Roman

Iwoke up with rough hands shaking me, then a slap on the face.

"Fuck you," I muttered to my assaulter. "When I wake up properly, you're dead." Fuck, my head hurt. What time was it? Hell, what day was it?

I attempted to open my bleary eyes. My cousin, Benvolio, was glaring at me like I was a petulant child late for school. He looked like the rest of us Tyrells, a generous crop of dark hair, strong jaw, dark hooded eyes and a permanent snarl to his lips. "Wake up, fucker," Benvolio slapped my face again. "Have a shower and get dressed."

I shoved him back so he couldn't hit me again and sat up, rubbing my face. Sometime last night I had passed out on the couch in the living room of my new apartment, all three bedrooms of opulence, cold and impersonal like a hotel. My foot kicked at an empty bottle of Jack across the plush cream rug. "Where's the fire?" I grumbled.

"The cops are coming to take you to the station."

Cops? A shot of adrenaline rushed through me. Now I was awake. "What?"

Benvolio rolled his eyes. "Shower. Now. A Tyrell never goes in public without wearing suitable attire. Reputation is everything." He pointed to the fresh suit still in its dry-cleaning plastic, hung across the back of a straight-backed dining room chair.

Reputation is everything.I snorted. "You're sounding more and more like my old man every day."

Benvolio's eyes narrowed. "And you're not sounding enough like him."

I gritted my teeth. For a long moment, we glared at each other, Benvolio hating me because I was next in line to the Tyrell throne, me hating him because he wasn't.

Benvolio pointed towards my bathroom. "Shower. Go."

"What? You're not going to wash my ass for me?"

"I don't get paid enough to wash your fucking ass. Why don't you get one of your groupies to do it for you? Speaking of groupies, why are you alone? Shouldn't you have a naked girl or three draped over your dick?"

I snorted. "What the fuck do you know?"

"Please. Your sordid reputation in Europe even reached us in Verona."

I didn't answer him. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and tried not to barf all over the pristine cream marble tiles. In the shower, I let the hot water run over me. I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my body. My muscles ached. My head throbbed.

What hurt worst wasn't physical. I felt raw and torn, a mere cavity inside me where my soul had been, where hope had once lain. Not even that pretty and willing blonde from the other night could soothe me.

After I got her back to this apartment, Rachel, or whatever her name was, had begun to undress. I'd stood there drinking straight from the bottle. I kept comparing her to Julianna. Her tan was fake, not like Julianna's smooth, natural glow. Her body was too skinny and I could feel her ribs when she pressed up against me, not like Julianna's soft, warm flesh and perfect natural curves.

I reached for the blonde's lips anyway, praying that they would quiet the noise in my head like Julianna's had.

They hadn't. The world still whirled around me, the voices—mine, my mother's, my father's—all yelling at me in my head. I needed peace and peace was in Julianna's touch.

But I couldn't have her. Not now. Not anymore.

I tore my mouth away from the blonde and let out a growl of frustration as I pushed her off me. She let out a whine of disapproval.

"I can't do this," I told her.

She stared at me, wide eyes looking pained, then she glanced down. I was totally flaccid. "You drank too much?"

"Yeah," I muttered. Let her think that. I hoped it would make her feel better when I kicked her out.

She wouldn't take the hint. "I can fix that for you." She pressed up against me, her hand shoving down into the front of my pants. Even in her palm, my dick was limp.

Julianna.

Julianna Julianna Julianna. That's all my fucking body was crying out for. She was a drug that I'd somehow become addicted too. Nothing else would satisfy me. The gorgeous woman with the whiskey-colored eyes had ruined me.

"You should go," I said to the blonde.

She left in a huff, refusing the wad of cash I handed out to her. "I am not a fucking hooker," she yelled at me.

"It's for your cab."

She slammed the door behind her and it rattled in its frame.

I took my bottle of Jack and sank into the deck chair out on the main balcony and stared up at the stars.

When I was a boy, when my mother was alive, she used to lie out under the stars on a blanket with me, and we'd pick out constellations. She'd pick out one, a real one, then I'd pick out one. I used to make mine up, but she never let on, pretending that she saw them too.

