Verona Blood Read online

  Diamonds. Guns. Drugs.

  And yes, hotels. Lots and lots of hotels. After all, you have to launder the money somewhere, right?

  My family has so much money, you could never spend it all. It’s not in any one account, or controlled by any one person, but we have enough money to burn piles of the stuff as tall as this building, and not miss it at all.

  Many of the men eyeing me off in the crowd find that staggering wealth extremely attractive.

  Me, I learned a long time ago that money doesn’t mean much. Beyond granting you food, and shelter, and warmth, money doesn’t do much at all. It doesn’t hold you at night when your father is still working, always working. It doesn’t help you trust anybody who might be a romantic possibility.

  Money doesn’t bring your mother back from the dead after she dies giving birth to your stillborn brother when you’re twelve years old. Money doesn’t suck the water out of your dead sister’s lungs after she drowns herself to avoid taking the throne that was her birthright, not mine. Now I’m the consolation prize to all this.

  Money: I’m about to have more of it than any of these greedy fucks could imagine.

  And I don’t want it.

  Not a nickel. Not a penny. Not a dirty dollar bill.

  But for my father, I will take it. I will assume the throne of the Capulet family. It’s my destiny, whether I want it or not.

  As I get closer to the front of the grand ballroom, I see Joshua standing beside my father and my uncle, all three of them dressed in their best fucking suits. Christ, all I need is a bouquet of flowers to hold, and this could actually be our wedding. It’s basically a rehearsal for that very eventuality. I fight to keep my eyes on a spot behind Joshua’s head, wondering what it would look like if somebody shot him in the face and blasted his brains all over the back wall of the room.

  That sure would solve a couple of my most pressing issues.

  I make it to the front of the room. There are speeches. The Cartier box makes it’s own entrance, to much applause. Lamb, meet slaughter. Joshua smiles at me as he slides the giant rock onto my finger. And just like that, we are engaged. I am betrothed. I look at the cold diamond’s surface, imagining the sweet relief my sister must have felt as she plunged into icy waters, emptied her lungs of air, opened her mouth and let herself drown to avoid this very moment, all those years ago.

  Chapter Six

  ROME

  Merc takes great pleasure in getting to babysit Rosaline. I wonder if I’ll return home to find her missing fingers, or teeth, or her large intestine. Merc does so relish the sight of blood, especially when it’s spilled in the names of loyalty and vengeance.

  Me, I could go the rest of my life and be quite happy to never see the brutal reality of a bullet hole, a stab wound, a lip split from angry fists. I prefer the simple life, dabbling in my makeshift lab in the basement of a house I own in Alameda County, across the bridge and far away, where the watchful eyes of Verona can’t reach, or at least, choose not to look.

  On the passenger seat beside me, I have an odd assortment of things; a gold masquerade mask, a change of clothes, a Glock pistol, a switchblade. I’m driving a fucking Prius, because a Prius is the least showy, most able to blend in vehicle I could think of. I’m smart, these days. I mean, in my youth, before I understood the importance of flying under the radar, I used to drive a fucking hearse around town.

  I’m not even kidding.

  But drugs and conspicuous cars don’t mix, so I’m blending in, going five over the speed limit as I cruise over the Bay Bridge, a ninja in my white electric-powered dream.

  I pull up at a nondescript warehouse in Oakland a little while later, parking in a loading zone. The sky is starting to fade, the evening air a little cooler as the sun under over the horizon. I do a quick check of my surroundings, looking for cops, enemies, anything that might interfere with my mission. A gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans, a handful of pills that look more like Pez candies in my pocket, a fresh stick of peppermint gum, and I’m good to go.

  Head down, I circle around to the back of the warehouse and enter the loading dock’s open roller door. There are three beefy security dudes just inside the dock, hidden from the street but apparent as soon as my eyes adjust to the dark interior of the windowless space. They all nod at me, holding Uzi’s pointed at the floor, and I nod back in greeting, sliding the gold mask over my eyes as I make my well-worn path into what can only be described as a parallel universe in the middle of the industrial district.

