Page 72 of Downfall

I waited for her. I waited over and over. Returning day after day. Expecting to see her. Only she never showed.

But someone else did.

I know Ignatio was behind it. The first assassination attempt. But Rose set it up. It was her words telling me to be there. Telling me that she was coming. That she was leaving Verona. Christ, how my heart had leap when I’d finally gotten that message. I’d called her. She didn’t pick up but she replied, telling me she was being watched, that her family were suspicious and she was running away to be with me.

Except it wasn’t true was it? She was playing me, having one more laugh at my expense. How I’d not ended up gutted I don’t know. I guess it was instinct. I was fighting for my life, and the knifeman, though strong, wasn’t able to overpower me.

And as he lay bleeding out from the knife buried in his jugular I sat beside him, watching the blood streaming into the gutter, realising how truly stupid I’d been.

She wasn’t coming.

She was never coming.

She was staying in Verona Bay.

And everything we had been was a lie.

I run my hand over my face bringing my head back to now. I don’t allow myself to think on it. I haven’t for a long time. On those last days of the old me. The stupid me. The gullible me.

Rose had fooled me. Played me. And then abandoned me, right when I’d needed her the most.

And yet she’d screamed at me just now, acting like I was the one who’d duped her.

Have I got this wrong? Is it possible that all of this is the complete opposite to what I thought it was? I can’t deny that I still want her. Even now, even after everything, I know if she’d confessed to it, if she’d begged for mercy, begged me to take her back I would have.

She still holds that power over me. She still holds that power over my heart.

I snarl hating that she does. I want to hate it. I want to hate her.

But I can’t.

I blink staring about me. I need to figure this out. I need to know once and for all if she’s the conniving bitch I’ve convinced myself she is or whether she’s as much a victim as I am.

But the only way to know that is to spend time with her and if I do that, if I allow myself to get too close, I’ll burn entirely just from the exposure.

‘You left me. You destroyed my life.’

Her words echo in my head and I can hear it. Her pain. Her anger. If there’s even a small chance I’m wrong, even the slightest chance that the Rose I knew was real then I have to take it, and if it turns out she’s playing me again, if it turns out this woman is exactly what I fear then I will kill her.

I won’t hesitate this time.

I will carve out her god damn heart.

Rose

“You haven’t changed a bit.”

Why is it those are the words that stick?

And more to the point, how dare he? How dare he just show up and say that? Like he knows me, like he even understands what the hell I’ve lived through.

I have changed. I’ve changed entirely. I’m not that doe-eyed, innocent idiot who fell for his charms. I’m not that naïve twenty something who believes that love conquers all.

Because it doesn’t.

All that love does is leave you broken and ruined.

And that’s how he left me; Roman fucking Montague. Only now he gets to play the prodigal son, gets to return to a hero’s welcome.

---