Page 3 of Downfall

My anger grows then, as I take in her clothes. Scarlet silk of a designer dress that clings to her curves that seem to have only gotten better as she’s aged. I guess the colour couldn’t be more perfect. She is in many waysthescarlet woman. The betrayer. Her dark hair flows in loosely styled curls reminding me of all the times she used to play with it while we’d talk, while we’d whisper our desires, as if any of it was real to her.

But especially I take in the diamond glinting onthatfinger. She moved on. She forgot me. She married someone else.

Despite everything we’d promised. Everything we’d agreed. In the end it all meant nothing.I meant nothing.

She sips her drink, her rouge lipstick leaving a smear on the glass, reminding me of so many times she would have done the same on my lips. Suddenly I can taste it, I can taste her. She glances around. Perhaps she senses that someone is watching her. In truth half the bar is. She’s Rose Capulet for Christ sake. Her family are as powerful as mine.

Her eyes cast over the corner where I’m sat, concealed, but she doesn’t see me and if anything that tells me what I need to know. That I am nothing. That she truly has forgotten me.

It should strengthen my resolve. It should make this task easier. Afterall I came here tonight for one reason and one reason alone. To make my mark. To let this city know that I am back and that this time they will pay for their insults.

Starting with her. With Rose. My first love. In truth, the only woman I have ever loved, have ever cared for, my own sister excluded. If I had anything left that resembled a heart then I would feel something akin to grief in this moment but I have nothing now. Nothing but darkness.

She turns, her legs tucked to the side on the stool like she’s some graceful beauty and not some heartless creature of deception.

My hand pauses. I’m not one for changing plans. But now that I’m here, now that I’ve seen her it’s harder than I imagined. I thought this would be easy. I thought this would feel good. To take my vengeance. She belonged to me after all, all I’m doing is claiming that, fulfilling the promise she made all those years ago, when she said she would die for me. Though I can see now how hollow those words were, I was going to make them real. To claim her life. To take it. To watch her last deceitful breaths pass over those perfect pouty lips.

But Ican’tdo it. The realisation hits me from nowhere.

I can’t kill her.

But she doesn’t deserve to live either.

And then he walks in.

No, saunters in.

He doesn’t look around. He knows where she is. His men have been stood close enough as if they’re her bodyguards but I wonder with the way she seems to flit if they might be more than that. Perhaps he senses her duplicity too. Perhaps he’s learnt to keep a tight leash on her. Can’t blame him for that.

He puts his hand on her back, where the dress exposes her skin and she doesn’t react. Doesn’t recoil from his touch. My jealousy spikes because she should fucking recoil. She should hate it.

His mouth lowers and he murmurs something in her ear. She sighs, nodding her head, her eyes fixed in front. She puts the glass down, gets to her feet, and he leads her out, her heels clacking with every manicured step she takes.

She doesn’t look then.

She just walks.

Hand in hand with Paris Blumenfeld. The man she married instead of me.

Roman

“Well?” Ben says as soon as I walk into the house. It’s dark. I was meant to be back hours ago but it felt too soon to return to the house. And I wanted some thinking time. Some processing time.

It wasn’t meant to feel like this. It was meant to be easy. It was meant to feel good. To take my vengeance. To show the world what it meant to cross me and yet for the first time in my life my finger faltered. I failed to pull the trigger.

I look at Ben. For the entirety of my exile he has remained by my side. Helping me. In truth being more of a servant at times than a friend. His face bares the scar of when he took a knife for me. When Capulet sent an assassin, not long after I’d left, to ensure his enemy’s only son was gone for good. Except it didn’t end that way. Ben took the knife. Lost his eye for me. And the assassin spent the next two weeks enduring every minute of my furious violence until I sent him back, neatly packed up in a box for Ignatio to keep.

I shake my head just a little in answer to his unspoken question. But he must know already. If she were dead the news would already been screaming it. Social media would too. Rose Capulet executed in a bar. The entire city’s elite would be dumbstruck.

And yet it didn’t happen. I didn’t do it.

He gets up, walks over to the drinks cabinet and pours out two drinks, passing one to me and I down it.

“I did warn you.” He says. And I know he’s right. I hate that he’s right. That that beautiful, conniving temptress has beaten me once again. Beaten me without even knowing it.

My glass shatters in my hand as I clench my fist. How can such a woman possess such power over me? Me?

“What are you going to do?” Ben asks.

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