Her Villain: A Dark Bully Romance (Aqua Vitae Duet Book 1)

by Ellie Meadows

  Yet it turned out to be my saving grace in the end.

  I didn’t play nicely with partners. I jumped into the cooking fire without the pan’s permission. As a rookie cop, I’d been told more than once by my Captain that I had a deep-seated problem with authority, and I needed to learn to respect the hierarchy of the system. I couldn’t though, not when the system had failed my family so horribly. It’s part of the reason I became a cop in the first place. So other families would get better treatment. So other mothers wouldn’t die and never have justice served.

  There had to be at least one person who never gave up, who never threw in the towel. One person who said: I’m here until the truth is brought to light.

  Rookies don’t pick and choose assignments, Capuleti. Rookies go where they’re told, they learn the ropes, and they earn their places. My field training officer Danny Peters had zero patience for my antics. He did his best, impressing upon me proper protocol on the job. He walked me through handling small domestic spats and navigating basic theft calls. It was all very routine. Whilst the police academy put a premium on high stress incidents like active shooter response and felony car stops, rookies were never ready for the basics out of the academy. But that was fine because I never wanted to handle the basics anyway.

  What did I care if a convenience store got some chips and sodas stolen by a bunch of teenagers? I wanted what the academy had trained me to expect—bad guys. Real bad guys. The adrenaline of a chase. Slapping cuffs on a violent perp. I wanted to keep innocents from being hurt by locking up the danger.

  I’m the first to admit that I rebelled against my duty.

  Get your head in the game, Capuleti. This is child’s play, and if you can’t handle this, then you’re never going to move to Major Crimes. And that’s your goal, right? To hunt the kind of bastards that killed your momma? Well, you’ve got to pay the piper, Kid. I hated when Danny called me a kid. But he’d forced me to see that if I didn’t shape up, I’d never get to Major Crimes.

  When another rookie fell in the line of duty because they didn’t follow protocol, I took Danny’s words to heart. I slammed my nose firmly against the grindstone, and I’d started paying my dues. I worked my way through undergrad, taking classes online and at night. I made Detective in four years and moved to Major Crimes before I turned 22.

  But I’d still crossed a line. Still jumped into the fucking fire without permission.

  It was about a year after making Major Crimes that I was put on desk duty, presented with a stack of those dreaded old folders and stripped of my gun until my probation was over. And inside the stained from coffee spills and crusty from old food files, I found my salvation.

  A young girl killed in her own bedroom.

  It was the grandfather, dismissed because he was wheelchair bound.

  A teenage boy left in the woods to drown in his own vomit.

  A high school party gone wrong; his best friend still had the overdose pills in his bedroom.

  I decided that if no one else would solve Mom’s murder, I would.

  But to get my hands on that particular case, I had to move away from the LAPD and towards the FBI. Because mom’s case was part of a larger investigation. A serial killer, crossing state lines and killing at random. No one had successfully built a profile to pinpoint the bastard. All his victims were too different, his MO too varied. In fact, the only thing someone could confidently say about The Rose Killer was that they were willfully random.

  And they had a thing for roses. Roses that held significance. Probable bad men were left with the black flowers, slaughtered innocents left with the white.

  Sometimes he’d leave someone alive, scarred forever and abandoned in a sea of blood, as if he wanted witnesses to his crimes.

  That happened, often. It wasn’t only that a villain wanted to be caught, it was also a ‘fuck you’ to law enforcement. Like a serial rapist pissing on a victim’s bed.

  A few theories centered around him being some kind of dark vigilante. But The Rose Killer could be murdering both good and bad.

  And even if they were some sort of justice-dealing antihero, that wasn’t how the system worked.

  Bruce Wayne was for comic books. And that sort of one man judge and jury had no place in the real world.

  If I wanted to go after the person who’d ruined my life and caused my father to attempt suicide, I’d need to prove myself.

