“Hurry,” Timothy said. “We don’t want to miss a thing.”
“What?” Rose was confused.
He pulled out her chair and she sat down. He poured them both wine, lit the candles, and then scooted his chair so it was facing the water of the bay.
He looked over at her and grinned. As he did, a brilliant explosion of sounds and color lit up the night as a massive fireworks display began.
It was too loud to speak, but every once in a while, Rose would look over at Timothy and smile. It was strange; every time she looked over at him, he was staring at her instead of the fireworks. It made her heart race again.
When the display ended, Rose refilled her glass and stood. She walked over to the waist-high wall at the edge of the roof and took in the lights of the city around her.
She felt him at her side.
“This is magical,” she said.
When she looked up at him his mouth was instantly on hers.
Her memory of going back down to her apartment was a frantic blur.
All she remembered later was an uncontrollable urge to become one with her best friend.
She’d never seen this side of him. He ripped his shirt while taking it off so hastily. She tore her own dress down the middle, popping the buttons because she couldn’t unbutton them fast enough.
Then his mouth was not only on hers, but all over her body.
He spent extra time kissing her tattoo. She’d gotten it the week before to commemorate her eighteenth birthday. It was an intricate rose dripping blood. He’d held her hand at the parlor while she got it.
She’d had the tattoo put right at the small of her back. In the tattoo parlor, she’d unselfconsciously unbuttoned her shorts and slipped out of them so she was only in her underwear and then pulled her t-shirt over her head before climbing onto the table. It wasn’t a big deal in Barcelona, where every female on the beach between three years old and ninety went topless. But normally Rose kept her bikini top on while sunbathing.
One time, when Karla had whipped off her top, Rose had started to do the same, and Timothy had given her a look. She raised an eyebrow and he sent her a text that said, “Why give them a free show?”
She wrote back, “Your girlfriend thinks it’s okay.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Instead of arguing the point, Rose had simply laid back down and kept her top on.
At the tattoo parlor, he examined the picture she’d brought in for the tattoo artist.
“Why this one?” he asked her.
“It’s like that song by The Smithereens,” she said. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“’Blood and Roses?’ You’ve never heard of it?” she asked.
He shook his head.
After, she took him back to her apartment and played it for him. They sat on the living room floor, smoking cigarettes and listening to the song.
He sat there for a long time when the song was done and finally said, “That just broke my heart.”
Now, in her bed, he kissed the tattoo tenderly. “I could barely control myself when you were getting this,” he said in a hoarse voice. “And then when I heard what the song was about? I swear I almost told you right then how I feel about you.”
Rose froze. But he kept talking.
“You drive me crazy,” he said. “Why do you think I had to leave the parlor to have a cigarette?”
She didn’t answer just grabbed the back of his head and pulled his lips to her breasts.
He came up for air. Then he was on top of her and inside her, and she’d never known such pleasure. Tears dripped down the side of her face.
Then he slowed and began to kiss her tears. “Am I hurting you?”
She shook her head. “You are the best birthday present I could’ve ever asked for.”
He looked at her so seriously her heart seemed to stop beating. “Don’t you know that I’ve loved you from the first minute I saw you on the beach all those years ago?”
Rose had known this deep down inside but never had admitted it to herself. It had been too terrifying.
“That’s why that song broke my heart—about you needing love and feeling that you don’t belong and feeling cold.” He drew back. “I never want you to feel that way again.”
He searched her eyes with so much intensity, she had to look away. Instead of answering him with words, she put her mouth back on his.
They both forgot conversation after that and fell asleep with arms and legs entangled.
A few hours later, she woke to find Timothy getting dressed.
“Where are you going? It’s still nighttime.”
“I know. I don’t want to go, but I promised my father I’d help him this morning. We are opening early for the football crowd. Now, I regret telling him that more than anything in the world.”
The championship had brought in tourists from all around Spain, and all the businesses on Las Ramblas were geared up for more business on that Saturday than they usually saw in two weeks.
“Can’t you call him and cancel? Maybe Paolo can fill in?”
Inside she was thinking, I have to leave tonight for Paris. I’ll be gone a few weeks.
Suddenly, she wished she wasn’t going. She wanted to spend every second with Timothy instead.
Paolo was Timothy’s cousin and a good friend. He often worked at the restaurant to help out even though he had another full-time job as a clerk at a museum.
Timothy shook his head. “I wish I could, but I can’t leave my father in the lurch.”
“I know,” she said smiling.
He leaned down and kissed her long and hard on the lips.
She moaned in pleasure but he drew back.
“Sleep in,” he said. “Come find me after your goodbye brunch. I should be able to take a break by then.”
“You better. I have to leave tonight, remember.”
He paused. “Shit!” He sounded really upset.
She watched his back. She briefly considered telling him she wasn’t going to go, but instead she bit her tongue.
As he started walking again, she called after him.
“Timothy?”
He paused.
