ROMA KING: Book 1 in the Roma Royals Duet

by Hart, Callie

  I prepare to tell Paul that he’s completely useless at his job and that he’s wrong, but I catch myself. The guy has no reason to lie. And I stare at call logs all day long. They’re pretty difficult to misinterpret, being simple lists of numbers, dates and times. There’s no real way to get them wrong. “I don’t understand how that can be true, though.” I strain to keep my voice even. “I swear, the phone has been ringing. Every night. I’ve been lying in bed, listening to it ring since Tuesday.”

  “Do you live in the apartment block on that corner there?”

  “Yes. My apartment faces the street. My bedroom window looks out right over the payphone.”

  “And you’re sure the ringing couldn’t be coming from a telephone in one of the other apartments?”

  God, he must think I’m so fucking dumb. “I’m positive. I was standing right next to it the first time it rang. It’s that payphone. It is ringing. I know it is. It’s relentless. It rings for hours at a time. For the love of all things holy, Paul, I really need it to stop.”

  “Ma’am, it can’t ring for hours. The line gets disconnected after twelve rings if no one picks up.”

  “Twelve? Ha! I got to three hundred and eighty-seven rings last night before I gave up and stopped counting. Three hundred and eighty-seven!”

  “Okay. Okay, I understand. I’m sure we’ll be able to figure this out.” Paul’s tone has gone from disinterested and distant to pacifying and placating. I realize then, with a flush of embarrassment, that Paul is beginning to think I am crazy.

  Lord Almighty…

  I close my eyes, slumping in my seat. I can’t blame him for thinking that; I’m acting fucking crazy. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m just sleep deprived, and—”

  “Would it make you feel better if a tech came to assess the payphone, Miss Llewelyn? I can have someone out to look at the unit on Monday at three?” Paul asks.

  I sigh a breath of relief. “Actually, that would be great. I’d appreciate that very much. Thank you.”

  I note the details of the technician’s appointment in my phone, feeling more than a little foolish. I don’t know why the ringing phone is bothering me so much, why I can’t just let it go and put it out of my mind, but there is something preventing me from moving on. Something about the constantly ringing phone that’s so disconcerting to me; I can’t bear the thought of going home and going to bed, knowing that it’s going to start ringing again, the moment I try to pass out.

  “Miss Llewleyn?” Paul asks. “I do have a suggestion that might resolve this problem sooner than Monday, if you’d be willing to consider it?”

  “Of course! What is it?”

  “If you do happen to hear the phone ringing again…you could always just go down and answer it.”

  “Answer it?”

  “Yeah. If you answer it, you could let the caller know that they have a wrong number and maybe they won’t call anymore. That’s what is it in most of these types of situations. A mistake. Just a wrong number.”

  Just a wrong number.

  It’s never occurred to me before that the ringing phone might be a person mistakenly trying to connect with someone else. It’s always seemed as though it’s a prank—someone taking pleasure out of causing disruption and looking to cause trouble.

  I hum distractedly as I ponder Paul’s suggestion. “Yeah. Well. I suppose I could do that.”

  * * *

  “Zara, can I see you in my office for a second, please?”

  An hour before my shift is due to end, Roger, the shift supervisor, comes and stands on the other side of my desk. He’s an insubstantial man who always looks like he’s on the verge of getting sick. His hair is thinning and lies flat against his skull in slick wisps like the hair of a newborn baby, and his clothes are usually rumpled and less than fresh. He’s softly spoken, and his eyes have a way of flitting around the room when he’s talking to you instead of looking at you, as if the concept of making eye contact makes the man very nervous indeed. For all of that, I like Roger.

  He took on his niece and nephew after his brother and his wife died in a car accident four years ago, and he’s the compassionate type. He cares about people, and often goes well out of his way to make sure his staff are content and happy.

  The expression on his face as he asks me to join him in his office sends a thrill of panic racing through me. “Sure. Is…everything okay?” What is it? What have I done wrong? What mistake have I made that now has Roger about to fire me? Nothing immediately springs to mind, but there has to be something. He wouldn’t look so anxious otherwise.