Julianna had shone brighter than the stars to me. A perfect constellation. I had to let her go. Because I didn't deserve her. She didn't deserve me.

I shut my eyes, wishing I was somewhere else. I drank until it all went black.

I turned off my shower, forcing myself back to the present.

When the police knocked on my door, I answered it, pressed and polished in a tailored Armani suit. It had been Jacob's and now it was mine. Apparently, I had grown to fill it out in the eight years I'd been gone.

I greeted the uniforms at my door with cold civility. They seemed surprised to see that I was ready and waiting for them. They should know by now that nothing went on in Verona without the Tyrells knowing about it. My father had friends and little birdies in all sorts of places.

I traveled to the police station with Benvolio driving his Escalade, the police car behind us, with another black SUV following us at a distance with two other hired men. No Tyrell would be caught dead in the back of a police car like a common criminal.

In the car, Benvolio spoke only to tell me, "Your father has already been summoned to the station too."

"Great. A father and son excursion."

I ignored Benvolio's look.

Verona's main police station was a solid five-level building that took up half of a block, a parking lot located out the back. After I exited the car, I was escorted by two officers to the third floor where, apparently, I would be interrogated. Benvolio and the hired men remained outside.

As I strode down the corridors of the police station to the interrogation room, the other police officers flinched away from me. I could sense their fear; I could almost smell it. Fear because of who my family was. Who they thought I was. The addictive rush of power swirled in my veins before I could stop it. I lifted my chin and glared back at these officers of the law, looking my natural enemies straight in the eyes.

I was a Tyrell. I had learned how to lie to the world. It was lie or die.

I was shown into a tiny interrogation room where I folded my body into a plastic chair at a table, two chairs opposite me. The room smelled musty and slightly of sweat. How many criminals had they broken in this very chair? They would not break me. They would not break a Tyrell.

I faced a large mirror that took up almost the entire wall and wondered how many of them would be watching through the one-way glass. I smirked into the mirror and spent some time rearranging my hair that was still perfectly in place. I noted a small video camera in the top right-hand corner of the room, also trained on me.

They made me wait a whole forty minutes before the door opened and a male Hispanic detective walked in. It was an interrogation technique, making the interviewee sweat. It wasn't going to work on me. If they had anything on me, I'd have been arrested. I repressed the emotions and questions swirling around inside me.

He sat opposite me and placed a manila file on the table top. I hid my curiosity as to what was contained within. I suspected enough.

"I'm Detective Espinoza," he said, folding his hands and placing them over the folder. He was a baby-faced guy, olive-skinned, round cheeks softening the hardness to his eyes. I suspected this detective wasn't one to be fucked with.

I stared at him for a few seconds, refusing to blink or show any emotion. A Tyrell never shows fear.

"You want to tell me what this is about, detective?"

"Just some questions."

I lifted my ankle onto my other knee and leaned back in the chair, placing my arm along the back of the chair beside me, acting as comfortable as if this place was my own personal living room. Like he was my guest. "By all means. Ask away."

"We're waiting for my partner."

The door opened to the right of me. This must be the partner. I turned in my chair to get a glimpse of the poor schmuck. My heart slammed against my chest at the sight of the woman in the doorway. Whiskey-colored eyes of my dreams. Perfect honey-gold hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, a conservative gray pantsuit covering the most incredible body that I'd ever laid my hands on.

The blood drained from my head.

Julianna was a detective.

Her gaze locked with mine and recognition filled up her widening eyes. Then came the realization.

Even though I had decided to let her go, even though I knew she deserved better than me, I had prayed that somehow, some way, in this city of four million people, that fate would somehow manage to drag her back into my life. But not like this. Not like this.

Julianna was the detective who was about to interrogate me.

Life could not get any fucking worse.

I forced my face into a calm mask. I felt the surface of me crack over as it froze. Underneath I was a whirling, furious current.

Detective Julianna Capulet.

Something in the newspaper clippings my father had sent over for me to read yesterday caught my attention. I hadn't fucking put it together until now.

Montgomery Capulet was the new chief of police. My family's enemy number one.

And the woman I couldn't forget was his only daughter.