  I open a small door in the back of the empty loading dock, my eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark interior beyond. It’s still light outside, the sun holding on for at least another thirty minutes before it’s grand departure, but in here, it’s midnight twenty-four hours a day. I breathe in, a smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth as I enter what can only be described as one, big, fucked-up fairytale-themed party, complete with Sleeping Beauty being projected onto the bare white-brick wall at the far end of the space. Translucent black sheets of gauzy silk hang suspended from the ceiling in different configurations, wrapping around low, circular daybeds that, ironically, will most likely never see the light of day. On low tables, platters of red toffee-dipped apples sit gleaming, and black rose petals are scattered on every available surface. Fat, round candles burn eagerly, some on the floor, others on tables and low walls, the entire room pulsing like a fire marshal’s living nightmare.

  I know exactly where to go, heading for the stairwell at the side of the room, past the silk-draped couches and the people in various states of undress lounging upon them. I see flashes of pert breast and round, smooth ass cheek, of spread thighs and pistoning hips. Still, it’s all fairly sedate down here on the ground floor, where people know they can be seen. It’s up the stairs that I take, bouncing two at a time in my sneakers, that the real deviants are hiding out.

  More security. A long, dark corridor that leads to a series of private rooms, criss-crossed along the walkway. All locked. I stroll past two more security guards on my way down the hallway, looking at each door carefully. My reputation precedes me. There are little red stickers, the size of my thumbnail, stuck to every single door. Some rooms have three and four of the little dots. Each dot represents a customer wanting to purchase my wares, and this isn’t exactly the type of thing you can just buy off the street corner. No, the drug I sell is exclusive. But it does have a rabid following, and as I enter the first door, this one adorned with three red stickers, I have to fight to keep the amused grin off my face.

  The rooms in this place are identical, lavish but minimalist, outfitted with everything you could ever want for your own personal sex-and-booze bender. Chilled champagne sits in a bucket on a low marble table, three lipstick-rimmed glasses filled with bubbles and honey-hued liquid.

  Three bodies move on the large bed, the hungry sounds of skin slapping on skin something I’ve become acutely accustomed to over the past three days, not to mention all of my previous visits to parties like this. I clear my throat, hoping to get their attention. There are three girls, probably in their early twenties. They’re all giggly and frothy from the champagne, and I wonder if their little party will extend to male company, or if it’ll stay just these three.

  “Three?” I ask, a little louder than is probably polite for this kind of thing.

  Five minutes later, the girls are lined up on their knees in a neat row in front of the bed, their mouths open, their pink tongues ready. I would crack a joke about how this looks, but I’m kind of in a hurry, with at least fifteen more customers to attend to in this one place alone. I’ve got a list of parties to go to, some over here in Oakland, others in the city, and everybody wants their dose of the good stuff before the party fizzles out. If I were an enterprising drug manufacturer I’d have staff to deliver the other doses for me, but I don’t trust anyone with my particular brand of magic.

  Hence the naked girls. I place a pill on the tongue of the first one and watch her swallow it, checking her
mouth and under her tongue, before offering her a champagne flute to wash down the chalky pill. She accepts, drinking the entire glass. I switch my focus to the second girl, repeating my actions, making certain that she swallows the pill.

  The third girl is more coy than her friends, the introvert of the threesome. She looks at the red heart-shaped pill in my thumb and forefinger with apprehension. “I’ll take it later,” she says, crossing her arms over her breasts. I raise my eyebrows, taking my leather jacket off and offering it to her. Some people are just too damn inhibited to have a strange, tattoo-covered punk shove a pill down their throat while they’re completely naked and on their knees. I get it. But also, she’s not keeping my fucking pill to give to some asshole who will copy the formula I painstakingly created.

  “It’s now or never, princess,” I say, holding the tablet up in the dim light. “There’s zero harm in saying no. Honestly.”

