Hanging in the Stars: A Mafia Romance (Dark Romeo Book 3) Read online

  “M-Man, I ain’t gay. I ain’t—”

  “Do it before I give you a second asshole.”

  His zipper cut over the low hum of the car engine, still on.

  “Now pull your dick out.”

  He let out a pained whimper over the rustle of his jeans.

  I shifted my fingers on the grip and tried to block out his sobbing. I wondered if his daughters would mourn him. Or would they sag with relief when they heard he’d died, knowing that their beatings would stop. Knowing what I did, they would probably do both and it would tear their tiny insides apart. Bastard as Eddie was, he was still their father. I was about to take him away from them.

  I forced my finger onto the trigger. To my surprise, a trickle of sweat beaded on my forehead.

  Come on, Roman. It’s not like this is your first kill.

  But Vinnie had been forced on me, my father’s gun at my back. The second attacker, Tate Jackson, whose neck I’d broken earlier, had been an accident. I hadn’t meant to kill him. I was just so fucking furious when I saw his hands on Julianna, when I heard the tearing of her clothes, when I knew, knew, what he wanted to do to her.

  “You promised me you’d get me to safety,” Eddie garbled. “You promised.”

  Do it, Roman. Do it to make sure this scumbag never reveals what he saw tonight—the heir of the Tyrell Mafia empire saving the life of a cop.

  Do it to protect her.

  “I lied.” I pulled the trigger.

  The bullet rang out like a bang, echoing out into the night. Eddie dropped forward like a sack, his dick hanging out of his pants like the poor unlucky fucker just stopped for a piss.

  For a second I just stood there, my gun still pointed at where Eddie’s head once was, whips of smoke reaching for the heavens from the end of my barrel.

  No weapon, no evidence, no witnesses, a voice echoed in my head, spurring me to action.

  There were no witnesses to worry about.

  I would take the gun with me, throw it into the river on my way as I drove back to Verona.

  As for any evidence I might leave behind… I strode to the seat behind the driver’s side where I had stashed the two cans I’d bought in the gas station earlier. Eddie hadn’t even noticed I’d returned with them, to his detriment. I grabbed the one marked “bleach”. Good old household cleaner. Will remove all scum, stains and DNA evidence.

  I washed Eddie down before I climbed back into Eddie’s car and gunned it back onto the road.

  The other can was marked gasoline. This car was going to make a pretty bonfire.

  Sometimes, when I wasn’t thinking of Julianna, I replayed that night over in my head as I lay in bed staring at my ceiling.

  I wasn’t going to lie to myself. I was glad Eddie was dead. One less rapist scumbag for the world. Did that make what I did justifiable? Did that make me a hand of justice in a way?

  He was still someone’s son. Someone was going to miss him. Someone was going to mourn him.

  “You are a good man, Roman.”

  Julianna’s words taunted me. Haunted me. How could a bright angel see any light in me?

  “Let me tell you what this good man did. I killed Eduardo Sanchez. I pointed the gun at his head and I pulled the trigger.”

  Every day since I confessed to her I half-expected, half-hoped I’d be arrested. The knock on my door never came. Even with the way I left things, even after I deliberately caused her pain, she would not turn on me. I didn’t fucking deserve her. She was better off without me. Soon she would see that.

  3

  ____________

  Julianna

  I didn’t tell anyone that the signature on Eddie Sanchez’s insurance policy was forged, not even Espo. I promised Rosa that I wouldn’t. That woman had been through enough. She had three young girls to look after and that insurance money would go a long way. I didn’t give a shit that it was the wrong thing for me to do, I would not tell. I would not take that money away from those girls.

  A forged insurance policy. A million dollars. A dead husband. Was it possible that Eddie’s death had nothing to do with Roman?

  Or did Roman have something to do with this mysterious policy?

  My father had just left. I sat in an armchair by my living room window, staring out into the night. A fist rammed against the door.

  Roman.

