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  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.”

  I could see Abel smiling from over my father’s shoulder. He knew I was stalling, fighting for some way not to do this.

  “You know,” my father said, “Abel is not convinced that you’re the right one to lead this family after I die. As are most of my men.” He nodded to the silent figures watching us from around the room. “I know you could be. You have your mother’s nature, but you also have my blood running in your veins. You are a Tyrell, son. That means that you bow down to no man. You bend to no one else’s rules. You just need some…encouragement to earn your crown.” He grabbed my hand and shoved the gun in it, the barrel as cold as death in my palm. “Kill him. Or I have no son. And the first bullet in this chamber will be for you.”

  I stared back into the face of my father, inches from me, both of us breathing the same acrid breath. In his eyes I saw the twisted, soulless gargoyle he’d become. I saw my future.

  The life of a stranger…or mine.

  An honorable man would lay down his own life for what was good, for what was right. A good man would take this gun in my hand and press it to his own skull. He would give himself up instead of taking away a life that wasn’t his to take. He would choose to keep his soul even if it meant he’d lose his life.

  I wasn’t honorable. I wasn’t good enough. The emptiness of death, the eternal blackness stretched open in front of me, and I lurched away from it. I wanted to live. Him or me. And I wanted to live. My stomach knotted. I was a coward because I wanted to live. Forgive me, Mama.

  “Fine. I’ll do it.” With those words, I signed my soul to the devil.

  I turned towards the man in the chair, forcing my eyes to look past him, making his figure into a blur. It was the only way I could do this. He’s not real. This isn’t real. I’m not really here. I lifted the gun, my barrel pointed towards him.

  I didn’t even know his name. I was going to take his life and I didn’t even know his fucking name.

  The man sucked in air audibly into his lungs, startling me. I made the mistake of seeing him, really seeing him. My gaze locked onto his one eye that wasn’t quite swollen shut. “Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking on every word. “I have a wife…”

  My hand shook, even as I tried to hold it steady. Fuck you, I screamed inside me. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. I fought to hang on to any sense of justification, some sense of righteousness. He killed my brother. He deserved to die. I found myself hating this man for begging for his pathetic life as I hated myself for having to take it. Fuck him for begging. Why couldn’t he just shut up and die?

  I needed something good. Where was something good to hang on to? Where was the beauty? Where was the goodness? Even Julianna had left me now.

  “I have children.”

  Children. He was a father. I was taking the life of a parent. The pain of losing my mother ripped through me. Could I do that to another child?

  My gaze landed on his colorful socks peeking out from under the hem of his trousers. Bright blue with a cartoon dog on it. The kind of socks a child buys for his daddy.

  I couldn’t. My hand holding the gun dropped.

  I felt a barrel in the small of my back as my father stepped up behind me.

  “Do it,” he commanded into my ear. “Do it. Or I swear to fucking God, I’ll kill you myself.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. My life or his.

  You have no choice, Roman. It’s self-defense.

  “Roman,” my father’s voice softened, the anger slipping away and the cursed poisonous slither of disappointment slid into my ear. “Don’t fail me, son.”

  My heart crushed in my chest. My finger slid into the trigger. All I had to do was squeeze. One tiny movement, that was all. That was all. I aimed the gun at the man in the chair. No, not a man. Not a human. Not a soul, not a beating heart. It was a thing.

  “Please…”

  My veins filled with ice. I let the darkness wrap her hands around me, soothing my ragged guilt with her numbness. And I pulled the trigger.

  17

  ____________

  Julianna

  I sat alone at my dining table drinking a cup of tea, and listening to my mother’s voice fill the room, wrapping myself in her voice.

  Abigail: “You don’t have to tell me your name. Let’s call you…Joan. After Joan of Arc. She was a strong woman, just like you.”

  Joan: “I’m scared.”

  Abigail: “I know. I’d be scared too. Take a deep breath. And remember why you want to do this.”

  My chest filled with pride. That was my mother, so patient, so filled with compassion. She always knew what to say. I wished I had inherited that trait from her.

  There was a pause on the tape and the sound of someone breathing hard.

  Joan: “Are you a mother?”

  Abigail: “I am. I have a beautiful little girl. She’s eleven. And I would do anything for her. Anything. Be strong for your children, Joan. Be strong for them.”

  Joan: “Okay…”

  It had been a phone conversation she’d taped a few weeks before her death. When I made detective six months ago, I had snuck into the records room and copied every piece of evidence from that file. My father would hate it if he knew I had this tape, that I played it over and over again on nights alone, listening to her voice and pretending she was in the same room as me. “I have a beautiful little girl. She’s eleven. And I would do anything for her.”

  The recording ran to its end. I sat in the preceding silence. My apartment seemed cold and empty. Quiet. Too quiet.

