Claiming Roman

by Trevion Burns

  “Yeah, you did. And you know what?” She swiped up her bag and adjusted it on her shoulder. “I finally believe you.”

  Roman pulled back at the sting of her words, but he didn’t try to stop her when she pushed past him and left the room.

  Angie pressed the back of her hand over her downturned lips as she barreled down the stairs.

  He didn’t try to stop her.

  That was what hurt more than anything.

  13

  The next morning Roman, Zoey and Val were the only ones awake. They found themselves at the dining room table playing a quick game of spades, distracting themselves from the long ride none of them felt like making back to the city. The party had gone until the sun came up¸ and the house was a wreck. Leo had assured them that the maid would take care of it, but Zoey couldn’t help feeling a little guilty.

  The place was truly trashed.

  Since she was the only one who was pregnant, she was the only one who wasn’t hung over, so the mess was bothering her much more than everyone else. She’d already cleaned the kitchen, and had been well on her way to the living room when Leo had stumbled downstairs for a glass of water, insisting she stop.

  Waiting for everyone to wake up, and having all her cleaning supplies torn away by Leo, she’d amused herself by stacking her hundreds of baby shower gifts into the shape of a giant penis in the corner of the kitchen, but that game had gotten old fast. For both she and Leo. He’d stumbled back upstairs shortly after, and had been passed out since.

  So now not only did Leo have a house that was still trashed, but also a giant multicolored penis teetering next to his fridge.

  Zoey admired her masterpiece for a moment longer, then forced herself to look away for fear she’d get a big head. She opted instead to watch Roman across the dining room table, glaring at him over the top of her cards.

  “You plan on lighting that thing?” she asked, nodding to the unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  Roman swirled it in a circle with his tongue. “Haven’t decided.”

  He’d been quiet all morning, even for him. She wondered why he was fighting the urge to smoke the cigarette that had been between his lips all day. It was almost noon. A few months ago, he’d have obliterated at least half a pack by now.

  His agitated aura had been put to rest only by Zoey’s offer to play a round of spades. It was his favorite game.

  Zoey watched as he scowled his way through it. She’d woken up to find Angie gone, and Roman irritated, but she’d been too afraid to ask him why. From his piss poor attitude, she knew it wasn’t anything good.

  Perhaps she, Leo and Gary had gone too far with making Roman jealous the night before. He’d always been sensitive, and they’d been foolish to play with his emotions the way they had.

  Zoey continued studying him, but the frown on her face quickly spiraled into a giggle when Val suddenly planted a kiss on her neck from where he sat in the seat next to her.

  “Aye.” Roman cried around the cigarette. It bounced as he talked, but he managed to keep it in his mouth like a pro. “Please don’t do that in front of me. It’s weird as hell.”

  Zoey was the first to pull away. While slowly licking her lips, she leaned back, her hand disappearing under the table.

  Roman watched her hand vanish beneath the wood, a little too strategically placed to spell anything innocent. Without a word, his knowing eyes rose to Zoey.

  Zoey smiled. “Fine, Roman. Let’s talk about my friend, then.” Her eyes went suddenly serious. “What exactly are your intentions with my Angie?”

  Roman was instantly irritated. “You mean my Angie?”

  “No, Rome. I mean my Angie. What are your intentions with my precious Angelica Colt? Why did I wake up and find her gone? What the hell did you do?”

  Roman nearly laughed, but his heart wouldn’t allow it. It was easy to call Angie Colt precious. Short, lanky, with curly hair that seemed entrenched in a never-ending battle to conquer her face, and thick-framed glasses that finished the job, she was almost a cartoon. To the casual eye, she appeared delicate, innocent, easily manipulated. Roman now knew better. Angie Colt was a sharp, no-nonsense, sarcastic little spitfire with the sexiest ass he’d ever had the pleasure of feeling under his hands, and a fierce pride that had sent her straight out the door the night before.