  My heart rocketed into my throat. I smoothed down my hair as I hurried to the door and flung it open.

  It wasn’t Roman. Everything alive in me sagged.

  Nora didn’t wait for me to speak before she pushed past me into my apartment.

  “Why don’t you come in then?” I muttered under my breath before shutting the door.

  When I turned to face her, she had her arms crossed over her chest. “You’ve been walking around with that mopey look on your face for the last four weeks.”

  After Roman left my apartment the night he broke my heart, Nora, like a bloodhound, had come over demanding to know details. I had made up some vague excuse, “our careers don’t match” as to why Roman and I ended our relationship.

  She grabbed my cordless house phone and waved it at me. “Call him. Tell him you miss him.”

  I wasn’t going to get her off my back unless I told her the truth. Or at least, some sort of semblance of truth. “Nora,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully. If I revealed too much, the poor thing might have a heart attack. “Roman isn’t who you think he is.”

  “I know exactly who Roman Tyrell is.”

  I stared at her as my brain skipped like a scratch in a record. Nora couldn’t know know. If she knew she’d be yelling at me for putting myself in danger by associating with such a criminal.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “Roman Tyrell, youngest son of Giovanni Tyrell. Public enemy number one according to your father. Did I miss anything?”

  “But…” I shook my head, trying to knock this new piece of information into place. “I don’t understand. You knew who he was all along? Aren’t you mad at me?”

  Nora tilted her head. “Did I ever tell you about Pappy?” Pappy had been her husband of almost thirty years. He’d passed away the year before I had moved into this building. Nora and I had connected over our shared experience of deep loss. In the years I’d known her, she rarely spoke about him.

  I shook my head.

  “My parents hated Pappy when they met him. He was dirt poor. He was a welfare kid with an absentee father who grew up on the wrong side of Verona.” Nora’s eyes turned misty and unfocused as if she were remembering. “But I loved that son of a bitch. He loved me. I didn’t care what anyone said about him; I knew he was a good man. He loved me, supported me, protected me until the day he died. I still love him.”

  “I never knew.”

  Nora narrowed her eyes at me. “I know you, girlie. You ain’t stupid. If you see something in Roman, that means that he’s fit to spend time with. He’s a good man too. No matter what anybody says.”

  I let out a bitter laugh. Would she still say the same thing if she knew he had killed to protect me? “What I think of him doesn’t matter. It will never work between us.”

  “If the love is strong enough, it will survive anything.”

  “Except that he doesn’t love me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He ended it, Nora,” I cried with a frustrated smack of my palm against my thigh. The physical pain helped to distract me from the one in my heart. “He ended it. Why would he do that if he loved me?”

  “Because he’s scared.”

  “I’m not that scary,” I muttered.

  “He’s not scared of you.” Nora let out a sigh. “The most terrifying thing any of us can do is to fall in love. Why do you think they call it ‘falling’ in love? The greater the love, the harder we will fight against it.”

  Roman and I had been pushing and pulling against our feelings, against each other this whole time. Had he been falling in love too? Was this why it was all so…terrifying?

&n
bsp; That was ridiculous. We’d been fighting against each other because we weren’t meant to be together. This thought was a knife that sliced the raw wound open again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, tasting bitterness on my tongue. I wiped under my eyes, angry at my tears. “He’s gone.”

  “He’ll be back.”

  I shook my head, my heart weighed down with the knowledge that even though I would never give up on him, he had given up on us. “No, he won’t.”

  4

  ____________

  Roman

  A soft, warm hand slipped across my stomach as I slept.

  Julianna.

  My heart let out a thud. My bright angel had come back to me.

  I let out a small groan as the hand slipped lower. A weight shifted over me, soft thighs slid on either side of my thighs. My cock stirred. Jules…don’t stop.

  Something nagged at the back of my mind. She…felt wrong. There were too many angles. She wasn’t soft enough. She smelled wrong; the sharpness of too much spicy perfume hit my nose.

