Page 41 of Born Chaos

I huff a tiny laugh, though I don’t really find the situation funny. “I was going into neurology before I came to Chicago. Brains were interesting at the time.”

He crooks a little smile, though he’s not actually entertained either. “I spent two months trying to figure out who I was. But when it all led to dead ends, I realized something. What kind of good person has a fake name and a fake passport? What kind of good person gets so brutally murdered? What kind of good person gets dumped in a landfill?” He’s quiet for a minute, and I can feel the weight pressing down on him. It’s in the way he stares vacantly into the dark. In the tightness of his shoulders. In the hard fist his hand is curled into, pressed into his thigh.

“So, I let it go,” he says, his voice coming out quiet and rough. “I stopped looking for answers from the past. I became Roman De Luca because, why not? It was the only form of documentation I had. And for two years, I thought I was the only unholy vampire creation in the entire world.”

That sounds so damn lonely.

“I smelled him before I realized why the scent was familiar,” Roman moves on. “I was in Washington, east of Seattle. I stalked him, and when I saw him drinking the blood of a skier, I knew I wasn’t the only one. I approached him, and we entered into an uneasy friendship. For nearly a year, we had each other’s backs. But when he started stalking this woman, I knew I had to do something about it.”

I swallow once. Every woman has had this fear. Has always looked over her shoulder. Has always thought about how she would defend herself from some scary figure walking behind her in the dark.

“He followed her all the way to Chicago,” Roman states. “I went with him, and he was so fixated, he didn’t even care to ask me why. But he was escalating. He got demanding. He wanted her to say yes, and that wasn’t what she was answering. So, one night when he broke into her apartment, I went after him.”

The silence that follows tells me how it ended. I’ve seen it before. Roman is brutal. Savage. He’s incredibly good at it.

“I meant to move on,” Roman says. “But Edward Godfrey had been watching me and the other vampire while we’d been in the city. And he approached me about working with him in organizing things into a better state here in the city. I told him no at first. But I was so damn desperate. He offered to pay me an insane sum. I didn’t have much other choice but to hear him out. And I saw how it could be different. And here I am, twenty-one years later.”

Roman has been a vampire for twenty-four years. And in twenty-four years, he’s never told anyone the full truth.

“Your story is incredible,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief and awe. “I… I had no idea. I can’t imagine what that feels like, not knowing who you are.”

And I start to understand. To see Roman a little more clearly.

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure many people really know who they are,” he says with a soft sigh. He sits a little straighter. “We have to rediscover who we are, every single day, because the world never stops changing us.”

I realize then that it’s true. I’m not sure I’m the same person I was yesterday, and I’m definitely not the same person I was the day before that.

“Thank you for sharing with me, Roman,” I say. I reach over, and I’m not nervous anymore when I grab his hand. His gaze falls down to our hands resting on the shingles. “And thank you for keeping my own complicated past to yourself. I know it’s not easy carrying other people’s baggage.”

He looks back out into the streets again. “Makes it lighter, sharing the baggage.”

He’s right. I try to picture what it would feel like if I held all my most dangerous secrets on my own. It would feel suffocating. It would be so isolating.

Roman has lived twenty-four years with this baggage.

And suddenly, I’m more than happy to help him carry the load.

CHAPTERTWELVE

“I have to show her this.”

I open my eyes, taking in the wooden ceiling above me.

Down the hall and out in the chapel, I hear Roman speaking to one of his people.

“You can tell her what’s happened,” another voice says. I don’t recognize it, they weren’t at the party. “But if she sees this, it’s going to scare the shit out of her.”

“She deserves to know how far it’s gone,” Roman counters, his voice a low growl. “She has to understand all of it.”

I sit up when I hear footsteps walking down the hall, and just a moment later there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I say as I tuck my knees into my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

Dread fills me when Roman walks in. What he just said, what I just heard… something is about to change.

There’s death in Roman’s blue eyes. The set of his lips is narrow, angry. His left hand is curled into a fist. In his other hand, he holds a phone.

“I think you need to see this,” he says. He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed, handing me the phone. “We installed cameras at your apartment after Sebastian trashed the club.”

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