  “No need to be alarmed,” he murmurs. “I just need a few minutes of your time, that’s all. The police are here…”

  Holy shit. It must have been the phone technician. He reported me for being weird and aggressive earlier. Roger must see me blanch, because he holds up his right hand and pats the air—a calm-the-fuck-down motion he breaks out whenever he thinks people are about to start hyperventilating. “The police are here to ask you about a call you received earlier this week, that’s all. They want to ask you some questions.”

  Oh.

  Corey.

  This is about the little boy. I know it is, even before Roger finishes speaking. My stomach has tied itself into a knot by the time we reach Roger’s office and the guy in the black bomber jacket and bright red baseball cap turns around to face us. I was expecting officers in uniform, maybe two detectives wearing trench coats, but the lone guy in his civvies meets none of the intimidating stereotypes I’ve conjured in my head.

  Brown hair, poking out from under his cap. Brown eyes. He’s young, probably only a couple of years older than me. He emits an air of brash confidence as he holds out his hand and gives me an efficient, economical flash of a smile.

  “Miss Llewelyn, right? I’m Detective Holmes.”

  “Please. Call me Zara.” I surprise myself with my cool, calm tone; I’m neither cool nor calm, but the timbre of my voice belies my anxiety. Shaking Detective Holmes’s hand, I move further into the room so Roger can sit behind his desk. The detective and I take seats beside one another, and the fresh bite of spearmint hits the back of my nose—he must have just spit out his gum.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’ve come all the way down here to bother you,” Detective Holmes says. “Mr. Walker tells me you’re about to finish up for the day, so I won’t keep you for long. I just had a couple of questions I wanted to ask you about a call you got on Tuesday. Would that be okay?”

  I nod. My pulse inexplicably pounds at my temples.

  “A little boy. He wanted medical help for his brother. Do you remember the call?”

  I don’t blink. It feels like something terribly important is about to happen, and I’ll miss it if I blink. “Yeah, I do. He was very distressed. I believe his brother was actually dead, but I’m not sure...”

  Holmes nods. “The EMTs recorded him as D.O.A. Drug overdose. They originally thought it was accidental, but we’ve since come to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t. There was a struggle. A number of items were stolen from the house. A substantial amount of money from a safe in the pool house.”

  “I’m sorry? Pool house?”

  “Yeah. The safe was wide open when the parents got home, but they insist Jamie, the deceased kid, didn’t know the combination.”

  I try to process this piece of information, but the words slide out of my head like butter off a hot knife. I’m still stuck on the words pool house. I’ve been picturing Corey in a dirty, messy one bed apartment without power or heat. Turns out Corey lives somewhere that has a pool house, which makes no sense to me, because little boys who live in places like that are watched over twenty-four seven. They have loving parents who work hard and get paid well. They don’t wake up in the middle of the night, alone, to find that their brother has been killed.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Petrov arrived home from St. Bart’s late on Wednesday. They’ve hired a slew of lawyers to handle ‘the situation’ as they’re calling
it, so it’s impossible to get a straight answer out of them, but we’re trying to get ahead of this thi—”

  “I’m sorry.” I frown, angling my head to one side as I stare at the detective. “Did you just say…Petrov?”

  A knowing, weary look flickers over Detective Holmes’s face. “You’ve heard the name then.”

  I have. Everyone has. The Petrov family are notorious in Spokane. Their name began cropping up five years ago, when the family first moved into town and opened up a Russian restaurant. No one believed the place would last long. There was no Russian community to speak of here, and while people are generally adventurous and like to try new things, it seemed unlikely that they’d continue to frequent a restaurant that served strange and unusual dishes that no one could really pronounce.

  The restaurant succeeded, however, and soon the Petrov family were opening up laundromats, and florists, and liquor stores, and autobody shops. They flourished, at a time when everyone else seemed to be struggling to make ends meet, in a town that didn’t really need any more laundromats, or florists, or liquor stores, and autobody shops, and slowly a general concern began to creep in at the corners of people’s minds.

