Claiming Roman

by Trevion Burns

  He prayed for the strength to walk away.

  He prayed for control.

  Two things he was rapidly losing sight of every second he spent with Angie Colt.

  5

  Angie awoke the next morning to the sound of her phone beeping. As she sat up in the softest bed she’d ever laid her ass on, she realized immediately that she wasn’t in her apartment. Bracing her arms behind her, she squinted against the sleep in her eyes as the white duvet cover and sheets came into focus, the immaculate windows, the modern furniture, the stainless steel everything. Through the open door of the guest bedroom, she took in the floating spiral staircase that sat in the far corner of the open floor plan, leading a path up to a glass enclosed second level.

  “Holy shit.”

  She was in Roman Romanovsky’s apartment.

  The night before came blasting back, one image after the other. Meeting Roman and Henry outside of Roy’s, bar hopping, laughter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed as much as she had last night.

  Her pussy swelled to life as the final event of the night finally took over her muddled mind, reminding her of the events that her body had certainly not forgotten.

  Her breathing hitched as memories of Roman’s skilled fingers stroking her came back so succinctly, she almost believed his hands were still on her. She pulled her knees together when the need to satiate the urges just thinking about him produced became almost overwhelming.

  A gentle sound startled her, and she tossed her head over her shoulder, covering her mouth with her hand at the sight of Roman leaning against the headboard behind her, fast asleep.

  He’d stayed next to her all night.

  Her shocked eyes traveled down his chiseled face, from his short blonde hair, dark eyebrows, the strong slope of his nose, those full lips. Her appreciation for his beauty was only amplified as her gaze trailed across his collarbones, protruding strongly against his skin. Her fingers itched to touch them, to travel along each solid ridge, down over his strong pecs and abs, all eight of which contracted with each deep breath he took.

  Unwittingly, Angie trapped her entire pointer finger between her teeth in awe, wetting it with her tongue as her eyes passed the pronounced V at his hipbone, a V that led straight to the gentle tent in his white briefs, and down his bare legs.

  He’d stayed next to her all night, and he was hard.

  He filled those briefs well, and the urge to pull them back and take a peak nearly ate her alive.

  She was sure a trail of drool would soon come racing down the finger that she still had desperately trapped between her teeth. She yearned to replace it with his dick, his lips, any part of him, really, that he would allow her to.

  The very phone that had awoken her beeped to life, once more, louder this time, ripping her out of her horny revere.

  Roman shifted, face tightening as the beeping continued, and she sat in a stunned silence, waiting for him to wake up. Thankfully, he didn’t.

  Looking to the bedside table where her purse sat, she bent over as quietly as she could and swiped it up, emptying out it’s contents when digging through it proved too much exertion for her hung-over brain and limbs.

  Notepads, utensils, files and random knick-knacks all came tumbling out of her bag and onto the mattress. She snatched up her phone when it finally came into view, looking over her shoulder at Roman to make sure he was still asleep before taking her attention back to her phone.

  Two messages. One from Zoey, and the other from Jessica Borgia.

  “Finally,” Angie breathed, opening Jessica’s one word message.

  Done.

  Jessica’s text messages were always dry, straight to the point and, to the uninformed eye, all but useless. But Angie knew what the message meant.

  Jessica had gotten her hands on the streetlight footage.

  For the first time in ten years, Angie didn’t just hope to one day find the person who murdered Zoey’s parents.

  She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would.

  She could almost taste it.

  Feel it.

  Touch it.

  What she felt at that moment was the reason she’d gone into her field. The rush of uncovering the mysteries, lies, and deceptions that human beings plagued each other with every single day, was what kept her going.

  The fact that this one involved her best friend only amplified the euphoria further.

  She nearly flew out of the bed, gathering her things as quietly as she could without waking the angel sleeping just a few feet away from her.

  If someone had told Angie Colt a week ago she’d be sneaking out of a bed that had a half naked Roman Romanovsky in it, she’d have declared they didn’t know her very well.

  Roman had always been her biggest dream, her greatest fantasy. She’d loved him from the moment she’d laid eyes on him.

  But she loved Zoey more.

  ***

  A few hours later, Angie sat at the desk in her small office, staring at the computer screen as it played back the streetlight footage that Jessica had given her earlier. Her eyes had become bleary from watching the black and white video of the deserted neighborhood street with unblinking eyes, waiting with bated breath for the footage she needed, preparing herself for what she was about to see.

  The road was fully visible, as well as a tiny sliver of sidewalk on each side. A solid yellow line stretched down the middle of the quiet New Jersey street, eventually fading into the darkness, and out of the shot. But it had what Angie needed to see.

  A clear shot of the street in front of the Romanovsky’s old house.

  A clear shot of the exact location that Zoey’s parents had been murdered ten years ago.

  At the top of the footage was a date and time stamp. The timer that ticked away told Angie the images she needed to see were mere minutes away.

  When Roman suddenly popped into her head, the feel of his lips on her ear, the soft brush of his fingers, his hungry eyes, and the orgasm he’d given her that put her to sleep with a quickness, she would’ve kicked herself, if it was physically possible. Even now, watching a video that she knew had the potential to scar her for life, she couldn’t keep the son of a bitch out of her head.