  I used to love the silence of my apartment, the way the things I left remained where they were exactly how I left them, no one else’s invading touch. Everything right where it belonged. Every bit of space mine.

  Tonight, I stared around the apartment as if it was my first time in here. The furniture I liked enough but it was all so generic and far from personalized. There were no pictures on my walls. No artwork. Nothing to reflect my tastes. I’d been waiting, it seemed, expecting that one day I would leave. That my real life would then begin.

  That chance had come with Roman. That possibility had stretched out its hand to me. I did not have the guts to take it. Why didn’t I have the guts to leave with him? Why didn’t I say yes?

  I felt his warmth and his body pouring into me, filling me up. Our cries echoing throughout the room.

  I shook my head, closed the box containing my mother’s case file, before dumping my cold tea down the sink drain. I was being silly. I barely knew the guy. I was reeling from the insane amount of orgasms he’d given me. That was all.

  Tomorrow, I’d feel better. Tomorrow things would go back to normal.

  I lay in bed, staring at my ceiling, the moonli
ght painting squares of pale light across it, chewing on my lip. My eyes kept drifting over to my phone, the only link I had left with him.

  Nora had long since gone home but her words had stayed behind with me. “When you get to my age you realize that life is short. Sometimes you don’t need to know the ‘point’ of it before you jump in.”

  I snatched up my phone from the bedside table and opened a new message, the blank screen waiting for me to say all the things I wanted to say.

  Is it strange that I miss you?

  Is it crazy that I can’t stop thinking about you?

  I wish I had said yes to Paris.

  I didn’t write any of these things.

  Me: I wish we hadn’t left things the way we did. Let me know you’ve arrived in London safely.

  I turned over, my back to the phone on the bedside table, and tried to find peace in the darkness. The image of his eyes haunted me, chasing me into a restless sleep.

  18

  ____________

  Roman

  I killed a man.

  Back in my father’s limo, I stared into nothing as this single thought looped over and over in my brain. The repeat of the gun booming throughout the warehouse room, the gun jerking my hand back, the small black hole that appeared on his forehead, the slim river of blood that dribbled from it. And those stupid cartoon socks.

  The gun became so heavy that I let it hang at my side. My father’s hand clasped my shoulder and his voice echoed in my skull. “Well done, son.”

  I had killed a man and he had been proud of me.

  My hearing had gone fuzzy after that.

  Someone had pulled the gun out of my hands. I knew it’d be wiped down, the barrel scratched with a wire plunger designed to change the internal grooves so that the next bullet’s striations were different. No one would ever trace the bullet in that man’s brain to me. That was how my family worked. They were professionals at this, too well-oiled and rehearsed to be taken down by the law. Soon I would be adding to them, bringing my knowledge of the criminal law system so we could bend it further to my father’s will. It had been the only reason my father had agreed to let me move to Europe to commence my legal studies.

  I would soon help this monstrous empire grow stronger. I would help feed it with my life and my soul. It didn’t matter how hard I fought against it, I could not escape what I was destined to become.

  I was alone again in the limo with my father, barely paying attention to what he was saying. “Things have changed in Verona since you left. The political landscape is not so…friendly. We have a new chief of police elected nine months ago. They call him the incorruptible.” My father let out a snort. “So far he seems good to his word. He’s made us public enemy number one. Vowed to clean up the streets.”

  I nodded, my body cold.

  “I’ll have a dossier sent to you with everything you need to know about who’s who. Read it, memorize it, learn it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, automatically.

  The limo stopped. Moments later someone opened the door for me. The cool night air did little to cut in through the fuzz around my head.

  “Go drink,” my father said. “Have fun with your friends. You’ve earned it.”

  Go drink, have fun, while a man who you sentenced to death is being dumped somewhere like trash. Go have fun, you’ve earned it. I choked on these thoughts.

  I don’t know how I managed to get out of the limo. I stood in a smelly back alleyway, the walls of the buildings around me seeming to cut out all the light of the stars. Someone opened the back door of the bar for me, their body silhouetted in the dim light that misted out of the doorway. The thudding of the music coming from inside sounded like someone’s violent heartbeat. Before I could take a step forward, Abel stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  The sight of him was like a splash of cold water on my face, cutting through my fog. I growled and bared my teeth. “Get out of my way, dog.”

  He smirked at me. “Relax, Roman. I just wanted to congratulate you. We’re all surprised at how you…stepped up tonight.”

  A feeling of nausea bubbled up again like clotting blood. “Fuck off.”

  His grin widened. He shoved something in my hand before I could stop him. “I thought you’d like to keep a souvenir.” He cackled, his laughter echoing off the insides of my skull. He disappeared back into the limo.

