by Sienna Blake
“The Tyrells have a number of accounts.”
“Check all of them.”
“All of them?”
“I have an amount and a date. Check all of them.”
There was a soft sigh at the end. “I don’t know why I keep doing shit for you.”
“’Cause you secretly love me.” I couldn’t help but joke despite the situation.
She snorted.
I recited the information Goldfish had given to me. There was a pause and tapping.
Finally, her voice came back online. “Yup, there it is coming out of one of the Tyrell subsidiaries…$7,275, Nemo’s Furniture Removals, thirtieth of August.”
My blood turned cold.
Goldfish was telling the truth. My father lied to me. He paid to have Julianna kidnapped.
The contract’s still open.
23
____________
Julianna
I rose to awareness like a drowning woman reaching from under the surface of an icy lake. For what seemed like ages, awakeness seemed removed from me by a thin sheet of ice. I fought against it, kicking and screaming for life. Finally I broke through.
My eyes opened. I inhaled sharply, drawing sharp, frigid air into my lungs, and sat up. My head spun. I reached down to steady myself, finding a cold, smooth surface.
Where was I?
My mind scrambled to piece together the last few minutes of consciousness. I had been in a cab before the doors had been locked. I had been knocked out by some kind of gas. I had been taken. By whom?
I squinted through the dim, trying to figure out where I was. It was a room perhaps the size of a small bedroom, empty shelves about the place. A single fluorescent light bulb flickered over me, the only one working, casting a greenish sickly spotlight over me. There was a distinct smell of something rotting. The air felt wet. I frowned. The walls and floor were white and shiny, like marker board. So was the ceiling. High along one wall there were three air conditioning units on shelves. There were no windows that I could see. A large door like a barn door took up part of one wall, sheets of plastic draped before it.
I knew what this was. I was in an old cold storage room.
“I did warn you to be careful, didn’t I, Detective Capulet?”
My blood froze.
Protruding from the shadows on one side stood a man whose features looked so similar to those that I treasured.
Roman’s father.
He stepped forward so I could see him properly. With a wide frame dressed in a midnight-black suit, leather shoes so polished they shined, Giovanni Tyrell was just as intimidating and imposing as I remembered him to be. His dark hair was slicked back off his stern features, and his sharp dark eyes studied me from under thick brows. It unnerved me that I could see fragments of Roman’s face in his.
Several rifles cocked, their barrels pointing out of the shadows, letting me know that he and I were not alone. I slid back, keeping my distance, keeping my features schooled, even though inside I was lashing out like an animal cornered. It would do me no good. I had to bide my time. Gather as much information as I could, then figure how to get the hell out of here.
When I spoke, my voice came out steadier than I felt, thank God. “What do you want with me?”
“Don’t take it so personally,” he said, his voice rough like the rumble of an engine.
“It’s a little difficult not to take it personally when I’m the one being held here against my will.”
“You’re just a means to an end, my dear. With you I get to kill two birds with one stone, excuse the pun.” He grinned, a horrible smile of teeth and stretched lips.
I tensed. “I don’t understand. I’m just a lowly detective.”
He let out a curt laugh. “Don’t play coy with me, girl.”
“I’m not.”
He pursed his mouth. “You know, you remind me of Maria, my deceased wife, God rest her soul. You both have spunk. A spark. That certain bewitching quality.” His features hardened. “And that annoying habit of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
The hair on my arms stood on end. Look where Maria Tyrell ended up.
“No matter,” Giovanni continued. “In the end, I can turn anything to my advantage.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “What plans do you have for me?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?” He turned and exited my cell. I could do nothing but stand there as the nameless guards retreated after him, their guns trained on me until the door was slammed shut and locked.
I had no idea what Giovanni meant. I only knew that his plans could not be good. I had to warn Roman but I had no idea where I was or how the hell I was going to get out.
24
____________
Roman
My father. My own damn father had Julianna.
I pushed through the doors to my father’s library, where I had been told he was. The library was a medium-sized room, the walls lined with tall bookcases almost to the ceiling. It was carpeted in a warm green, the color of moss. Around a fireplace were several high-backed armchairs.
My father reclined in his large crimson leather armchair, his slippered feet resting on a matching leather pouf, a round crystal-cut glass filled with amber liquid. He was staring off into space. It was past midnight, but he was still awake as I knew he would be. He’d been an insomniac for as long as I could remember.
Even when I was a child, he often sat in here alone except for his volumes and volumes of books—mostly business and politics. He would often make me read them as a teenager. My father might be an immoral man but he wasn’t stupid. He was never violent for the sake of being violent. Every one of his decisions was strategic, calculated and had a purpose. Even the bloody ones. He clawed his way to the top of the underground world using his brain and his penchant for getting his hands dirty. A deadly combination.
For a split second, before he noticed me, when he still thought he was alone, he looked…open and vulnerable, lost in his thoughts. How could someone so evil, so ruthless, so monstrous, look so fragile? So human. So lonely.
