Roman

Two days earlier...

Imade the mistake of checking my phone after Julianna had fallen asleep in my bed. I found a message waiting for me.

Giovanni: Tomorrow we have something important to do. Be ready at 6am. Abel will fetch you.

Fetch me.Like I was a stick he liked to throw around. I imagined smashing my phone. I imagined burrowing myself into Julianna so deep that he'd never find me. I imagined disappearing into the far corners of the earth; all I'd need was Julianna by my side.

Only she'd never run with me, she'd made that much clear. Verona was her home. Who the hell was I to her?

Tomorrow we have something important to do.

These words filled me with a cold dread. Whatever it was that my father had planned, it would not be good. Our father-son outings ended in guns drawn or someone dead. Each time a little bit more of me blackened. Each time a little more of me became accustomed to his brand of "justice". I could sense Darkness lay waiting for me, softly laughing, fingernails clicking.

I couldn't sleep after that. My mind folded over and over, arguing for me, against me. The cold truth frosted over my heart as the cold dawn crept ever closer. I couldn't escape who I was.

"Something on your mind?"

I turned away from my boxing bag to find Julianna standing at the door to my gym. Shit. I hadn't meant to wake her. Then I noticed she was dressed. "Where are you going? At three in the morning?" I couldn't help the accusation in my voice.

"I got a call from work. They've found a body."

Today she would be solving a crime. Today I would be committing one. The reminder of how different we were slid into my gut, injecting me with self-loathing. She tried to hold me but I pushed her hands away. She didn't deserve my filth on her clean skin. "I'm sweaty," I grunted, like the creature I was.

A small crease appeared between her brows. "Will I see you later?"

I remembered my hands, the blood under my fingernails after the night I shot Vinnie Torrito. I remember the foul, wretched creature I had morphed into afterwards. Whatever my father was going to have me do today would be worse; I could feel it. I could not let her see me afterwards. Not until I had pulled myself together. Not until I had scraped the remaining gentle, warm pieces of me back into place, patting them down like pieces of clay to cover back up the rotten black core. I said nothing, promised her nothing.

I watched her face fall, her pain evident from my cold dismissal. Didn't she realize how bound I was to her? She had me. She ruled me. Couldn't she see that it was all for her? It was so painfully obvious to me.

I couldn't let her walk away with doubt in her heart.

I went after her. "Jules."

She turned, her hand on the doorknob. I grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to meet my crushing lips. The growing sense of doom sizzled like a poison in my blood. I kissed her as if her lips held the antidote to death. I kissed her as if it was the last time. I had only borrowed her. One day soon I would lose her.

Julianna froze, perhaps shocked at the desperate turnabout of my attention. I wanted to roar and beat my chest, lock her away here with me and never let her out of my sight. That would be the only way I could protect her.

You can't protect her. Just like you couldn't protect Mama.

I let go of her before I scared her any further. Before I scared myself with the violence of my desperation. "Be careful," I said, trying not to let fear creep into my voice.

The smile she gave me back was forced.

* * *

Abel was waitingfor me on my couch, robed in black like a Master of Death, when I returned to the Tyrell apartment at about ten past six that morning. "Where've you been?" His face was twisted into a snarl, probably from having to wait for me.

"For me to know and for you to find out." I walked past him into my bedroom, barely glancing at him, an obvious dismissal.

He followed me. I could practically smell his acrid breath over my shoulder. "You're late. Your father's waiting."

"Calm down, dog. Let me drop my gym bag and we can be off."

As I dropped my bag on my still-made bed, I felt my burner phone buzzing in the bottom of the bag. Julianna. She was the only one who had that number. Why was she ringing me at six in the morning A strange feeling echoed in the pit of my stomach. Whatever it was, I couldn't take her call now. I'd have to wait until I got back from…whatever my father had planned. I grabbed the gun from my bedside table and strapped it to my hip.

"Where are we going?" I asked when the driver of the limo that drove Abel to fetch me missed the turnoff towards my father's mansion, continuing down the highway out of Verona. Seeds of apprehension sprouted weeds in my gut.

Abel smirked at me from the opposite seat, a slimy thin-lipped smile that made his scar whiten. "For me to know and for you to find out."

Bastard. I strained not to fidget in the leather seat, watching the city hurtling past.

My stomach had become a knot of thorns as the limo pulled up into a small airfield. My father and a small entourage of black-suited men were waiting, a private jet waiting behind them, our family crest emblazoned in gold on the tail and wings.

"I said seven o'clock takeoff," snapped my father to Abel as we got out of the limo.

"Apologies, sir. We were delayed." Abel shot me a murderous stare.

My father grunted and turned towards the plane. I repeated my question to him as I strode beside him, watching our long morning shadows like ominous twins before us on the tarmac.

My father clasped me on the shoulder, pushing me forward to take the short flight of steps up to the jet. "It's time you learn about our business, son."