  I sat up, instantly becoming alert. I grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands off me. She let out a soft, excited cry. The familiar voice sent a coil of annoyance through me. I collected both wrists into one hand and reached out to turn on the designer bedside lamp of my Tyrell-owned apartment. Apparently, a free-for-all apartment. The golden glow fell across a face I’d be happy never to see again.

  Fucking Rosaline.

  I knew I should have stayed at my mother’s place instead of coming back here. She was straddling my lap wearing a black leather teddy that barely covered her fake breasts in a series of straps that strung up onto a studded choker. Her hair was pulled into two pigtails and her heavily made-up face was pulled into a look of triumph.

  My loving fiancée, I thought with a sneer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Rosaline gave me a look of fake innocence, batting her false eyelashes at me. “Can’t a wife surprise her husband in bed?”

  “You’re not my wife,” I growled.

  “Yet.” A lascivious look flashed in her dark, sinful eyes. She ground herself onto me, trying to get a rise out of me. Literally. That was never going to happen.

  I pushed her aside, causing her to yelp, and damn near leapt out of the king-sized bed. I grabbed my steel-colored bathrobe, wrapping it around my half-naked frame. “How the fuck did you get in?”

  She shrugged. “I had a copy of your key made since you were so rude as to not provide me one.”

  How the hell did she get a hold of a key to copy? Mine hadn’t been out of my presence. “Whose key did you copy?”

  She pouted her sticky pink lips.

  “Rosaline?” I warned.

  She crossed her arms. “Benvolio let me borrow his key.”

  For fuck sake. I made a mental note to slap Benvolio upside the head the next time I saw him. Also, to get my locks changed. Abel had a key. Benvolio had a key. Now Rosaline. Apparently, my keys were candy that was handed out like it was Halloween.

  I pointed at the door. “Get out.”

  She crawled on all fours on my mattress, wiggling her ass. “Aww, baby, are you still mad at me?”

  I snorted. “Mad is a temporary situation. Hatred is a better word for what I feel for you. Even that is being generous.”

  She crawled towards me, giving me a shot right down her cleavage. “There’s a fine line between love and hate, baby.”

  Jesus fucking Christ. “Rosaline, get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  “Or what? You’ll call the cops?” she sneered.

  I flinched at the thought of Jules breaking down my door to find Rosaline in my bed dressed like that.

  She continued, “Besides, you can’t kick me out of my apartment.”

  “It’s. Not. Yours.” I ground out. If only she was a guy so I could break her nose and throw her out the window.

  “What’s yours is mine, remember?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But soon, baby. Soon.” She tweaked one of her nipples and let out a small moan.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah, well, until then, leave me the hell alone.”

  “Are you sure about that?” She reclined on the bed, dropping her knees out so I got a shot of her black panties. Crotchless.

  Dear God. It was past one a.m. I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. It looked like I wasn’t going to be getting my bed back soon either. I grabbed jeans, a dark t-shirt and my jacket. I would change in the damn elevator rather than stay here another second.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” I called over my shoulder. “You better not be here when I get back.”

  * * *

  “I don’t like this place, Roman,” Mercutio said.

  “Why?” I slammed down another shot of whiskey and indicated to the lanky, bearded bartender to keep them coming. These days it seemed that I had to drink down a stomach-pumping level of alcohol just to get a buzz. Even then I never got numb enough. My head was slightly fuzzy from the booze, my body buzzing with hot, pressurized aggression. Aggression I hadn’t been able to release despite the daily pounding of my boxing bag until I dropped to the ground covered in sweat.

  We were in a flashy club downtown called Covert or Espionage or something like that, a place with a dance floor that lit up from underneath. The clientele was mostly gyrating Barbies in crop tops and tight jeans, wearing lip liner the thickness of crayons, and overly tanned guidos with tight white pants and too many top buttons undone.