  She was alluring in the most dangerous way… because he hadn’t seen her coming. He’d knocked on that little cartoon’s door looking for help, and had found everything else. He’d found a friend, a shoulder, a rock, and a tight little body that she always kept impressively hidden until the night before. A body he constantly ached to sink inside of. A heart he yearned to know. He’d found more in Angie Colt than he ever could have bargained for. He’d never shot up a drug, but he imagined it must have felt something like what he’d been feeling with her. She’d become habit forming. He needed a hit every day, either by hearing her voice, or looking at her or, preferably, touching her. He needed her in any way he could get her.

  Waking up without her that morning had him itching for another hit. It had sent him straight to the cigarette pack he hadn’t touched since the day he’d met her.

  He twirled the unlit stick under his tongue, tasted its flavor, testing his will.

  When his silence apparently went on a little too long for her liking, Zoey piped up. “My friendship with Angie crossed over into that slightly weird, slightly unhealthy territory somewhere around junior year of high school, okay? She’s not just my friend. She’s like an extension of my arm. She’s me in a smaller, slightly less pigmented package, so what she feels, I feel. When she’s happy, I’m happy. When she hurts, I hurt. What I’m trying to say, Roman--”

  “What are you trying to say?” Roman demanded.

  Zoey pointed the finger on her free hand at him. “I don’t know why she’s gone, and I won’t push you on it, because I can see that, whatever it is, you’re torn up about it, but just know this… If you hurt my friend, I’ll simply have to kill you, Roman Romanovsky, but not before I cut your fucking balls off first. I’m pregnant and hormonal, not a jury in the world would convict me, Sir.”

  He held a hand out. “Relax.”

  “Are you going to hurt my best friend?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to push me on this?”

  “I changed my fucking mind. Now answer me. Are you planning on hurting my friend?”

  “Quite the contrary. My only goal has ever been to show her love.”

  “Love, with no strings attached,” Zoey corrected. “That’s a great plan, Brother. One problem, you can’t have one without the other.”

  “The hell you can’t.” Roman steeled himself, just in case Zoey decided to lunge at him. He could see in her eyes she was close to doing just that. He was stronger, but he knew Zoey was fast. There had been many occasions during their childhood when she’d caught him off guard with a smack upside the head, or an arm around the neck. He was very aware of what she was capable of.

  And at that moment, she seemed capable of murder. “Why are you fighting so hard?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You have an unlit cigarette hanging out of your mouth. Three months ago you would have already blown through an entire pack before the sun finished rising. You damn sure are fighting. The real question is what? Why?”

  “I just wanted to have a little fun, Zoey.”

  “And you used my friend to do it!” she cried. “Fucking asshole.”

  “Don’t ask me nosey ass questions, and then clutch your pearls in shock when you get an honest answer,” Roman said.

  “I’m not clutching my pearls.”

  “You better not be. Seeing as a guy you used to call your brother is lying in bed with you every night. You think I don’t know what you’re doing under this table right now? You don’t get to clutch your pearls with me, Zoey Black.”

  Zoey’s hand magically appeared from under the table the moment Roman said the words.

  Val stood, his fun
having been ruined, and left the room. Val knew the kind of knock down, drag out fights Zoey and Roman could get into. They were both stubborn as mules, and Val wanted no part of the drama that was about to ensue.

  Zoey watched him go, and then looked back to Roman. “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Roman mocked, fighting a smile.

  “And you’re not being honest.” She crossed her arms over her chest, cards forgotten. “I know you have feelings for Angie. And I think that scares you to death.”

  “You know me so well,” he said, sarcastically.

  “Is it just because she wasn’t born on Park Avenue? She doesn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes? Her head isn’t shoved so far up her own ass she can’t see straight? I’ve met a lot of the snobs you’ve dated, bitches so in love with themselves they’d rather die than come back down to earth and walk around with the rest of us. Just because Angie is brainy, and homey, and a little nerdy, doesn’t mean she deserves to be treated like shit.”

  “I have never treated her like shit.”

  “She told me you bought her a Bentley.”