  So, I built my reputation on solving the fucking impossible. Until at 25 I was dubbed the LAPD’s Queen of Cold Cases. Residence: Major Crimes. The nickname was equal parts respect and derision. ‘She’s pretty, but a fucking weirdo. Got the authorization to work old cases after her probation. They should have fucking fired her if you ask me. She’s showing us up, making us look like goddamn failures. I bet she knows things we don’t. I bet she’s as bad as the killers she hunts.’

  They hated me, though they never said it to my face.

  Well guess what, I learned to hate them too.

  For giving up, when a little imagination could have kept future victims alive.

  But Danny still cared about me, still kept track of me; he called me his eternal rookie because I never would learn to stay in line. We had a standing breakfast back in California. Seven AM at the café on Coliseum Boulevard. Best damn waffles around. I missed those. Our last had been a goodbye before I left for twenty brutal weeks at the FBI Academy.

  -

  “You getting out, Ms. Capuleti? I gotta start charging for stand and wait time if we’re here much longer.”

  I’d tuned the driver out after a while, an amazing feat considering how loud he’d been talking since finding out my identity.

  “Shit,” I murmured, focusing through the car window and seeing the red carpet leading into one of the most expensive hotels in New York. Rays of light shone from rotating ground equipment. They shot to the heavens and disappeared into the night sky, kissing clouds and making the moon appear hazy against their brightness. The gilded entrance glittered, and the checkered ground teamed with valets. A burgundy rope cordoned off the reporters. Cameras flashed nonstop.

  “Swanky,” the cabby breathed out.

  “Can you pull around the corner? I’ll get out there.”

  “Naw. Make an entrance why don’t you? You’re every bit as good as the Richie Riches.”

  “Please,” I begged.

  “All right, all right. Have it your way.” He shifted into gear and drove us through the maze of expensive vehicles and limos, turning down the next street and pulling over.

  “How much do I owe you?” I leaned forward, trying to read the meter.

  “Right in front of you, Ms. Capuleti. You can pay with your card or phone, whatever.”

  I glanced down at the charge meter set into the door. Sheepishly, I took my card from the petite wristlet bag and swiped it quickly, paying the over forty dollars to drive me across the city. Maybe I should get a car…

  “You have a good time, Ms. Capuleti.” He kept saying my name, as if we were friends. As if he was familiar with my life and pain, just because he’d read the same damn news article every other person did. “You’re my last fare. Ain’t looking forward to traffic on the bridge.”

  “George Washington shouldn’t be too bad. Everyone comes into the city on Saturday.” I tried to smile, but my insides were all jumbled.

  He chuckled. “Too right there. Everyone wants out of Jersey and into New York. Never got the appeal though. Give me the shore any day.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” I muttered, swinging open the door and planting one too high stiletto heel onto the uneven sidewalk.

  “Thank you. Now I got a story to tell the wife. She’ll never believe I met a Capuleti!”

  Because meeting a murder victim’s daughter is so interesting...

  I got out and slammed the door closed, but immediately wished I hadn’t. I could just go home, make some excuse about feeling ill or having... having a fucking wardrobe malfunction. I should have stayed in the cab.


  God, I wished I’d stayed in the cab.

  I avoided any sort of large gathering as a general rule, but I especially avoided the upper echelon of New York City. With these people, even more so than your average city dweller, Sandra Capuleti was still a household name. I’d been photographed by enough paparazzi and in enough rag magazines for my face to be pretty well known as well. When I’d first come to NY again, I’d flown under the radar. But that hadn’t lasted.

  Murdered Charity Darling’s Daughter Returns Home.

  The Prodigal Daughter of Slaughtered Sandra Capuleti Now Fights for Justice!

  Here though, unlike in the cab, I had a reason to hide my face. Before walking back around the corner and closer to the building, I slipped the black mask over my face. At some point in the evening, there was supposed to be a big reveal. All masks would come off and some special guest was making a speech.

