by Sienna Blake
Something glinted to the right of me. My vision zeroed in on the barrel of the rifle pointed at Roman from one of the broken windows. From the outside, the police wouldn’t know the difference between Roman and all the other Tyrell men.
“Roman!” I screamed.
He turned. The rifle fired, the barrel kicking back. Everything seemed to slow.
I saw the bullet hit before it did. I saw the nightmare before it began. In that split second, the life I thought I might have was torn from me. Our future, the one with Roman and me in it, happy, together, disintegrated. I could do nothing, helpless, as it unfolded.
The bullet hit Roman. It hit him, but I could feel it ripping through me.
He fell to his back on the ground, grabbing at his stomach, looking down as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, a rush of blood soaking his clothes. He lifted his head, his eyes caught mine. A cold rush flooded over me like I’d just crashed through the ice into a watery grave.
“My son!” Giovanni Tyrell rose from behind a crate, screaming in a battle cry. “You shot my boy, you bastards.” He turned to fire, getting off a couple of shots before the first bullet hit him. Three stains appeared on his chest as he toppled to the ground.
The firing seemed to fade around me as I kneeled beside Roman. His stomach was a bloody mess. “Oh God, Roman.”
His eyes caught mine. I saw resignation in them. “It’s bad.”
“It’s not so bad,” I lied.
“Jules, listen…”
“No.” I pressed my mouth to his to shut him up. My hands clutched at his stomach, trying to stop the bleeding. “Help is on its way. Just hang on.”
“All those years I thought I was living,” his voice rumbled against my lips. “I was merely waiting for my life to begin.”
“Stop talking like that, you’re going to be fine.” This could not be goodbye. I wouldn’t let it be. The blood just kept pumping out of his stomach, squeezing between my fingers like grains of sand even as I tried to stop it. What are two hands against a tide?
He grabbed my hands and pulled them off his stomach, his grip surprisingly strong. He brushed my fingers with his mouth, smearing it with liquid the color of roses. “My life began with you. It will end with you.”
“Roman.” A rising panic choked me. Tears blurred my vision. He was saying goodbye. Fuck him for saying goodbye. This could not be goodbye. “Please hang on.”
“I love you,” he said. The three words I’d longed to hear. My heart swelled to bursting. Then shattered. “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you.”
“Please,” I begged. I begged with every aching piece of my soul. “Don’t leave me.”
“Be brave for me, Julianna,” his voice grew hoarse. “Be happy…” His eyes fluttered shut. He stilled, his fingers unraveling from mine, slipping from all the blood, and fell out to his side.
He let go.
He let go of me.
He wasn’t supposed to let go.
I heard someone screaming, a long, pained scream of anguish. As if the very core of the universe were ripping apart. I realized it was coming from me.
Someone grabbed me, cruel, strong arms ripped me back from Roman’s body. “Miss, you have to let go of him.” I would not. I sent out a desperate plea to God, to Allah, to the devil if he were listening, don’t let him die. All their lives for Roman’s. I would trade all their lives for his.
They dragged me back. I felt my bond with Roman pulling, coming undone like a rope about to snap.
“Let me go,” I screamed. “He needs me. He needs me.” If Roman could just feel me near him. If my soul could just reach out and catch the tail end of his and pull it back into his body. If our love could do that. It was strong enough to do that, wasn’t it?
They wouldn’t let me go. The sight of Roman was lost to me as he was surrounded by the dark blue uniforms I used to love so much.
29
____________
Julianna
I sat in the back of a police van, numb, wrapped in a blanket. My father, still wrapped up in his tactical gear, was standing in front of me, explaining…trying to explain.
“Roman came to me. He said he would do anything to save you. Even turn on his family.”
My stomach clenched. Oh, Roman. Why did you have to try to save me?
“He made a deal with us,” my father continued. “He gave us this location where they were keeping you. He was supposed to wear the wire so we could get something incriminating on tape. So we could end the Tyrell empire. He installed the recording device inside the barn last night.”
“Looks like you got what you wanted,” I spat out. Bitterness coating my tongue.
“He knew the risks.” My father sighed. “You were right. Roman Tyrell…was a good man, in his own way. He died a hero.”
Finally, my father believed me. But it was too late now.
“But no one will know that, will they?”
My father gave me a guilty look. “It’s better if we don’t reveal publicly how we were able to get the recording or to find the location of the barn.”
Angry tears fell on my gray fluffy blanket. This was so unfair. I could scream, but my throat was choked up. “So he dies a criminal.”
“I’m sorry. If it means anything, I think he really did care about you.” My father looked at me with such sorrow I almost softened.
I remembered the barrel of that rifle pointed at Roman. I looked up, glaring at my father. “Your man shot him. Whoever shot him did it on purpose. I saw—”
“It was crazy in there, Jules. You don’t know what you saw.” My father’s jaw twitched. Was he lying? Did he know something he wasn’t saying? If his team knew that Roman was on their side, then someone had shot Roman on purpose. My father was covering for them.
I pulled the blanket tighter around me. “I’d like to be alone now.”
