Roman

Espinoza pointed his gun at me. I could see hate contorting his face, his prejudice twisting my actions into something nefarious. He would never believe that I wasn't standing here assaulting Julianna. I imagined him pulling the trigger only a split second before he did.

Bang!

I braced myself for pain. I was hit from the side as Mercutio slammed into me. I had almost forgotten he was there. We hit the ground like a fallen tree. For a split second I remained still, my body frozen with shock, waiting for a starburst of pain and the inevitable burning ache.

When I was sixteen, my father had bought me a Glock 19. He made me practice loading a full magazine over and over again until I could do it in under ten seconds without a speed loader. When I succeeded, my father took the Glock from me, a slight smile of pride on his face, and turned it over in his hands. Then he pointed it at me and shot me. The bullet had lodged in my shoulder.

It had been one of his lessons. He had wanted me to feel what it was like to be shot. He wanted me to learn to handle the burning pain, like someone had shoved a red-hot poker through my arm. He made me tie off a tourniquet myself, torn from my own bloody shirt. He glared at me every time water dared to leak from my eye. I'd passed out well before his off-the-books doctor approached me with a scalpel and a pair of tweezers.

In Dead Man's Alley, I lay on the gritty ground, Mercutio's weight on me. I felt none of this pain. My relief was shattered by a wet, sticky sensation on my chest and the tang of metal in the air. Blood. Not my blood.

No no no, my mind begged uselessly. I rolled my best friend off me and onto his back, everything else forgotten.

"Merc." I hovered over him, ignoring the grit cutting into my knees. A sticky mess spread from his chest. This could not be happening. Mercutio refused to even hold a gun. What kind of God would let this happen?

"I think I got shot." Merc coughed and redness spluttered from his lips. Shit. His lung had been punctured.

"No shit, Sherlock." I pressed my hands over his chest. If I pressed hard enough, if I spread both my hands, if I fucking willed it hard enough, he would stop bleeding. He had to stop bleeding.

He looked down at his chest, at his lifeblood pouring out of him. "Man, it looks bad."

"It's not that bad."

"Don't lie to me, it's bad." He coughed again, more blood bubbling up, and winced.

"Why did you come here, you son of a bitch?"

"Someone had to save…" he coughed again. More blood. He ignored my attempts to keep him quiet, to conserve his strength. "…save your ungrateful…" His eyes matted over as swift as a plague. There was no warning. One second he was here and the next…

"Merc?"

Another set of eyes flashed in my head, the rich, earthy irises now dead and black as burned grass. Mama? A strange cold numbness fell over me as I slapped Mercutio's cheek, trying to wake him, my bloody hand leaving a smudged print just like a young boy's finger painting. Wake up. Call me an ass. Yell at me. Tell me off, for fuck's sake!

"Espo, stop!" Julianna screamed. She had launched herself between me and her partner, standing by me like a guard.

It hit me that the polished steel of Julianna's gun was the same color as the matching sweaters that Nonna had once knitted for Mercutio and me. It had been the first Christmas I'd spent with them since my mother had died. He always got a new sweater. This was my first. Merc had scowled when Nonna had pushed it down over his head. I had pretended to make a fuss too, but I had worn that sweater every day until it smelled. Mercutio would never know that I still kept that stupid sweater, packed in a box in my mother's apartment, now too small for me.

Nonna. My stomach twisted. How was I supposed to tell Nonna? How would I ever explain how I got him killed? How could she ever forgive me? All it took was a twitch of one finger. One careless, single movement. The entire futures of three people—Mercutio's, Nonna's and mine—were torn out of the pages of time.

My eyes focused past Julianna's legs to Espinoza, towering like an executioner. "Stand aside, Capi," he demanded. There was no remorse in his cold, hard voice. None. There was no paling of his skin, no slight quiver in his voice, like there had been in mine. He had been trained to kill. And he did his job. Who was the monster now?

"I won't," Jules said, widening her stance.

His face twisted in confusion, his eyes darting between Merc and me on the ground, and Julianna. He couldn't understand why she was protecting us.

Mercutio was dead by his hand and he was confused.

This was his fault. His. Not mine.

A fury unlike any I'd ever felt before rose through me like a demon taking possession. I was no longer Roman but a demented succubus demanding what was right. Retribution. Justice. An eye for an eye. Mercutio's soul was still hovering above us, torn from this Earth much too soon. It was only fair that Espinoza would be the one to escort him up to heaven.

Julianna's gun glinted in her holster like the wink of an eye. Mercutio would never wink at me again. He'd never roll his eyes at me when I was being an ass. I snatched the gun from Julianna's hip. It weighed nothing in my palm.

I saw Espinoza trying to aim for me, but Julianna was in his way. She would not move no matter how he screamed at her. He did not fire. He would not risk hurting Jules. For that I had to thank him. It was not enough to redeem him.

I had a clear shot of him under Julianna's arm. I meant to aim for his heart. I meant to tear from him the thing he had torn from me. But my hands were wet with Mercutio's blood and the nose of the barrel dipped. I pulled the righteous trigger. The second death crack sounded into the black, sticky night.

The hole appeared in Espinoza's stomach and blood flooded his shirt. An eye for a bloody red eye. Julianna screamed, but it sounded so far away. She screamed as her partner began to fall, like a tree felled, heavy and straight.

The instant he hit the ground, all my brittle fury smashed apart like a vase, scattering into splinters, leaving me in consequences' cold spotlight, tangled in the web of the blackened fate I'd spun myself.

Julianna let out a broken sob as she dove to Espinoza's side. She placed her hands over his wound like I had done for Mercutio mere seconds ago. The pain of Mercutio's death tore through me again, this time joined by the pain I saw on Julianna's face.

I had shot Julianna's partner. Her close friend. Her Mercutio. The gun dropped from my hands.

I am a Tyrell.

As if in answer, the night sky broke open with the scream of police sirens. I pushed myself up to my feet. I felt woozy, drunk from how the last minutes had scattered our four connecting lives in different directions.

The sirens were fast approaching. They'd be on us in minutes. Seconds. I stumbled towards Julianna, my empty hands reaching for her. Grasping for her. My life buoy, like a flash of honey hair over an angry black sea. If I could just grab hold of her.

Before I could reach her, Julianna grabbed another gun from her side, my gun that she'd taken off me. She pointed the single black eye towards me. An eye for an eye, until the world is drowning in blood.

Julianna had finally turned on me. We were finally on the two sides we were meant to be on. I had pushed her there. I wanted to fight it, to fight her.

I could not conjure any justification. I was a criminal and deserved to be treated like one. I lifted my bloody palms and tried to convey with just my eyes—my voice had been crushed in the sorrow clogging my throat—that I wasn't angry. I understood.

"Jules…" I'm sorry.

"Leave." Her top lip pulled up into a snarl even as her bottom lip wobbled and her hand holding the gun trembled. "Before I change my mind."

She was letting me go. She wasn't arresting me.

Even as relief broke over me, it couldn't wash away the stains of my unworthiness. I didn't deserve her mercy. Angel as she was, she bestowed it upon me anyway. Perhaps she could forgive me. I couldn't leave without knowing she could one day forgive me. Perhaps love me again. "Just tell me?—"

"Leave now," she hissed, even as her voice broke. "Leave Verona. Go where you'll never be found. Because the next time I see you, I will shoot you."