  She was in the middle of an exasperated sigh when the first signs of life suddenly showed itself in the footage. Her breath caught in her throat, and Roman was instantly forgotten.

  A middle aged African-American couple appeared, walking down the sidewalk arm-in-arm. Half of the sidewalk was out of frame, but Angie had seen enough photos of Zoey’s parents that she immediately knew she was looking at Pansy and Marcus Black on the night that they’d both breathed their last breath.

  Angie slammed her finger down on the spacebar, pausing the video. Chills prickled all over her skin. The room suddenly felt too dark, too quiet, and she was scared to death. It had finally occurred to her that she was about to watch a video of two people being killed, and she wasn’t sure she was ready.

  Standing from her chair, she moved to the other end of the room and flipped the switch, drowning the room in much needed light. Attempting to breathe past her wild heart, she asked herself if she was ready to do this, ready to see this.

  Then, Zoey popped in her head, sitting on the bathroom floor in tears, doubting what kind of wife and mother she would be to her fiancé and future child. All because of how fucked up her parent’s death had left her. Angie saw her best friend’s tear-filled face, and immediately moved to her desk. She sat back down and took a deep, unsteady breath.

  This couldn’t be about her.

  This was about Zoey. Finding Zoey’s truth, and finally putting her mind and heart at, much deserved, ease.

  With a deep breath, Angie pressed the spacebar, and resumed the video.

  The grainy, gray-scaled image jumped and sputtered for a moment before giving her a clear picture, once more.

  Marcus and Pansy Black were both tall and thin, holding each other close, laughing together as they
stumbled off the sidewalk and into the street, clearly so intoxicated that looking both ways hadn’t even occurred to them. As quiet as the street in the video had been up until that point, Angie couldn’t even blame them for jaywalking.

  Then, just like that, the instant they stepped out into the middle of the road, a pair of headlights came blaring out of the darkness, so suddenly it shocked even Angie, who’d known it was coming.

  Marcus and Pansy hadn’t a single moment to react before they were taken out, their skulls slamming into the windshield of the white Cadillac as it hit them head on, sending both of their bodies flying into the air in opposite directions.

  Angie slapped both hands over her mouth, feeling the tears tumbling out of her eyes and down her cheeks as she screamed into the cuffed mitts of her palms. Marcus’ body had been launched behind the car, and Pansy’s in front of it. Both had gone flying so far out of frame that their lifeless bodies were no longer visible in the picture. Smatterings of blood ran along the vehicle, making the obnoxious purple flame that had been painted down the side look bespattered, like it had been dotted with red polka dots.

  Angie fought the urge to hide her face on the desk, to turn the video off, to slam the laptop shut and revisit this another time. She fought all of that as hard as she could, realizing her entire body was shaking.

  She stopped breathing entirely when the driver’s side door of the vehicle suddenly opened.

  The driver stepped out on one foot, and the first thing she saw was the top of a gray beanie cap, and then the back of a Caucasian man’s neck as he stood tall and looked to the rear of the car, where Marcus’ lifeless body lay.

  The sight that met the driver sent him pushing back against the door of the car so strongly it nearly came right off the hinges. His hands went to the top of his head, and his fingers dug into his beanie cap as he was met with what must have been a horrifying sight.

  The driver had just taken two lives, and it was clear when that reality sank in. He began to behave erratically, tugging violently at his clothes, fidgeting wildly.

  Panicking.

  Angie watched the screen with wide eyes, waiting desperately for the driver to turn towards the camera, to show his face.

  She just needed to see his face.

  In the midst of his panic, the driver leaned down and tucked his head back inside the car.

  Angie hissed as he moved, frustrated that every move he made still managed to keep his face out of frame by the tiniest breath.

  For a few moments, the driver seemed to be reacting to someone in the passengers seat. He slammed his hands on the roof of the car and screamed something back.

  The driver stood tall, once more, looking towards Marcus.

  Angie held her breath when he began to turn his body in the opposite direction, towards Pansy.

  Towards the camera.

  “Show me your face,” Angie whispered desperately.

  But the image suddenly went black.

  Angie jolted in shock. Pure shock. Taking her hands away from her mouth for the first time, she slammed at the keys on her laptop, rewinding, fast-forwarding, even taking the disk out, blowing on it, and putting it back in.

  Nothing.

  The fear that hit her heart in that moment was something she’d never felt before. It was beyond measure. So powerful she was afraid she might never come back from it.

  ***

  “The footage is dirty, Jess,” Angie cried into her cell phone, pacing the floor of her office moments later. Chills still ran a race across her body with such vigor she wondered if they were going for a medal. They picked up more power and speed with each second that passed, and didn’t seem to have any plans on stopping. She tugged anxiously at her curls. “It cuts off at the very moment that son of a bitch was about to show his face to the camera. You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.”

  “Angie, I gave you the only tape there is, and I shouldn’t have even done that. Please don’t call me, again.”

  “Jessica!” Angie screamed. “Someone tampered with the tape. What aren’t you understanding? Am I speaking English?” Angie felt like she could cry, and bit her lip when her trembling voice broadcasted her loss of control. She knew Jessica despised weakness, especially coming from a fellow woman, so she struggled to stay strong.