  Everyone knows the Petrovs are connected to the Russian mafia in some way. It’s an unspoken fact that no one really wants to talk about. Talking about it means that it’s real. That the men you saw entering the laundromat at two in the morning, wearing five thousand dollar suits, their hair slicked back, eyes hidden behind expensive sunglasses, did not go in there to launder their clothes.

  “They’ve managed to keep Jamie’s death out of the news for the time being, but it won’t be long before the story leaks,” Detective Holmes continues. “All hell’s gonna break loose, and we want to try and get ahead of this thing.”

  Folding my hands in my lap, then separating them, placing a palm on either knee, I look him dead in the eye. “All right. I don’t know how I’m going to be of any help but ask away. I’ll do my best.”

  The detective gives me another brief smile. “As you’re obviously aware, all emergency calls are recorded and saved to a shared drive within each dispatch command. They’re saved to an external server, too, just in case. In this instance, it seems both copies of Corey’s 911 call have somehow been…corrupted.” His voiced sours at the end of his sentence—clearly, he doesn’t believe this at all. He believes something else happened, and he isn’t happy about it.

  “Was there no written transcript?” I ask.

  Detective Holmes pulls a face. “Apparently, it’s been misplaced. If you could give me a rundown of the call as best you can, I believe it’d be very helpful to us at this point,” Detective Holmes says.

  It’s unheard of that a recorded call might be erased or damaged. It just doesn’t happen. There are so many safe guards in place to prevent such a loss that I’m frankly astonished by what he’s telling me right now. But for the written transcript to have gone missing as well? Something is definitely not right here. “Uh…okay. Sure. Well…” I cast my mind back and replay the call from the moment it connected to the moment it disconnected, and then I relay that information to Detective Holmes.

  “I know he said he was scared, Zara, but did he seem scared? Did he sound terrified?”

  “I mean…frightened, yes. Scared for his brother. But not terrified.”

  “And did he mention if he’d spoken to this other man who showed up at the house?”

  “No, he didn’t. He just said that his brother had told him to go to his room. He didn’t say if he knew the man who was there, or if he’d had any direct interaction with him.”

  Disappointment rolls of the detective. “Did he say if the man was still there at the house when he called?”

  “I asked, and he said no, it was just him and his brother.”

  “Right. And you heard no other sound in the background?”

  “No.”

  “No other sound whatsoever? No voices, no music, no engine sounds, or…I don’t know. Anything that might give us a lead?”

  I close my eyes, reliving the conversation again. It’s all there, floating just below the surface of my memory, so vivid and so clear that it feels like Corey’s whispering into my ear again, spilling his secrets, telling me that a man has come to his home and his brother won’t wake up. “No. I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything. Believe me…if I could help you find the guy who killed Corey’s brother, I would in a heartbeat.”

  Detective Holmes nods, setting his jaw. He was clearly optimistic when we started our conversation, but there’s nothing left of that optimism now. I just crushed whatever hope he brought into this office with him. Blowing hard down his nose, he rises from his chair and bows his head. “Yeah. This guy obviously needs to pay for killing Jamie. But right now, we’re more concerned with finding Corey. It’s been well over seventy-two hours, and typically, once a kid’s been missing for this long—”

  I watch Detective Holmes’s mouth move with a sick kind of fascination. He speaks for at least a full minute, but his words are lost on me. I hear nothing he says; my ears roaring with the rushing of my blood and with a wall of white noise that prevents me from registering anything else. He shakes my hand, and I mutter my thanks, or maybe I apologize to him again for not being more helpful. Hell, I could have just wished him a merry Christmas and I wouldn’t know it. My body’s on auto pilot until the man has walked out of the office, and his back has disappeared down the hallway and out of sight.

  Slowly, I turn to Roger. “Missing? That little boy is missing?”