“Julu…” My father slipped a hand on my shoulder.
I flinched from his touch. “Don’t call me that.”
He sighed, dropping his arm to his side. “You’ll get over him, love. You will.” He walked back among the officers who were processing the scene.
My heart curled up into a withered pile of ash. I’d never get over Roman. Never.
* * *
I had just finished giving my statement inside the station. They’d sent me some jerk-off kid who still had his training wheels on to question me. I had seen a cop shoot Roman. No one would listen to me. I needed proof. I needed to know who shot him. Then I could get a confession.
“Pierce,” I called to the young officer standing out back of the police station sneaking a quick cigarette.
He flinched, coughing out a cloud of smoke. “Hey, Capulet.” He waved the smoke aside as I strode up to him.
“I know you were at the Tyrell takedown earlier today.”
He blinked slowly at me. “Right. Yeah, a few of us were there.”
“Were you stationed on the north or the south of the barn?”
I saw him pause. “Aren’t you off duty at the moment?”
“Were you on the north or south?” I repeated.
“Why does it matter?” He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and turned to go back inside.
I grabbed his arm. “Just answer the question, Pierce. Please.”
He glanced over my shoulder to the doorway leading into the station. “I was…on the south.”
He would have been standing on the same side as the shooter. “Who was stationed on the western-most window on that side?”
He shuffled his feet, his eyes darting about him. “Why are you asking all these questions?”
“Who stood at that window? Tell me now or I’ll go to my father.”
Pierce scoffed. “He’d be the last person to tell you who stood there.”
I froze, my blood turning to sharp icicles in my veins. I grabbed Pierce’s shirtfront, not caring that I was assaulting a police officer right outside the police station. “Was it you? Was it you w
ho stood at the that window?”
“No.”
“Then who, dammit?” I leaned in. “Who? If you’ve ever thought of me as a friend…”
He shushed me. “Jules, keep it down.”
“Tell me, Pierce, tell—”
“Okay,” he relented, “but this never came from me.”
Triumph flooded through my veins. “I promise.”
Pierce glanced around before locking eyes with me. “Your father took that position.”
My fingers sprang open. I stumbled back. Dread rattled down my bones. Betrayal shot like a bitter poison through my veins, withering my insides.
“Jules…are you okay?” Pierce’s voice sounded so far away.
No. I was not okay. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be okay again.
My father had shot Roman. He killed him on purpose.
30
____________
Roman
“You can stop pretending to be dead now,” a familiar voice said.
Light hit the backs of my lids. A wave of fresh air rolled over me and I sucked it in greedily.
I remembered Julianna’s face just before I “died”, her eyes glassy with tears, pain ripping across her beautiful features. The image was burned into my retinas. It would haunt me forever. A rush of anger flooded through me as I sat up, blinking as I tried to adjust to the light.
“Easy, tiger,” Chief Capulet said. “You’ll get fake blood everywhere. Let them take the bag out.” He stood by the metal table that I was sitting on, watching as an older man in a white coat unzipped the rest of the body bag I’d been transported here in. Wherever here was.
I sat still as the man in a white coat cut away at my suit and removed the blood bag that had been strapped to my stomach. The plan had been executed to perfection. Almost. Julianna’s screaming echoed in my head. She was the one flaw.
I was in what looked like a curtained-off section of a morgue, heavy metal tabletops and square metal drawers along one wall. The air smelled sharply of antiseptic, but underneath it was the thick odor of stale decay. I guessed the man in the white coat must be a medical examiner—the one who had been roped into faking my death certificate.
They hadn’t closed the curtain enough, because just past it, on the tabletop next to me, I spotted a familiar figure. My father, his eyes still open, a look of shock on his face. As if the great Giovanni Tyrell himself couldn’t believe he was actually dead.
Turns out you aren’t immortal.
Under the numbness that coated my body, a rumbling of something dark and painful rippled. I tore my eyes away from my father’s face. I was not ready to deal with this now. Not right now.
The examiner finished wiping my torso of the sticky fake blood. Julianna had almost touched the bag under my suit. I remembered grabbing her hands, gripping them, brushing them across my lips. If only I could touch her hands once more.
You did what you had to. You made the deal for her.
The important thing was she was safe and alive.
The chief’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Your immunity comes into full effect as of now. The paperwork is almost done for your transfer into our witness protection program. We’ll have a car take you to the airport for a flight tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow? Please, not yet. I wasn’t done here. I needed some reason, some excuse, to stay in Verona. Near her. Just for a few more days…
“I want to attend my father’s funeral,” I said as my eyes came to rest upon his body. “It’ll be in a few days, I’m sure. You wouldn’t deny me that, would you?”
Chief Capulet gave me a suspicious look as he considered my request, his stare edged in hatred. Even with how he felt about me, he wouldn’t deny a son his right to attend his father’s funeral, would he?
“Fine,” he said finally. “But you’ll stay hidden. I’ll escort you myself to make sure there is no…funny business.”
“Of course.”