  I looked down into my hand. He had pushed a single thin gold ring into my palm. The man’s wedding ring, dried blood still clinging to the skinny gold band.

  “I have a wife…”

  It fell from my fingers into the muck.

  I stumbled into the bar through the back entrance, searching, looking for… a drink, I needed a drink. I probably looked like I was already drunk, even though I was sober as fuck, everything blurry, my movements clumsy.

  I had to get my shit together. My mother had been a Lettiere before she was married. I was a Lettiere. Lettieres didn’t fall apart.

  You’re not a Lettiere. You’re a Tyrell, a voice inside me taunted.

  I was in a nondescript bar off the main strip, old wood and creaky leather, dim lighting casting the place in a dull brown light. It was where Mercutio and I used to meet after bad shit happened at home. None of my “family” or other “friends” came here. I was anonymous here.

  Mercutio was already waiting for me inside, his eyes on the back entrance, leaning against the old wooden bar, chipped and lacquer peeling from years of spilled drinks. He’d driven all the way to the airport and rang my cell six times before I was capable of texting him back, asking him to meet me here.

  He took one look at my face and his fell.

  I almost turned around and left, not sure if I could take his judgment, his piteous look. I had nowhere else to go. I pushed my way through to the bar and leaned against it, just trying to breathe.

  “You’re not leaving Verona,” he said.

  It didn’t sound like a question. I shook my head anyway. No, I will never be able to leave now. I will die here.

  “Jesus, what did he do to you?” he asked quietly. I could hear the hesitation in his voice. He didn’t really want to know.

  I shook my head again, words failing me. It’s better you don’t know.

  He cursed under his breath. I didn’t have to say anything to Mercutio. He just…knew.

  I closed my eyes, the gunshot echoing over and over, the backs of my eyes splattering with crimson. It had been the thing I had feared most since I watched my brother turn into a monster by my father’s hand. I could feel the stains on my body, the darkness leaking into my veins and mixing with my blood.

  “Here.” Mercutio pushed a drink into my hand, snapping me partly out of my thoughts. I could feel the pity exuding from him. I could hear it in his voice. I hated him for pitying me. But I understood. Even I pitied me.

  I downed the drink without even asking what it was, letting the alcohol burn all the way down in my throat. If only it could burn away my sins.

  What I wanted was Julianna. I wanted to bury my face in her hair and lose myself in her body, letting her pure light absolve me of my sins. When I had been with her I’d forgotten about my cross to bear. I had been filled with a lightness I had long forgotten I could feel. Joking and laughing with her, and worshiping her beautiful body, had all felt so natural. I was no longer a Tyrell. She looked at me, really looked at me, and reminded me of the man I was underneath.

  My phone beeped with a text.

  Jules: I wish we hadn’t left things the way we did. Let me know you’ve arrived in London safely.

  It was like she could sense that I was thinking of her. That I needed her. Even though I had been such an asshole to her when I had left, here she was showing me the concern I didn’t deserve.

  I could go to her. Tell her I wasn’t leaving Verona. Ask her to be mine. I stabbed my thumb on the screen to reply. I caught the sight of dried blood like a dark crescent moon under my nail. I froze. My hearing went all fuzzy. I t
hought I had washed off all the evidence from my hands. Here I was, still stained.

  How could I touch her with these bloody, poisonous hands?

  I had to let her go. I couldn’t drag her into the darkness of my life. Things would only get worse from here.

  I deleted her message before shoving my phone back into my pocket. I looked up and my breath stuck in my throat. There she was. Julianna, staring at me from across the bar. My heart slammed against my ribs. I didn’t deserve her, but she’d found me anyway.

  I blinked. Julianna faded from her face, revealing a pretty blonde stranger. She smiled at me and her sticky pink lip gloss caught the light, her thick fake eyelashes fluttering like moths.

  I had a new mission. Drink. Get wasted. Let this stranger help me forget the shit my life had turned into.

  Usually picking up girls was no problem for me. Tonight… everything felt off. I wrapped my hands around my glass and drank, before slamming it on the counter. My head felt like cotton wool and my body was numb. Not numb enough. I waved at the bartender for another one.

  I felt a light touch on my arm and an overpowering floral perfume pierced through the smell of spilled beer and sweat. Oh, right. The blonde. Rachel or whatever.

  “Is your name, like, actually Roman?” she said with a giggle. Her voice was high-pitched and she spoke like she was scattering her words. I missed Julianna’s husky warm voice.

  “Yup.” I stared at my glass as the bartender refilled it with amber liquid, the color of Julianna’s eyes.

  “Like the city, right?”

  I downed the fresh glass of whiskey and hissed as it burned my throat. “That’s Rome, not Roman.”