  Jessica must have heard it in her voice. The tears. The desperation. The weakness.

  “Colt. I’m not doing this. Goodbye.”

  Angie wasn’t shocked when Jessica hung up on her. Through her fury, she didn’t even bother calling back, knowing that Jessica wouldn’t answer.

  “On my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Angie repeated the mantra she’d been saying back-to-back, non-stop, from the moment that footage had cut off during the most pivotal moment. In a perfect world, Angie would chalk it up to chance, simple bad luck, a fluke. It could have been a total fluke that the camera had shut down right before the killer showed his face to the camera.

  But it wasn’t a perfect world.

  And Angie Colt was no idiot.

  Someone had gotten rid of the rest of that tape.

  A tape that Jessica, in her own words, had apparently had to dig deeper than normal to find.

  Another chill ran up Angie’s back, and she tried to think harder.

  But nothing made sense.

  Looking toward her laptop, she stared at it, as if it would have all of the answers. It didn’t. In fact, it had only put a million more questions in her mind. Questions that hadn’t been there before.

  Racing back to the computer, she pulled the video back up, freeze-framed it on the back of the killer’s head, and printed it.

  Printed photo clutched in her hand, she grabbed her coat and raced for the door.

  ***

  “Is it possible to get a clearer image of this,” Angie asked the photo technician at Kinkos an hour later, pointing to the back of the killer’s neck in the photo. “I’m assuming this black blotch here is a tattoo. Is there anyway you can clear it to the point that I can recognize what it is?”

  “Sure.” The tech shrugged.

  It wasn’t the kind of conviction Angie was looking for. She immediately found herself doubting how much trust she should put in an impatient looking teenager wearing a purple Kinkos polo, but realized she had no other choice.

  “I’d like it blown up to the largest size possible.”

  “That’ll take a while.”

  “That’s fine. How long?”

  The photo tech shrugged again, that bored impatience still present in her blue eyes. “Fifteen business days. So… Friday after next, since Thursday is a holiday.”

  Angie almost screamed, but closed her eyes instead. By some miracle, she managed to find patience. “Can I pay you extra for faster service? I will pay whatever it costs. This is New York City for Christ’s sake, I could get breasts implants and a mail order bride in less than fifteen business days.”

  “Fifteen business days,” the teen reiterated.

  Angie begged for more patience, as what little she had left was being quickly depleted by this youngin' and her cavalier attitude. “Fine. What do I owe you?”

  ***

  After paying the unconcerned technician at Kinkos, Angie went home and tried to get some sleep. But she couldn’t sleep that night.

  Or the night after that.

  Or the night after that one, either.

  Three maddening days later, on her way to the grocery store, she found herself getting off the train a block too soon, and headed straight back to her office. She had to see the video one more time—or twenty more times. She wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, sitting idly by, waiting for a photo to come back that may or may not help her discover who the killer was on that tape.

  Maybe there was something she hadn’t seen. Something small.

  After disengaging three different combination locks she had keeping her office secure, she pulled open the creaky screen door, before going to work on the locks on the main door, as well.
With dents, bullet holes, and red paint cracking against its rickety steel frame, the door had definitely seen better days, but it was impenetrable. With the kind of sensitive information she kept in her office, it was invaluable.

  Especially in her sketchy neighborhood.

  Finally disengaging every lock, she tried to open the door, but it resisted.

  “Come on,” Angie groaned.

  As usual, the struggle to push open the door of her office was very real. She rented the space from the Pakistani family who owned the mini-mart next door, and had been begging them for a new door for years. Their promises to replace it had still gone unfulfilled. The door always resisted, but today it seemed to be giving her more trouble than usual. It was pure steel, so getting inside was always a battle she barely won.

  She gasped at the sight of a large hand reaching in from behind her, and resting against the door. She looked over her shoulder just in time to catch sight of Roman as he gave the door most of his weight.

  It flew open with ease, and Angie went with it.

  She stumbled into the office, doing her best to recover quickly. She looked back to Roman sheepishly as he stepped in behind her with a smirk.

  “Roman.” She pushed her glasses so far up the bridge of her nose that the lenses brushed her fluttering eyeglasses. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  He pointed towards the bare door of her office as he closed it behind him. “You don’t have a sign,” he noted.

  Still recovering from his unexpected arrival, her eyes traveled his body, taking in his perfectly pressed sweater, slacks and Italian leather shoes. He was wearing all black, but still glowed like an angel.

  “You’re irritating,” she said, before she could stop herself.

  He sputtered in amusement. “I’m sorry?”

  “Why are you always so clean and pressed? How is it possible? How do you manage to make it through an entire day without acquiring one single wrinkle? Not one piece of hair out of place. Not one! You’re basically sub-human.” Angie knew the only person she was really angry at was herself. She was tired of looking like shit every time he snuck up on her like this, making it impossible to even attempt to clean herself up, comb her hair… something! The fact that work was weighing so heavily on her mind wasn’t helping matters, either. She was on edge in a way she never had been before.