  She stares at the pill, seemingly fascinated. “I have a really strong gag reflex,” she confesses. “If you put your finger on my tongue, I’ll throw up.”

  I feel for her boyfriend, if she has one. Then again, perhaps that’s why she’s locked in a private room inside a sex club with two other women, no dicks to be seen. Except mine, and it’ll be staying firmly inside my pants for the duration of the evening, and probably another couple of days as I recover from my case of Rosaline chafe.

  I coach the girl to catch the pill in her throat by tilting her head back, and she takes it like a champ, gag reflex thankfully not affected. After she’s swallowed, and sank half a bottle of champagne as a chaser, I sit on a sleek mustard-colored sofa in the corner of the room, and set my watch for thirty minutes. My cash is already downstairs, the next room ready for me. The girls go back to whatever it was they were doing on the bed, and I watch idly. I can think of worse things to be doing.

  My phone vibrates nineteen minutes in. It’s Merc.

  She says it was Ty Capulet who wanted her to take your pills.

  Huh. Fucking figures that one of those pricks would want to take away the one good thing I’ve got going for me. Fucking figures.

  Rage boils up in me at the mention of that soul-sucking family. They’re the kind of people who would climb over your dying body to take your last dollar, and they’d make sure to stand on your throat and finish you off while they were at it. The Capulets used to be like family, until they destroyed my family and scattered us to a dozen different corners of the globe. I’m the only one stubborn enough to stay in the ruined mansion that my trust fund owns, the only asset to any of our names anymore, a vestige of broken lives and ash and now, Rosaline’s blood. Fucking bitch. I didn’t know she was in with the Capulets. I never would have hooked up with her if I’d known. Now, I’m just glad I figured out what she was trying to steal before she managed to get away with it.

  I hope it took a lot of torture to get that information out of her, but Rosaline is a coward. I bet she flipped on Ty before I even got to this party.

  Any idea where this little shit is? I fire back. Three dots appear immediately.

  He’ll be at the birthday party tonight. In the city. You know, all that bullshit where they hand over the reins, or sell the cow, or whatever.

  That’s tonight. Jesus.

  Something akin to jealousy ripples through me like fire, as I think of Avery Capulet getting engaged tonight.

  I find it ironic as fuck that when we were tiny children, our parents had arranged for us to be married one day. Yeah. Me, a Montague, and Avery, the diamond in the Capulet family’s crown.

  Guess you can see how that turned out.

  When? Exactly where? I type back to Merc.

  Palatial Hotel. From 8pm on. You know which one he is?

  I think back to the last time I say Ty Capulet, the little prick, after he testified against me in court and helped to send me to prison for two fucking years for something he did.

  Yeah, I text back. I know exactly which one.

  Dude. Wear a mask or something. They’ll never let you near that place. You don’t exactly blend.

  I catch my reflection in the mirrored coffee table I'm hunched over and have to agree. My tattoos are pretty fucking conspicuous. The Montague crest on my back might be covered, but there’s plenty more black and red ink snaking up my arms, all the way to my fingertips. Up my neck. Everywhere. Plus the small matter of me looking exactly, irredeemably like my exiled father, who is the only person more hated than me in this little criminal society in San Francisco.

  I gave Rosaline something to knock her out. I’m meeting you there. You’re not going in to their lair alone.

  I smirk. Swell, I text back. See you there.

  Somebody is going to get fucked up tonight, and not in a fun way, like these three giggling girls, whose doses of my special recipe have started to hit them. I wait eleven painstaking minutes, the entire time imagining exactly how I’ll rearrange Ty Capulet’s face.

  That fucking family. They’re like blood-sucking demons. Ghouls. They’ve taken everything from my family, and now one of them is trying to undermine me and steal my drug.

  Haven’t they taken enough?

  Game on, motherfucker. You just messed with the wrong Montague.