  It was a place I never went to. Partly because I hated the kind of Eurotrash pop anthems they played at an ear-splitting volume. But mostly, I never came here because I wasn’t exactly wanted in here. It was a slip in management that I’d been let past the front door. A slip in management that I was sure they were about to regret.

  Mercutio frowned at me. “What are you staring at?”

  He turned his head towards the group of men in black jackets in the roped-off VIP area that I’d been eyeing since we arrived. Merc snapped his face towards me, his eyes wide with realization. “This is one of the Veronesis’ clubs.”

  Indeed. We were deep in enemy territory. I’d told Mercutio not to come out with me tonight, but lately he seemed to have become like my second shadow. Anyone would think that he was…worried I’d do something stupid.

  “It’s a free country.” I slammed down another shot, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. There was only one Veronesi brother in here tonight, surrounded by his wanna-be goons, all dressed like him in black leather jackets and jeans, all with slicked-back hair. Just one would work.

  Mercutio elbowed me to get my attention. “You don’t think I see what you’re trying to do,” he hissed.

  I knocked his arm away. “What am I trying to do, Einstein?”

  “You’ve been a suicidal prick since you broke things off with her.”

  “Jules, don’t embarrass yourself any further. It’s over.”

  “I’m going to marry Rosaline.”

  “You thought that I loved you?”

  I hissed under my breath as the heartless things I said to her echoed back in my head. Every cruel word was a knife I would have gladly taken myself. But they were doubled-ended blades, making twin wounds in both of us. The way her face had crumpled, the tears threatening to spill over, the way she had trembled; these memories were a whip that I punished myself with over and over again. I was an asshole and I hated myself for it. I deserved every foul, wretched thing coming to me.

  “This is not about her,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, really?”

  After I’d left Jules, I found myself at Mercutio’s place, punching the gym bag he kept in his garage. It took only seconds for him to come out and casually ask me what was up. I had spilled my pathetic guts to him, a moment of pure weakness. Something I was regretting now.

  Her, her, her. Why did everything have to come back to her? Why couldn’t she leave me the hell alone
for one goddamn minute. The only peace I seemed to get was when I was throwing punches. I did not want to be throwing punches at my best friend. The Veronesis, on the other hand…

  “I just wanted to try out a new place,” I lied. “I guess it was just fate that we ended up here.”

  “Fate?” Merc gave me an incredulous look. “You’re kicking fate in its teeth.”

  “So what if I am? It’s my life.”

  “It’s your life?” Mercutio grabbed the front of my jacket. “You selfish prick—”

  “Well, well, well.” A cold, gruff voice cut through us like butter. “What do we have here?”

  Mercutio let go of me and spun. Standing before us was Dante Veronesi, built like an Italian soccer player with lean, muscular limbs, the peek of a tattoo showing on his forearm from his jacket pushed up to his elbows, green eyes under heavy dark brows, a permanent scowl on his face. Of all the Veronesi sons, Dante was the dangerous one, the ruthless one, the reckless one, the one you’d never turn your back on. He was the one I had hoped to run into tonight.

  He had a man flanked on either side of him, both shorter and stockier, but less scary-looking than Dante, the bulges under their jackets a sign that they were both armed to the teeth. Merc and I were outnumbered. Instead of being scared, a shot of adrenaline rushed through my veins like I’d taken a hit of cocaine.

  Merc, the idiot, stepped in between us. “We don’t want any trouble. We were just leaving. We didn’t realize this was your club. No disrespect intended.”

  “I don’t know, Merc,” I said, pushing him aside and glaring defiantly at Dante. “I knew this shithole was Veronesi territory as soon as I smelled the inside of it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Mercutio muttered.

  Dante’s lips curled, his entire face contorting with anger. “You have some nerve coming in here and running your mouth. I think someone needs to teach you some manners.”

  I plucked a pink umbrella from a cocktail that a passing woman was carrying. “Who?” I waved the umbrella at Dante. “You and your entire boy band?” I flicked the cocktail adornment at him. It bounced right off his nose.