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  “Nora, shhh.” I cringed as I imagined my other neighbors hearing.

  “Tell. Me. Everything. Height, specs, penis size.”

  “I don’t know his penis size!”

  “Lame.” She huffed out a breath of air. “Tell me everything anyway.”

  My stomach fluttered, forcing a grin out of me. “Okay.”

  We sat on my couch. I launched into a recap of what had happened with Roman, leaving out the sexy specifics despite Nora’s attempts to tease them out of me. “Every second with him felt so incredible, so natural, like breathing. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, unlike anything I even thought possible.”

  Nora clasped her hands together and let out a sigh, her eyes going all misty. My belly clenched tighter as I spoke about him.

  I missed him.

  I missed his touch, his voice, I missed laughing with him.

  When I told Nora about his offer to take me to Paris, she let out a shriek. “What? Why are you still here?” Her eyes bulged. She looked like she might hit me. “You said no?”

  “I couldn’t have just taken off like that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, you could have. That’s an excuse because you,” she glared at me, “are scared.”

  I tried shrugging off her words, but they had settled like tiny knives in my belly. “What was the point anyway if I did say yes? My life is here in Verona and his is in London. It’d never work out.”

  “When you get my age, you realize that life is short. Sometimes you don’t need to know the ‘point’ of it before you jump in. If it feels right, then do it. Carpe the fuck out of that diem.”

  I bit my lip. I wasn’t scared. I was just being responsible. Right?

  So why did it feel like I had done the wrong thing by not taking a chance with Roman?

  My stomach sank as I realized I could never make it right. He was gone. I was never going to see him again.

  15

  ____________

  Roman

  In the limousine, my father sat facing forward in the middle of the black leather seat, waiting for me. I slid into the seat opposite him, my stomach knotting into a ball. I hadn’t seen my father since I left Verona at eighteen. His dominating presence hadn’t changed.

  He was in his early fifties now but he looked as though he still worked out regularly. His shoulders were linebacker broad, his barrel waist showing little signs of flab in an expensive Armani black pinstripe suit, black shirt and a red silk tie with a matching pocket hankie. He cut an imposing figure, one arm outstretched across the luxuriously soft leather seat, his ankle holster showing a little under the hem of his slacks as he sat with one leg resting on his other knee. I knew he’d probably have a pistol tucked under his suit jacket too.

  His dark hair was slicked back. His goatee was showing the first signs of silver hairs. His black hooded eyes that looked so much like mine bore into me, the lines between his brows set in a permanent frown. I should be used to his look of barely disguised disgust, of bitter disappointment. It never failed to feel like a knife twisting into my gut. I hated him, but for some fucked up reason, I still needed him to approve of me.

  Hi, son. Nice to see you see you again after eight long years. Gee, you’ve grown into a man now. He didn’t bother with such niceties. He rolled his gaze over me, assessing me. Probably wondering why he’d been cursed with such a disappointment.

  “No,” my father said, as Abel tried to get in the back with us. “Get in front.” He turned towards me, his eyes flashing like a storm. “I want to speak to my son, alone.” His voice hadn’t changed; heavy and gravelly, it was the voice of my childhood nightmares.

  Abel shut the door. My father and I were left alone. The bulletproof and soundproof partition was up between us and the front cab. I bit down the growing apprehension in my gut.

  The limo began to move. I shifted in my seat and tried to unclench my jaw. “Where are we going?” I asked my father, the first thing I’d said to his face in eight years.

  “For a drive.”

  I swallowed as I stared out the tinted windows, Verona flashing past us as we turned off from the highway. “I need to be at the airport by eight to catch a flight.”

  My father smiled but it was not friendly. “You thought you could come to Verona, slip in and out of your brother’s funeral without saying hello to your old man? What did I do to deserve such disrespect?” I could hear the cold anger in his voice. He was pissed. More pissed at me than I think he’d ever been.

  I cringed. “I ran out of time. I had too many friends to see and…” I glanced over to him. He was still glaring at me. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “You seemed happy when I left Verona.”

  “Family comes first,” he said. “Family is the most important thing. I’d think that even you’d have learned that by now.”

  I tried to ignore his dig. I tried not to feel his disapproval rolling over me in heavy waves. I was never his favorite son; he had always made that clear. That honor had gone to Jacob, a demon he created in his image, then to Marco, the middle child who got himself exiled from Verona years ago, thanks to his tendency to lash out with violence first, talk never.