  Roman slammed a card down. “I didn’t buy her a Bentley.”

  “Fine, you gave her a Bentley, big difference. Guys don’t give women luxury cars, smile at them adoringly, get jealous when they dance with his brothers, and then call her a “friend” the next day. That’s not fair. It’s misleading. It’s confusing. It’s treating her like shit, without actually treating her like shit. It’s fucking with somebody’s head, and that’s not fair to Angie. She’s never done anything but love your ass. From the first minute she saw you, Rome. From the minute you picked up her books for her in the hallway back in high school.”

  His eyes grew ripe with feeling.

  Zoey noticed. “There’s a reason I know the whole story of the first time she saw you. She talks about it all the time. The fact that you can treat a woman who loves you like she does this horribly… well. That’s just not the you I know,” Zoey said.

  Roman finally took the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it onto the table, burying his hands in his hair.

  Zoey charged on. “I saw the candles all over the room on my way downstairs this morning. I know you feel something for her. For whatever reason, you just can’t admit it. That would be fine if you weren’t hurting her in the process, but you are.” Zoey watched him, realization dawning on her. “What happened to you? Where did my sweet, quiet, kind brother Roman Romanovsky run off to?”

  “Maybe he didn’t run.” Roman took his head out of his hands and leaned forward, holding Zoey’s eyes. “Maybe he just stopped pretending.”

  “The only pretender I see is the stranger bitch sitting across from me,” Zoey said, motioning to Roman. “And I suggest you open your eyes, before you lose her for good.”

  ***

  Angie was thankful she had her work to distract her.

  The next few days without Roman had been torturous. It hadn’t occurred to her that, since the moment they’d met, she and Roman had been attached at the hip every waking moment—most of which had been spent with his cock planted deep inside her.

  She jammed her eyes shut against the thought.

  Focus, Colt.

  She’d been sitting in her quiet office, at her desk, for hours, with her chin buried in her clasped hands, staring down at the six photos she’d lined up on her desk in the shape of a pyramid.

  At the top of the pyramid was a blown up picture of a tattoo. The tattoo that had been on the back of the killer’s neck the night the Blacks were killed. It had taken her months to get a clear shot of it, and she was still furious at all the time that had been wasted.

  The teenagers at Kinkos had proven just as incompetent as Angie always worried they would be. It just another reminder that she needed to start paying more attention to her gut, her instinct, her mind—however wild it got sometimes.

  On the first go-round, the kids at Kinkos had managed to blow up the picture of the tattoo, but had failed epically, on more than one occasion, in sharpening the picture. When Angie went back, for the third time, and was presented, yet again, with a blurry shot of the tattoo, she finally quit Kinkos for good.

  After scouring every printing company in Manhattan, she’d moved to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and then, finally, Queens.

  It was in Queens that Angie happened upon Mr. Kim’s Printing, a tiny print shop that was nestled between a 7-Eleven and a broke down old movie theatre.

  That was where she’d finally received the services she’d paid for. A not just large, but sharp, shot of the tattoo on the back of the killer’s neck.

  Finally. An elderly Asian man with an unknown shop in Elmhurst had finally got it right.

  Angie’s eyes ran slowly along the photo of the tattoo, a Chinese symbol. The photo was so clear, she could see every delicate detail, every dip, every curve. She’d been staring at it all day, so long the image would surely be burned into her brain for life.

  Thankfully, she’d learned that Mr. Kim wasn’t just the only printer worth his salt in the whole of New York City, he was also first generation Asian American, and very well versed in Chinese calligraphy.

  The tattoo on the back of the killer’s neck, Mr. Kim had informed her, was the Chinese symbol for brother.

  Staring at the photo for a moment longer, Angie finally allowed her eyes to move to the photo underneath it.

  Reggie King’s eyes glowered up at her, and it sent a chill down her spine.

  Her eyes moved to the photo next to that one.

  Governor King. It was a photo from the day he’d been elected Governor of New Jersey. His son had inherited his dark, dead eyes.