Julianna’s stricken face came to mind. Her screams echoed in my brain. I had promised I wouldn’t see her or speak to her again—conditions of the deal to get her back—but I couldn’t leave without seeing her one more time.
* * *
Two days later, my funeral was scheduled right after my father’s in Waverley Cathedral. I was escorted from the safe house I’d been hidden away in by two armed guards and the chief himself. I was allowed to remain only on the mezzanine that ran above the church’s main floor, the shadows hiding my face as I watched the funeral below. The chief and his men stood a few meters back from me at a respectful distance while I leaned against a pillar, the scent of incense and lilies clogging my nose.
They kept the top half of the coffin open. From up here I could see my father lying in his coffin as if he were sleeping. He looked so mortal from up here. So much at peace. No trace of his monstrous nature left.
The first wave crashed through me, causing me to grip at the balustrade, feeling unexpectedly like a release. It took me a second to realize that I was feeling…relief. I’d spent so long fearing him, cowering from him, hiding from his disapproval. Terrified of what his next “lesson” might be. Despite all these things, I’d also been driven by a need to please him, a task I could never win. Even when I won, I failed.
It was all over now.
It was all over.
My father was dead.
The last moments of his life thundered through my mind. “My son!” My father screamed, rising like an avenging demon from behind a crate. “You shot my boy, you fucking bastards.”
He had died avenging me. Despite his brutal lessons, despite his hard, cruel ways, my father loved me.
He loved me.
Twenty-six years of searching for a sign of his love. He handed it to me, right before he was taken from me. His actions, his behaviors, however harsh, were suddenly colored with another light. The light of a father who loved his sons enough to want to make them kings. Who revered them enough to want to build an empire for them, however bloody. He forced men to their knees around him so that his sons would never have to bow down. He inspired a fear that reached out like Zeus’s hands so his sons could be gods on earth.
Something inside me dissolved and blew away. Grief swirled into my body, hitting me like a tsunami. My father was not a monster. He was just a man. Mortal. As breakable and fragile as all of us. Perhaps even more so.
I never understood his ways. I never would. But he was my father and I loved him.
“I forgive you,” I whispered.
Family is most important, he’d always told me. I never really appreciated that until now. He had been the last link to family that I had left here. Now he was gone.
I was alone.
I sucked in a shaky breath as Father Laurence finished up the ceremony below. There were only a few scattered heads in the pews. Hardly anybody had shown up. All of my father’s family were either dead or exiled. His colleagues either in jail awaiting trial or refusing to show any connection with him. All my father’s wealth, his power, his empire…it all came down to nothing, reduced to rubble upon his death. Oh, Father. If you were alive to see this now, it’d break your heart.
Alberto Veronesi, his enemy and one-time friend, made his way down the aisle, dressed in a long black overcoat, a single white rose on his lapel.
He placed a heavy gloved hand on the coffin. “Goodbye, old friend, dear enemy. You’ll be with Maria now.”
My mother.
My father’s admission crashed into me, knocking into me from the other side.
He’d had my mother killed. He loved her and he still killed her.
“She was going to leave me, leave us. She was going to run off with that bitch prosecutor and leave us all behind. But I fixed it.”
My mother had been about to leave us. Leave me.
Everything I thought about her was wrong. She didn’t love me. She didn’t care. What mother leaves her children behind in the hands of a cruel father? She was selfish and…and…I hated her. Bitterness sp
read throughout my body, gripping me in its clutches like a poison.
Below, my father’s coffin was carried out towards the burial site. I stood frozen, white knuckles gripping the balcony, as a silent storm tore me apart from the inside.
When the door closed, leaving the church empty, I slumped over myself. I was tired. So damn tired. I felt like I could sleep for an eternity.
The side door of the church opened. It wasn’t so much the sound of the door or the soft foot treads that had me lifting my head, but the sense of who had entered.
“Jules…” I whispered.
She was so beautiful. Even with her face pale, wisps of hair escaping from her ponytail, whiskey eyes rimmed with red. Even with her feminine body cloaked in light-swallowing and shapeless black.
I spotted the stairs leading down and started forward. Everything faded except for her. My promises, my deal, my immunity, all forgotten.
Two firm hands wrapped around my upper arms yanked me back. “Don’t you dare,” the chief hissed in my ear.
“If I could just say goodbye…?” If I could just touch her face one more time. Smell her hair. Feel her heart beating against mine.
“She thinks you’re dead. You need to stay that way. If you don’t, the deal’s off. It’s life in prison and I swear to God I will make it a living hell.”
How do you say goodbye when you are forced into silence?
When I had made the deal with Chief Capulet, I had been desperate and half mad with the knowledge that my father had Jules. I would have said yes to anything to save her. Even if it meant I had to give her up. As long as she was safe. Alive. That’s all that mattered to me.
I gave up my life for hers. I’d do it a hundred times if I had to. It was my sacrifice. It was all I had to give her. Perhaps now I could be…good. Perhaps now I had redeemed myself. I had proven myself worthy of her… I only had to give her up.
They tried to drag me back away from the balcony, away from the edge, away from Julianna.
“Please,” I begged. “Please, just one more minute.”