  Roger picks up his coffee mug and stares into it morosely. It must be empty. He’s a nervous coffee drinker. “The EMTs didn’t find anyone at the property when they arrived. The deceased boy was in the living room. They searched the rest of the place after they’d established that there was nothing they could do for Jamie. There was no one there.”

  “But that’s impossible. I heard them arrive. I heard them kicking in the door.”

  Roger’s brows bank together. “The EMT’s report said the door was already open when they arrived. If you heard someone kicking in the door, then…” He sighs, still squinting into his mug. “Perhaps you did hear something useful after all, Zara.”

  4

  PASHA

  FIREFLY

  Her hands are small.

  The roadmap of veins under her skin, tinged blue and green, capture my attention, refusing to release it as I trace my fingers over them. She is a work of wonder. Her body is like nothing I’ve ever beheld before—perfectly proportioned, all gentle curves, the lines of her artfully rendered—and I can feel my dick stirring in my pants as I trail my fingers up, up, up, along the slender line of her arm, my heart thumping like a kick-drum as I reach her collarbone. Her breath catches in her throat as I stroke the side of her neck, and I begin to realize how absolutely fucked I am.

  This woman is dangerous.

  I transitioned from boy to man a long damn time ago, but never before have I experienced anything close to the surge of testosterone that streams through me as I look down into her hazel eyes. Stunning eyes. Not wholly brown, or blue, or green. A myriad of colors and hues that seem to shift and change with her mood, depending on how she’s feeling. Right now, they’re predominantly blue, the color of cornflowers and Delphinium. A dark, rich brown rims her irises, throwing the blue into contrast, and I see the desire building in her as she stares back at me.

  Her voice is sad when she speaks, though. “Oh, Pasha. You’re in love with me.” From the way she says this, it seems as if she’s only just realized this, and she’s surprised.

  “Of course I am,” I answer. “I always have been. I always will be.”

  “But…I’m a ghost,” she whispers.

  I touch the tips of my fingers to her mouth. “You’re real to me.” How could she not be? Everything about her screams ‘I’m alive!’ Her hair is like tamed fire, a deep, burnished auburn, shot through with enough copper, gold and cinnamon to set the world alight. I bury my no
se into it, inhaling the floral yet sharp smell of her, filling my lungs with her scent, as if it’s the only thing that can sustain me.

  “I want you so bad, Firefly,” I whisper into her ear. “I need you wet. I need you panting. I need to feel your pussy tighten as I push inside you. I need it more than anything else in the world.”

  “More than air?” she whispers.

  “Yes. More than air.”

  “More than food?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than water?”

  I nod.

  “More than sunlight? Or the wind? Or the moon hanging over the mountains at night?”

  She knows how much these things mean to me. How my soul would shrivel up and die without them. I cup her face in the palms of my hands, and I press my mouth to hers; she tastes like the dew on spring grass. “Yes, Firefly. I need it more than life itself. I need you to give yourself to me.”

  The sound of her laughter, laced with hunger and lust, nearly takes me out at the fucking knees. “What are you going to give me in return?”

  “All that I am. Everything. And nothing, depending on your perspective.”

  She flicks my top lip with the tip of her tongue, and a surge of heat climbs from my boots, scorching everything in its path as it devours me, rising to the crown of my head before settling in my chest. I want to fucking consume her. There’s a part of me that wants to fucking destroy her, if only so no one else will ever be able to look at her.

  “Everything,” she breathes. “You’re everything. I’d say you have yourself a deal.”

  The darkness shifts around us, and we’re transported. A huge bed lies before us, dressed in raw silk sheets the color of blood, and the woman, my precious firefly, topples backwards, her full, heavy breasts bouncing as she hits the mattress.

  I see nothing else.

  I’m aware of nothing else but her.

  Her naked form is beyond perfection. Long legs; ample hips; narrow waist. At the apex of her thighs, the dark smattering of auburn hair has my breath quickening and my fingernails cutting into the skin of my palms. Her hair spreads out around her head like a halo made of spun, glowing light.