splayed on the lawn just beyond her. Shot after shot after shot rings out from Calloway’s Glock. He has better aim than my dad, and I find myself hoping he clips him—just a graze, so he’ll stop fancying himself King Shit of Fuck Mountain and realize he’s not invincible.

Patrick’s magazine empties and he ducks down again. He reaches into his pocket for a spare clip but finds none. It was fortunate that he even had his gun on him. There’s an unspoken rule in the underground that days like today are automatic ceasefires. Funerals and memorial services are sacred; weapons are not needed. Naturally, in my father’s twisted brain, a young man’s funeral is the perfect place for an ambush, all his enemies lined up to pick off. That’s him, a true villain at heart.

Calloway glances over at Jules, crumpled in a ball on her knees, palms pressed against a giant gravestone. And then he clocks me. The fear on his face for his daughter’s wellbeing turns to rage as he registers who I am. If he had a single bullet left, I’d catch it right between the eyes.

“She’s fine!” I yell to him. “She’s safe with me, Calloway, I swear.”

Maria tugs his jacket sleeve. He turns to her, and she nods. It’s enough for him given the situation. “I’ll break your fucking neck if anything happens to her,” he bellows back at me.

That’s fair. “I’ll break it for you.”

More shots are fired from my right side. A Calloway guy. Is this ever going to end? When he runs empty, there’s prolonged silence. Dad and Jeremy are out of ammo, too. My father’s voice shatters the quiet. It ripples through the air, angry and accusing. Also, because I know him, I recognize the slight hint of alarm: He has never not known my whereabouts this long.

“Where’s my fucking daughter, Calloway? You put a hit out on her? I swear on every saint you know, if she’s dead?—”

I stand up and step out from my shelter, undisguised, in the full light of day. I could be shot by one of Calloway’s men if they have a fresh clip handy, but it’s a chance I have to take. Juliet reaches for me, pawing at the hem of my dress. I break away from her.

“Dad!” I holler across the cemetery, hands up to show I’m unarmed. “Dad, it’s Rowan!”

Jeremy’s is the face I see pop around the corner of the crypt. His eyes bulge. He says something to my father that I can’t make out. And then Callum Monaghan unveils himself, tall and lanky and as ferocious as he’s ever been.

“What the fuck are you doing here, kid?”

“Come on, Dad. You know why I’m here.”

A hand takes mine, entwines my fingers. Jules stands tall at my side. Her tears have caused her mascara to run. The thick black lines down her cheeks look like warpaint, heightened by the sheer determination on her face. It’s out now—us. We are the children of combating fiefdoms, daughters of defiance. The whole of Boston will know before the sun goes down. A lot of people will have opinions. The Rossi merger is off the table. There may be consequences for that. But the promises made weren’t made by me, so let them rain hell on Callum and watch me shrug about it.

My dad examines us. I read the disgust on his mien. It’s the same guise Teague wore in the tent, and every time he’d set sights on me before then. Love means nothing to men like them. They’ll never understand its value. All they value are dollars and cents.

He motions for me to come to him with his index and middle fingers. “Let’s go.”

There are police sirens ringing through the ether and fast approaching. This isn’t the Back Bay or Government Center or even Downtown—in this neighborhood gunshots are always gunshots, never firecrackers or cars backfiring. He turned this hallowed ground into a battlefield. If I had the physical strength to detain him, I’d make him stay to catch justice for it. If I had my piece, I might gun him down. I get it now: One way or another my father has to die, and his kingdom has to crumble alongside his brittle bones.

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