  I’d been my mother’s favorite. I’d been born premature and she’d almost lost me. I had been the smallest of her three sons. Because of that, she had treated me with kid gloves, to the disgust of my father. She’d made me soft in his eyes.

  We drove for a few minutes in silence. My phone pinged.

  Mercutio: WTF? Where r u going? Want me to follow u?

  I quickly texted back.

  Me: No. I’ll get him to drop me off at the airport.

  Mercutio: Your passport’s in the duffel.

  Shit. I didn’t think about that.

  Me: Meet me at the airport?

  Mercutio: K.

  Me: Thanks, Merc. I owe u.

  Mercutio: Just don’t get killed.

  It would have been funny if it wasn’t a real possibility. I slipped my phone back into my pocket.

  “Have you enjoyed your time in Europe?” my father asked, irritation clear in his voice. Before I could answer, he added, “Wasting my fucking money?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’ve been studying, learning about—”

  “I know about all the fucking things you’ve been learning. How many parties you can attend, how many fights you can get into, how many European heiresses you can fuck.”

  I bit my tongue. My blood turned bitter at his disapproval, harsh but accurate.

  My father smoothed down his jacket, composing himself. “I’ve withdrawn you from your legal studies at Notre Dame. Your time in Europe is over.”

  No! I was supposed to go back to London, away from all this shit again. “You can’t—”

  “I can and I have.”

  “I have one more semester to go.” I could buy some time. One semester. I could save money in one semester, get a job in Europe after I’d finished my degree. Then I wouldn’t be financially reliant on him. Fuck, why hadn’t I thought of doing this sooner? Because I didn’t plan on Jacob dying. I thought monsters were invincible like my father seemed to be. Only the innocents around them died, like my mother. “I can’t quit right before I finish. Send me back for one last semester.”

  My father sneered. “You’ve been one semester from finishing for the last two fucking years. You had your chance to finish your degree. You wasted it.”

  I sank back into the seat, feeling like it was going to swallow me up, my throat tightening around the realization of my fate. “You can’t do this.”

  “You listen to me,” he leaned forward and thrust his finger into my face, hatred glittering in his eyes. “I have let you drink and fuck your way around Europe for the last eight years,” my father barked out. “What do you have to show for it? Nothing.”

  Rebellion swirled around in my gut. I wanted to slap his hand aside. I knew better than to actually do it. I knew be
tter than to fuck with Giovanni Tyrell when he was like this.

  “I have a life back there,” I said, through my teeth. “Friends. An apartment. I have to go back and say goodb—”

  “Your life is here. I have let you carry on like a spoiled brat for too long. This ends now.”

  “This isn’t f—”

  “Jacob, God rest his soul, is gone. And Marco, exiled, thanks to his stupidity. He can’t run the family business from Colombia. As much as it pains me, you are now the heir to my throne. You are a Tyrell and you’re goddamn going to start acting like a fucking Tyrell, you understand me?”

  That was the end of that discussion. I swallowed down every single raging, defiant reply. They swirled hot in my gut like heartburn. I had no choice. I was the last heir to the Tyrell empire. My father was never letting me get away now.

  A single ray of light pierced through the darkness. If I was forced to stay here, then Julianna and I…

  Until she found out who I was. Until she ran far, far the fuck away from me.

  “Roman, have I made myself clear?” My father’s gravelly voice broke through my thoughts.

  “Yes, father,” I ground out. Welcome home, Roman.

  “You will stay at one of our apartments here in the city. I’ve already organized for the current tenants to move out. I’ll arrange for the stuff in your London apartment to be packed up and shipped back.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you do with my stuff,” I muttered.

  He snorted. “Wasteful, ungrateful son of a bitch. If your mother were alive—”

  I saw red. “You think she’d approve of what you’ve turned this family into, huh? Mama would turn over in her fucking grave if she knew what you did to our family, that you killed her eldest son with your—”

  My father’s fist lashed out faster than I could react. It slammed against my cheek, knocking my face aside, a burst of pain exploding through my cheekbone. Before I could react, he grabbed my chin with his meaty hand and yanked me forward. He leaned in, his eyes like coals burning into me. Suddenly I was twelve again. “If you ever talk to me like that again I will shred you down to your worthless bones with my bare hands. I brought you into this world, I will fucking take you out of it if I have to.”