I imagined that he was replaying the faces of all the men he’d sent to their deaths. Did they whisper to him as they whispered to me when I was alone? Did he regret the things he did? Did he hate who he’d become? He wasn’t always this man. My mother wouldn’t have loved him if he was. I wondered if he ever thought back to the first decision he made that turned him down this dark road. Whether, knowing what he did now, he would have made the same decision. I noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, the downward pull of the corner of his lips and the great weight that curved his shoulders. I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost. The sight of him sitting comfortably while he kept Julianna somewhere against her will made my blood boil. If he let his men hurt her, if they so much as touched her, I would slaughter every last one of them myself, damn the consequences.
For now, I had to keep pretending I was on his side. I had to keep playing the dutiful son. The deserving heir. At least until I got her back. When I got her back, God help me…I would burn his fucking empire to the ground with him in it.
I tucked away the river of fire in my veins. I promised the monster inside of me that he would get his revenge, and I composed my features. I was a Tyrell. I knew how to keep my emotions in check. I cleared my throat. “Father.”
He looked over, his humanness melting into the stern mask that I knew so well. His lip curled up into a snarl, my standard greeting. “So good of you to return, son,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “But then again, I knew you would eventually.”
He thought I could never survive without him. He was wrong. So wrong. Today would not be the day I proved that to him.
I brushed off his jab. I strode over to the liquor cabinet on one wall, opened the stopper of the crystal bottle that he had left out and took a sniff. Cognac. No doubt the finest that money could buy. “Family first,” I said. “Isn’t what you
always say?”
He let out a scoff behind me. “Since when do you actually listen to me?”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he sounded bitter.
I poured myself a stiff drink and turned to face him. He eyed my freshly pressed black pants and black button-up shirt. I’d showered and changed out of my wrinkled clothes before coming to him. My wardrobe of Giovanni-approved suits and smart-casual clothes hung in the bedroom that had been kept here for me. My attire, at least, he couldn’t disapprove of.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I had men looking for you.”
I snorted. “They didn’t do a very good job of finding me.”
“Or you did a very deliberate job of hiding from them.”
I shrugged. “I was upset over what happened to…Mercutio.” I tripped over his name. But quickly composed myself. “I took a few days out on my own.”
My father let out a sneer. “Whoring and drinking, I suppose. You look like shit.”
So, he’d noticed the bags under my eyes and where they were red from being rubbed. He always found something to criticize. Somehow this time, it stung less. Maybe because I had finally let go of caring what he thought of me. More likely, the underlying fear over Julianna’s safety overruled anything else.
I raised my glass in a mock salute. “You just know me so well, Father.”
I walked to the chair beside his on the bearskin rug and sat, crossing my ankle over my leg, taking a large sip of the liquor, letting the burn ease down my throat, soothing me.
When I looked over to my father, he was watching me closely. “I hear we have a…guest,” I said as casually as I could. I wanted nothing more than to knock him to the floor and slam my fist into his face until he told me where she was. My father would never give her up if he knew that was the thing I wanted most.
My father tilted his head at me. “And how do you know this?”
I shrugged. “I hear things. I have my own sources, you know?”
“What does that mean?”
I leveled a stare at him, some of my antagonism leaking out. “It means that some of the men in our business understand the way things are going. They wish to future-proof their standing in my empire.”
“My empire,” he growled.
“For now. I am the heir you are grooming to fill your shoes. After all, nobody lives forever,” I said with a lightness that hid the threat underneath.
For a second my father’s nostrils flared, a touch of color rising to his cheeks. Then he let out a small laugh. “Spoken like a true Tyrell,” he said, his words bitter jabs.
I took a large gulp of my drink so that I didn’t lash back out at him, letting the fire going down my throat burn my anger away. At least for now.
“What’s the plan for our guest? I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been made privy to them.”
“I’m disappointed I haven’t been made privy to your whereabouts,” my father snapped.
“You’re already privy to that, Father. Drinking and whoring. Do you really want the details?”
My father snorted and swallowed the last of his drink in one large gulp.
“So…” I said, steering the conversation back to the burning question. “The girl?”
“She’s a negotiation tool.”
“With whom?”
“Her father will be missing her in a day or two. I’ll have a set of demands for him soon.”
“What demands?”
My father tilted his head. “All in good time, son. For now, you are not to leave this compound.”
I could push. But I didn’t want to make myself seem so desperate to hear the answers. My father wasn’t a stupid man. At least I knew that Julianna was alive.
For the moment.
No weapon, no evidence, no witnesses.
Julianna was a witness. My stomach twisted. Whatever he had planned would not end without her dead and taking his secrets with her.
It took everything to stand up and walk away without demanding any more information or that he take me to her, my glass left on the table by the chair.
I had to get her out alive before my father had a chance to execute his plan. I couldn’t take any chances. Not with her life.
