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 spread 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."

By the grace of God, they loosened their grip. My heart squeezed tighter and tighter as I watched Julianna walk down the length of the cathedral, her steps hesitant, until she passed into the section in the back where my locked coffin, weighed down with sandbags, sat waiting for my funeral.

You will learn to forget me,I told her silently. But every day of my life I will think of you.

I would die a thousand times if it meant your life was saved.

Goodbye, my precious Jules.

Be brave.

Be…happy.