  He shoved me back, a snarl of disgust on his face. I turned my face away from him, my hands fisted by my sides, my face throbbing on the left side. I could feel a small trickle of blood running down to my jaw, probably from where one of his fat gold rings broke open my skin, but I didn’t wipe it away. Fury whirled around my body like a tornado.

  I had a looming sense, a premonition, that this would end with my father and me facing off. Only one of us would walk away.

  The limo rolled to a stop and I flinched. I hadn’t been paying attention to our surroundings.

  “Get out.”

  Thank fuck this conversation was over.

  “Always a pleasure, Dad.” I didn’t wait for the driver. I kept my fury tightly packed into my veins and threw the door open myself. I stepped out. And froze.

  We weren’t at my new apartment.

  We were at the docks, the smell of salt in the air, parked in front of a dark-looking warehouse, several men with large guns—AK-47s to be precise, judging from the shape and size of them—standing guard at a door, a single floodlight illuminating the entrance, corrugated iron surrounding it. The limo doors opened behind me. Abel and my father got out of the car.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, trying not to let any fear leak into my voice.

  Abel sneered at me. I recognized the same smug satisfaction in his face as earlier. I should have picked up on it before. I should have known something was up.

  My father merely leveled a cool stare at me. “We’re turning you into a man, my son.”

  16

  ____________

  Roman

  Inside the warehouse, I walked down a dark corridor, my father and two of his men in front of me, Abel behind me, herding me like an animal. The only sound was the echoing of our footsteps and the thud of my heart in my chest. No one would tell me what we were doing here. I knew better than to ask again.

  I ignored the apprehension swirling around me and strode onwards with my chin held high. My father and his men were like dogs. If you showed them fear, they would smell it, sense it, and they would tear you to shreds.

  We came to a locked door up ahead. One of the guards pushed in a pin code and a beeping noise sounded. The door ahead clicked open. We gathered into a small security chamber, an iron coffin with yet another door ahead locked by yet another pin code. Abel closed the door behind us, trapping us, the lock clicking into place. I could already feel the oxygen running out in this tiny room, filling instead with the stench of sweat and stale cigarettes. In the top corner of the chamber, the black eye of a camera stared down at us.

  The next door beeped, unlocked and opened, a rush of air flooding the cramped space as I moved forward. The room I stepped into was dark around the edges so I couldn’t quite make out how large it was. I could sense the watchful eyes like hungry beasts around the edges of firelight. I could make out the shadow of pointed guns. The scent of acrid vomit filled my lungs. I repressed a gag. Underneath it, was the smell of piss and the metallic scent of blood.

  A single spotlight cut through the darkness, falling on a man tied to a chair. Jesus Christ. His face had been beaten beyond recognition. All that remained was a swollen mass like a bunch of overripe grapes about to burst. Slits were all that were left of his eyes and mouth. He was covered in blood, drenched in it as if someone had showered him with it, now clumped and coagulating in places.

  By his chair was a small silver trolley. Various knives, a large needle and other sharp metal implements were laid out on it, along with vials of liquid, everything smeared with blood.

  My stomach curdled. I fought to keep the horror from my face. I spun around to my father, standing by my side, his face impassive, merely studying me. I’d always known that he did these kinds of things. Until now I’d been spared the morbid exhibition. I was no stranger to violence; I had inherited the Tyrell temper and had started more than my share of fights, but this was different. This was joyful pleasure in the prolonged pain of another. I didn’t think I’d ever hated my father more in my entire life.

  “What the hell is this?” I demanded. Was this a demonstration of what he’d do to me if I disobeyed him? Some fucked up way of warning me to keep in line?

  “He’s one of Veronesi’s men,” my father said.

  I stiffened. The Veronesis were the rival family blamed for the massacre that had killed Jacob. I turned back to the Veronesi man, my head spinning. I hated whoever killed Jacob. But every slice of me was crying out that this display of torture was wrong. “Did he actually pull the trigger?” I bit out.

  I heard a voice inside of me, laughing. Your father’s right. You are soft.

  “He sides with the Veronesis, which means he as good as pulled the trigger.”

  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.”