An idea stirred in my head…
Could I turn against my own father? Leaving him was one thing, but could I betray him? Could I turn my back on my family? Could I destroy my father’s legacy, as dark as it was?
I paused at the door to his library, my hand on the cold knob. I turned to face my father again.
“What?” he growled.
“Do you miss Mama?” I asked.
He stiffened. “Why are you asking me such questions?”
“Do you?” I pushed. “Miss her?”
Even from here, I saw the flash of pain in his eyes. He slumped back into his chair, his gaze becoming unfocused. I knew he was thinking of her. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about your mother.”
My gut knotted. In some deep, hidden part of him, my father still loved her. His love for her was like a single pure seed covered by layers of dirt, twisted roots and the thick matted branches of an overgrown forest. “If you could have her back, but you had to give up this…” I waved my arm. “Everything. Your empire. Would you do it?”
Please, Dad, just one small sign of goodness. Show me one. Just one.
He could barely meet my gaze. For the first time in my life, my father dropped his God-like guard and looked like any one of us mere mortals. For a second he looked like a lost boy, grabbing at ghosts.
His face froze over like the fast approach of a winter’s frost. “I built this empire with my bare hands. Twenty years it took me to amass this kind of power. This is my legacy. Your mother was determined to ruin that before…” he trailed off. He straightened in his chair, his eyes blazing. “I would not give up our legacy for anything.”
That single seed died. Choked to death under that black, hateful forest. There were no more chances left for redemption.
It turned out there was part of my father in me, because when his heart froze over, so did mine. I knew what I had to do. And I would carry no guilt over doing it. I would betray my father, turn my back on my family and burn his cursed legacy to the ground.
* * *
I slipped past my father’s guards and defied his order not to leave the compound. I stood in front of the white painted house in a leafy suburb of Verona. The windows were trimmed in a deep red, matching the door, a weather vane straddling the terracotta-tiled roof. The dawn was just brushing the edges of the horizon, painting the quaint street in a pastel light. The whole scene was so…quaint. So wholesome.
I felt a flicker of envy inside me at the sight of Julianna’s childhood. She told me about falling out of the tree on her lawn, a large towering oak, when she was eight, breaking her arm. Here on this footpath was where she used to draw hopscotch boxes with chalk. I imagined her taking her first ride down this driveway without training wheels on her bike. I smiled despite my situation.
I hadn’t been followed here. I made sure of that. Still, I glanced around me again before I walked up the driveway. Standing on the porch, I stared for a moment at the door. I knew the chief was up because I could hear footsteps inside and the slight rabble of the early morning news on a radio.
I had to make him listen to me. Surely he would put his prejudice aside if it meant he could save his daughter. Right? My stomach churned. This would either go right or it would go horribly wrong.
I forced down my apprehension and knocked on the door.
I heard footsteps then the door opened. Chief Montgomery Capulet appeared in the doorway. He frowned at me. “Yes?”
I pushed back my hood. The chief’s eyes, so much like Julianna’s, flared with recognition. He snatched his gun from his hip and pointed it in my face.
I lifted my palms but I stood my ground. “You could shoot me right now, but then you’ll never get Julianna back.”
�
��You son of a bitch—”
“I don’t have her. But I know who does. And I know how to get her back.”
The chief cursed. “I knew something was wrong when she stopped answering my calls.”
“Please, let me in. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
The chief shuffled his feet, suspicion rolling off him in waves. Still, I could sense his desperation. He wanted to believe me. His eyes narrowed. “Why would you help me?”
“Because…I care about her as much as you do.”
“Liar.” He stepped forward so the barrel of his gun was inches from my face.
I didn’t flinch. I just held his gaze. “Jules told me about how the two of you used to make pancakes for your late wife on her birthday. Blueberry pancakes. She said that you used to take her and her mom camping out on the lake in the Virgin Forest every July. She told me that you and your wife used to put old Louie Armstrong records on low and dance in the living room on Sundays after you thought she’d gone to sleep. She used to watch you both through the stair railings without you knowing and dream of one day finding a love like that.” As I spoke, the chief’s face softened, his mouth parting wider at each intimate detail I revealed. “Do you want me to go on?”
“She…She told you those things?”
I nodded.
There was a long, terse pause. He lowered the gun but kept it close to his side. He glanced around the street to see if anyone was watching. No one was. I had made sure I wasn’t followed. He turned his hard amber eyes, so much like hers, upon me before stepping back to let me in.
Once inside, he patted me down before he directed me into the living room of his family home, his gun still in his hand. I could see touches of a woman here—the faded pastel yellow of the walls trimmed with cream, soft gray and yellow curtains in a large floral pattern, fringed cushions on the couches. But I could see the years of being a single man layered on top of it: old yellowing newspapers in piles on the chairs and carpet, dirty coffee cups left on each flat surface, water stains in rings from glasses without coasters.