  I stalk to my car once I know my pills are safely dissolved in these girls' stomachs. When I get to my car, I open the door so hard I nearly wrench it off the fucking hinges. I wish I had a faster car, to rage-drive back to the city and smash right into the front doors of the Palatial Hotel, maybe take out some Capulet family members on my smash and grab mission. I intend to make an example of that family. A bloody one. And it might just involve taking their beloved princess Avery down a couple of notches.

  When I finally get to the financial district in the city, I park in a handicapped spot — if I’m going to beat some people to a bloody pulp, may as well start breaking the rules now — and collect my supplies from the trunk of the Prius. Knife? Check. Something to cover my face? Check. Guns? Check and check.

  The cells of fury that continue to multiply like cancer inside of my body propel me to the front entrance of the hotel. Before I get there, though, I hear screaming. Sirens. People start bursting out of the front of the hotel, spilling like bees from a hive that’s crashed to the ground. They all look rich, and beautiful, and frightened as fuck.

  How interesting.

  Meet me round back, Merc texts me.

  I change my trajectory, continuing down the edge of the building as people rush by, too panicked to even notice the enemy going for an evening stroll beside them. I round the side of the building, stepping into the shadows of the Palatial Hotel’s loading dock, and that’s when it seems that the universe is finally deciding to throw me a bone. A bone that looks like Avery fucking Capulet, stepping out of the service elevator, surrounded by security and clutching at some tall dude in a suit who looks like he’d eat her alive, given half a chance.

  Hello, little lover. It’s time your family was taught a lesson.

  Chapter Seven

  AVERY

  After my father’s speech, and then Joshua’s, during which I stand beside him and smile and blink my pretty fake eyelashes and try to ignore the blisters forming from my new Manolo Blahniks; the party moves outside to the rooftop deck. There are thousands of tiny fairy lights strung over the massive pool, everything sparkling and shiny. Normally I would love being here, but tonight I just want to rip the shoes off my feet, tear off this ridiculous dress, and put on some pajamas. I’ve been instructed by my father that I have to stay until at least midnight — maybe longer, if I don’t turn into a pumpkin — so I grab the prettiest drink from the nearest silver tray and try to appear semi-elegant while tipping it down my throat. The champagne bubbles tickle my nose and burn their way down my throat; but after a second flute, tossed back much the same way, a pleasant buzz filters through my veins and loosens my tense limbs. I’m reaching for a third glass when a hand presses against the small of my back, making me jump. I drop the champagne flute
to the floor, where it shatters into a million tiny shards, tiny droplets of frothy liquid hitting my ankles. Fuck’s sake.

  I turn around, expecting Joshua, letting my shoulders drop in relief when I see my cousin and uncle both standing in front of me.

  “Hey,” I say to both of them, my tongue feeling a little thick in my mouth.

  “Are you drunk?” Enzo asks, looking equal parts horrified and amused.

  Nathan scowls. “Every damn time, I tell you. You have got to eat at these things.”

  I shrug, mostly sad that I don’t have a fresh drink in my hand. “I’m not drunk,” I protest. “Tipsy, but not drunk.”

  My uncle blinks slowly, as if in deep thought. “Maybe you should take Avery to freshen up, maybe have a snack?” Enzo suggests to Nathan, who nods in response.

  “You want to cut out for a little while?” Nathan asks me, hugging me just long enough to bend down and murmur those words into my ear. I nod, and he grabs my hand, making a beeline for the exit.

  I scan the crowd, looking to see if Joshua notices my exit. He appears oblivious, deep in discussion with my father, both of them laughing and sipping on amber-colored liquid in thick crystal tumblers. Well. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s already moving on to business, but really? We’ve been engaged for literally thirty minutes.

  Perhaps this is a good omen amongst the shitty day I’ve endured. Maybe he’ll leave me well enough alone and treat this like a business arrangement after all.

  Just as I’m crossing the threshold into the ballroom, Joshua meets my gaze. I stop in my tracks, my entire body freezing up. He grins, raising his glass, giving me a wink that makes me want to run over there and rip his fucking face off in front of everyone.