  I’d slip out before then and hopefully finish the evening without being recognized a second time. Today had been hard enough already.

  4.

  Romero

  I’d been after The Apothecary for over a year. He fancied himself a revolutionary chemist, mixing new drugs and having his men pass them out at clubs for testing. If only one partygoer died, he considered his new concoction a success and it hit the streets. His latest offering was called Rapture X.

  New York Presbyterian had seen twenty overdoses in the past week, all college kids. Three DOA, ten still in critical condition. The tox screens all came back the same—MDMA with an LSD twist. They called it Candyflipping on the street, chase one drug with the other after a certain amount of time. Not cutting edge per say, but The Apothecary had found a way to combine the two drugs. One hit instantly, the secondary was slow release. It meant that users didn’t have to wait four hours to pop the next pill. They got the euphoria of LSD followed by the elevated emotions of Molly on auto drive.

  But it was too much for some people. And this last batch had been fucking tainted. He’d killed a bunch of kids. He’d cross the goddamn line.

  The DEA and the FBI had been working in tandem to catch the son of a bitch, but they’d only gotten the small potatoes at the bottom of the food chain. And none of them would flip. They knew what waited for snitches in prison. I’d been patient. But no longer. Not after reading the police reports and seeing the hospital records. I had eyes everywhere, cameras and informants and hackers that could find out pretty much anything for the right price.

  And I’d finally pinned the bastard.

  Gregory Mathias. A renowned plastic surgeon with a background in biochemistry. And the asshole was here tonight.

  The limo pulled to a halt at the back of the hotel.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive around the front, Mr. Montego? That seems to be where all the action’s at.” The driver seemed nervous. Newer to the business maybe. He was fucking young, baby faced and still hopeful about the world.

  “No, this is fine. Wait here for me. I’ll be roughly two hours.” I gave the orders quickly, opening the door myself when he didn’t climb out to do it for me. Something like that would have sent my father over the edge, but I wasn’t my father. I would never be my father. I’d spent the years since his death trying to repair some of the damage he’d done. I’d gotten out of the weapons business.

  Though my new pastime was no less bloodstained.

  I pushed the door closed behind me after standing up. My fingers automatically adjusted the tux, buttoning the sleek jacket and swiping a hand down the scarlet tie to brush away any wrinkles. Not that the Italian silk wrinkled. From my pants pocket, I retrieved a slim black mask. Having an excuse to hide my face made things all the easier. Last, I checked my breast pocket.

  The black rose nearly blended into the black suit.

  But I knew it was there. I knew what it meant.

  “Where is he now?” I spoke softly, mounting the rear stairs towards an employee door that was currently guarded by a man twice my size. Balthasar was situated in a building across the street; our comms were rated to 1500 meters, but we kept things tighter.

  “Hey, bud. You can’t come in this way. Employees only.” He held up a beefy hand, authority seeping from his voice and stance.

  I lifted the mask. “I can still eat you under the table, Stone.”

  Stone Briggs broke out into a wide smile. “One time and you’d have lost if that chicken wing hadn’t stuck in my throat. And I was tired from working your dang party. You doing some big speech tonight, right?”

  “Unfortunately.” I shrugged, dropping the mask back into place. Stone had worked security for me several times. He was a good guy, but not the brightest.

  “Come on in. Don’t wan’ you to miss your big moment. Just like you to come round the back when all the cameras are out front.”

  “You know me all too well.” I clapped him on the shoulder as if we were old chums, thick as thieves and constant companions versus sometimes employee and employer. Playing the good loving guy kept people off your trail. When the police came calling, folks would protect you, even if they didn’t consciously intend to. He’s such a good guy. He goes out of his way to be nice. He pays like he’s made of money, but he doesn’t act like an uppity dick. “You really should come work for me full time, Stone. The pay is better.”

  “The missus likes me close during the day.” Stone’s wife worked housekeeping at the hotel.

  “I’ll hire her too,” I laughed. “We’ll make it a family affair.”