“You know what I like best about you?”
“After last night, I think I just might know.”
“No, not that,” she said, laughing. “I love what a good son you are.”
He laughed and walked out.
As the door closed, a religious art piece fell off a shelf and clattered to the floor. She heard the sound of breaking glass and cringed. Her Mexican nicho.
It was a wall-mounted shrine box Gia had given her years ago. It was made of tin and inside was a picture of the Virgin Mary, a miniature candelabra, and silk red roses. A small glass door with a latch closed the box.
For a second, a fleeting sense of dread washed over Rose. She almost leaped out of bed and chased after Timothy so she could beg him to stay with her. But then she shook it off, put her head back down on the pillow, and fell asleep.
6
It was written in blood on her mirror.
He’d found her.
Because she’d been ignoring him, he was going to take away what she loved the most.
7
Nightmares chased Rose for the next few hours.
During the day, she was able to forget about her previous life—a life that to many would seem a horror show. It began when her mother was murdered in front of her as an infant. Later, at age eight, her chaperone into America was raped and strung up on a tree in the desert to die. At nine, her beloved nanny was beheaded in front of Rose in the jungles of Mexico.
Then, at twelve, her father’s past as the head of a cartel had caught up to them. The only reason Rose was still alive was that she’d killed a man intent on destroying her family.
After that, convinced she could never lead a normal life, Rose had gone to Eva and trained to be an assassin.
Before she turned thirteen, Rose killed aga
in.
But then she’d been given a choice—a fork in the road.
Two paths lay before her: continue her training as an assassin with Eva in Italy or carve out a new life in Barcelona as a student and daughter.
She’d chosen Spain.
For five years, she’d embraced her new life. She poured her heart into her studies at the art school in Barcelona. She went back to loves she’d once had: playing soccer, singing in the school choir. To her surprise, when she returned to Barcelona to live, she ran into the boy she’d met a year earlier on the beach.
His name was Timothy. They’d become friends and then discovered they attended the same art school for children of expats. Timothy was Italian and had moved to Barcelona five years before when his father opened an Italian eatery on the most popular tourist stretch in Barcelona—the Ramblas.
They played soccer in the parks on weekends and took school trips with the choir to sing in cities across Europe.
Timothy taught her guitar and bocce ball.
Rose taught him chess and martial arts.
They shared a love of reading and spent long afternoons on the beach reading books and discussing them with one another.
Every Thursday night, they met at the dojo for private lessons. Gia had found someone skilled in the ancient Italian martial arts form of gladiatura moderna and rented out the dojo for Rose and Timothy to train. It was the same martial art that Eva taught at her assassin boot camp.
Rose never told Timothy this. He was intrigued by the incorporation of swords with martial arts.
Life would’ve been perfect and serene if not for the nightmares and the waking horror that was her father’s memory slowly but surely declining.
One blessing was that they’d been able to slow Nico’s decline through experimental medication. The biggest blessing was that he almost always knew who she was.
When he no longer did, Rose wasn’t sure how she could go on living.
That was what she dreaded more than anything, even his death.
After living so much of her life not having a father, now she was worried she couldn’t live without him.
On this night—the night she lost her virginity—instead of dreaming about her lover, Rose tossed and turned with nightmares about the lives she’d taken and the one who had escaped.
The Sultan had not taken her life, but he had nearly taken her soul. He was the center of a dark magic that drew followers to him. One of the cores of his religion was sacrificing girls before they were old enough to bleed.
He’d intended for Rose to be one of those girls, but she managed to escape.
Memories of him and the darkness that surrounded him haunted her nightly. She was somewhat used to waking up in a sweaty panic, sitting up and reaching for the dagger she kept under her pillow.
Now, she woke in just this way to a sunny morning. She’d slept in.
After she calmed herself and put her dagger back under her pillow, Rose shook off the hazy dark nightmares and allowed herself to lie back down and remember the glorious night with Timothy. She couldn’t help but smile.
She looked at the clock and jumped out of bed. She was supposed to meet everyone for brunch in fifteen minutes! She raced to the shower and was out the door in ten minutes, throwing on a simple cream-colored sundress and pulling her hair into a messy bun as she walked.
Dodging people on the stone-paved street, she hurried to the brunch spot. Luckily, it was only a few minutes away.
It was only as she drew close that she checked her phone for her daily text from Timothy.
To her surprise there wasn’t one. She frowned but then brushed it off. He must be crazy busy at the restaurant. The street she was on was a few blocks off the Ramblas, but it was also packed with visitors to the city. The popular Ramblas with its boutiques and restaurants would be even busier.
She’d say one thing about the Spaniards, they loved their football.
And they knew how to party. She eyed groups of young men carrying cups of beers that sloshed onto the street. Small strains of conversation floated her way. German. Italian. Spanish. Catalan. Her ear even picked out some Slovenian, although she couldn’t understand what was being said.
Everyone had come to her city to celebrate the soccer championship. It made Rose smile.