  Angie’s gaze fell to the bottom corner of the pyramid.

  Zoey Black. Her best friend, her heart, and her main drive to make sense of the pictures that sat before her.

  Her eyes moved to the next photo.

  Knox Jefferson. She cringed. Something was off with that man. She knew whatever it was, it was connected to every other person in that pyramid.

  The last photo, the photo that she’d been prompted to add, but couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe she’d added it because she was stuck, and was now grasping at straws to expand her mind. To click on a light she didn’t even realize had gone dim.

  Maybe she’d added it because her gut had been telling her to for weeks, and she’d finally stopped ignoring it.

  So there it was, and there it would remain.

  Val Romanovsky.

  She felt like it belonged. Just like all the other photos she now found herself staring at almost every day, seeing Val looking back at her sent a chill up her spine. It was the same chill she got when she looked at the photos of Knox, Reggie and the Governor.

  It was killing her that she had no idea why.

  She was determined to find out.

  ***

  “Good evening, welcome to Kleinfeld Bridal. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes, I do have an appointment. My name is Zoey Black and, as you can see, I’m knocked up, so we should probably make this fast.”

  “Ah, yes, Ms. Black. We’ve been expecting you. My name is Suzy, I’ll be taking care of you today.” The middle aged blonde woman motioned behind Zoey. “And would that make this handsome young man the groom?”

  Zoey looked over her shoulder. “God no, this is my man-of-honor. My brother, Gary Romanovsky.” Zoey didn’t miss the confused frown that formed between Suzy’s eyebrows. As a dark-skinned black girl with four very white brothers, it was not only a frown Zoey had grown used to seeing, but one she now took great pleasure in eliciting.

  “The groom is actually her other brother, Val Romanovsky,” Gary said. Like Zoey, Gary never stopped looking for ways to freak people out when it came to their crazy ass family.

  “You’re engaged…” Right on cue, Suzy’s frowned deepened. “To your brother?”

  “He’s not really her brother.” Angie jumped in from over Zoey’s other shoulder.

  Zo
ey and Gary both gave her a look, annoyed that she’d ruined their fun.

  “Okay…” Suzy dragged on, coming out from behind the entryway podium with a marked hesitance. “Well, Zoey, I’ve pre-selected a few dozen dresses. Based off the list you emailed me last week, and your sky-is-the-limit budget, I think there’s a very good chance we have your wedding dress here today.”

  “Fantastic.” Zoey beamed.

  Suzy smiled between Zoey, Angie and Gary, but her smile crumbled when Zoey was the only one smiling back. “Why don’t you all follow me to the fitting area, and we’ll get started?”

  Zoey glowed, linking arms with both Angie and Gary, who stood on either side of her, glowering. “Thank you so much, Suzy!”

  One hour turned to two, two hours to three, and soon, Kleinfeild’s was preparing to close. Vacuum cleaners roared away in the distance, instantly killing the bright white ambience and sending a, not-so-subtle, signal that it was time for every customer to get the hell out.

  Zoey refused to heed the message. Three hours trying on dresses, and she still hadn’t found the one. She was starting to wonder if she ever would. After trying on more than a dozen dresses--most of which Gary had been all too happy to shoot down--Zoey was exhausted, but determined.

  She was leaving town in an hour, and she needed to find a dress tonight. She wasn’t sure she’d have the energy to do this all over again.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t even look to Angie for help.

  Angie and Gary had finally found common ground. Unfortunately, that common ground had come in the form of a mutual hatred for Zoey’s fashion sense.

  Gary was already shaking his head when Zoey stepped out of the dressing room in the thirteenth dress of the night.

  “No,” he said, lifting his legs off of the floor so the vacuuming crew could get under his chair. Kleinfeild's was closing in five minutes, and the cleaners were no longer attempting to make their presence a secret.

  Zoey stopped in mid-step, and the big dressed swooshed around her legs as she did. “You haven’t even looked at it, Gary.”