  Stone grinned wider. “Double pay?”

  “Triple if she makes that strawberry pie you can’t shut up about.”

  “It’s worth more than triple!” he protested.

  “I’m sure it is, Stone. Time to move. That speech won’t give itself.”

  “Knock ‘em dead, Mr. Montego.”

  “I plan on it, Stone.” I moved past him and into the building, blending into the event hustle and bustle.

  “Balthasar?” I questioned.

  “He is heading towards a closed-off section of the hotel. He is not alone.” Balthasar’s voice quietly chirped in my earpiece.

  Of course, he wasn’t alone. A bachelor surgeon at an event like this... “A woman?”

  “A man.”

  I’d have to find a way to separate the two.

  I weaved past waiters and rolling carts and headed down a crowded hallway, stacks of chairs and tables nearly blocking every inch of the floor. Big events always seemed to be that way—pleasure in the public areas, chaotic business in the back. But all the attendees cared about was the glamour of it all. The sparkle and lights and writing giant checks that made them feel better about their petty, empty lives.

  “You know that your mother is going to be very upset with you,” Balthasar clucked. “Sneaking in the back like a criminal.”

  “I never sneak.” I turned a corner, ignoring Balthazar’s obvious joke.

  “As soon as she sees that you didn’t make the Time’s front page, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “She’ll survive the disappointment.”

  “Take your next right and then the stairs. They’re in a park-view suite. Twelfth floor. Third room to the right once you’ve exited the stairwell.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I grumbled, entering the stairwell and taking the steps two at a time.

  “Cardio is good for your heart.”

  “I’m going to fire you, Balthasar.”

  “I’ve been thinking of retiring,” he replied casually, knowing full well that I planned to hold him hostage until he died.

  By the time I reached the twelfth floor, I had steeled myself for what was coming. Thanks to my hacker friends, the security feeds were taken care of and that’s how Balthasar was also helping me track my prey. They’d also set us up with full control of the building. But the man in the room with The Apothecary was an issue. I followed a clear set of rules about who I killed and when I killed them, and I had no plans to break those guidelines tonight
.

  Approaching the target suite, I heard a phone ring inside followed by a muffled voice.

  “Enter the room to your left,” Balthasar instructed. I followed without second-guessing, seeing the door’s coded card light blink green just before I depressed the handle to enter. I clicked the door softly closed behind me, peering through the peephole. Moments later, a man exited the opposite suite. He was in a rush, stuffing his shirt back into his suit pants.

  “Now how the hell did you manage that?” I breathed out, reaching into my jacket to pull the Maxim 9 from its low-profile holster.

  “Let’s just say that Mr. Holden didn’t expect his wife to attend the fundraiser tonight. The front desk just called to inform him that she is in the lobby waiting. It did not take much digging to discover who the man was or that he and Gregory Mathias meet here regularly, booking this same room.”

  “What would I do without you?” I quipped, exiting the room now that I was sure Mr. Holden was long gone.

  “You would have died a long time ago, Master Montego, considering this cloak and dagger passion of yours. His suite door is open and waiting for you. Good luck.” Balthasar fell quiet. He knew that I no longer required his assistance, though he’d stay in his secure location until the deed was done.

  All that stood between me and a certified evil bastard now was a single door.

  I flexed my fingers, slightly adjusting my grip on the Maxim. It was my preferred weapon now, though I had to admit I still had a soft spot for the Montego 45, one of the first weapons designed and manufactured by my family’s company. There weren’t many of them left nowadays though, not since I funded a buy-back program with the country to get as many off the streets as possible. To my chagrin, I hadn’t been able to get the Montego weapons out of circulation with the NYPD. But at least those weapons helped fight the bad guys... for the most part.

  The striations left on a bullet fired from a Montego 45 were unique, and with fewer of them in circulation that made it even less inconspicuous of a choice. That wouldn’t do for my purposes. Thus, the Maxim.