But then again, everything on this day made her smile.
How had she not admitted her feelings about Timothy until the night before? It seemed crazy that it had taken so long for them to become lovers. Now that it had happened, it seemed natural for them to be a couple in love.
Of course, they were!
She rounded a corner and saw Gia and Dante outside the café. They waved at her with big smiles.
She ran the last few feet and hugged them both.
“How’s it feel to be an adult?” Dante asked.
Rose could feel her face grow red even though she knew he meant something different—turning eighteen.
Wayne came out the restaurant door. “They’re ready for us.”
“Nice shirt,” Rose said.
Dante’s husband always wore the most beautiful clothing. He had several personal shoppers at design houses scouting for him.
“It’s Dior.”
“I like it,” Rose said.
“Of course you do,” Wayne said walking over and kissing Rose on the cheek. “You have impeccable taste like your two uncles.”
“That’s true.” They all looked at Gia.
She glared at them, but Rose saw a small smile creep across her face.
It was an ongoing joke that if Gia had her way she’d wear worn-in leather pants and a tight concert T-shirt every single day of her life. Today she had on a strapless turquoise dress that hugged her curves. Rose was sure that Dante had made Gia wear it, just like the halter dress Gia had worn the night before. Rose knew Dante’s influence when she saw it.
That’s one reason he insisted on having Gia meet him in Paris later that week. He was going to shop for her. He said her wardrobe was way due for an overhaul.
“You don’t live in foggy San Francisco anymore, my dear,” he said. “You need bright colors. You live in the Mediterranean.”
Gia hadn’t responded but had agreed to meet them in Paris.
There was still a closetful of Gia’s clothes at the Gothic Quarter apartment. Rose would sometimes try them on for fun. Gia didn’t mind.
Rose secretly hoped that she would grow up to look like Gia, who was sexy but also totally rock and roll.
Eva’s style was more “sophisticated mercenary.” She had a standard uniform that consisted of a black T-shirt, black slim pants, and tall boots. It could be one hundred degrees out, and that would still be what Eva wore. With her long, flowing black hair, voluptuous red lips, and ninja-like uniform, Eva couldn’t help but attract attention wherever she went.
The Queen of Spades was waiting for them at a corner table inside the restaurant. She wore dark glasses, as if that would help her blend in. Rose laughed.
Her aunt, as she liked to think of her, was famous around the world and was still wanted for murder in America. A total joke.
Eva was suspected of killing her husband and two children in Malibu despite one detective who would stake his life and career that she was innocent. LA Detective Jay Collins had made it his life’s work to prove Eva innocent, but so far nobody was listening.
Eva was the closest thing to a superhero that Rose knew.
People around the world turned to the Queen of Spades when they had nowhere else to go, and Eva would solve their problems.
Sometimes that involved bringing incriminating documents and photographs to the lawyer of a stingy ex-husband who refused to pay alimony or child support. Sometimes that involved an abuser waking up to cold steel pressed against his balls and whispered words of warning. And sometimes, when threats and warnings wouldn’t work, it involved murder.
So far, she’d never been caught or accused of any of the slayings, though. The only arrest war
rant on file for her was the one in California.
Sitting with these four adults who had shaped her, Rose was filled with joy. If her father had been there, it would have been the perfect morning. The brunch was delicious and full of laughter and shared stories.
Gia had been opening up more lately about Nico’s life when Rose was young. Her father had been one of the most powerful men in the world, and Rose was enraptured by the stories. But Gia was still very guarded about what she shared and only offered small tidbits here and there.
Rose liked nothing more than sitting quietly around her elders and listening to them reminisce about the crazy lives they had led. It never got too dark, even though all of them had suffered tremendous tragedies and losses in their lives. Instead, they shared the good times, even if some of those good times involved them taking out evil people, such as the doctor in San Francisco who’d collected homeless girls who were addicts and did experiments on them. He died at Gia’s hand. Or the crazy guy who tried to blow up an entire beauty pageant and its audience before he died at Eva’s hand.
If anyone overheard their conversations at the café they would think for certain the group was discussing movies they had seen. Nobody would believe they were speaking about things that had happened in real life.
Rose had finally been included in these conversations when she turned thirteen. At that point, having killed two men herself, her family must have decided it was stupid to shield her from the talk.
Now, she sat and listened until it was time to go.
Dante and Wayne were catching a train to Paris.
Eva and Alex were flying back to Italy.
Gia wanted to get home and check on Nico.
“I’ll come by tonight,” Rose said kissing Gia goodbye on the cheek.
After everyone left, Rose headed toward the Ramblas. She couldn’t wait to see Timothy.
It was stupid how much she missed him. It had only been a few hours.
Walking fast, she was there in less than five minutes. As she grew closer she looked through the large windows of the restaurant to see if she could spot his dark head in the kitchen.
Blood & Roses (Vigilante Crime Series) Page 3