Her Villain: A Dark Bully Romance (Aqua Vitae Duet Book 1)

by Ellie Meadows

  Aqua Vitae Duet

  -Water of Life-

  Act One of Two

  -A Romeo & Juliet Inspired-

  Dark Bully Romance

  ELLIE MEADOWS

  W A R N I N G

  Recommended for 17+, mature readers.

  This series contains delicious consensual sex (All sex is consensual. If it’s nonconsensual, that shit’s called rape), drugs/drinking/smoking, violence, and various other scenes some readers might find inappropriate.

  HER VILLAIN

  -Blurb-

  Romero Montego

  My family made our fortune by preying on the innocent.

  Now I try to save my black, tarnished soul by saving them instead.

  I’m a billionaire bachelor with a murderous hobby.

  And the FBI calls me The Rose Killer.

  Juliette Capuleti

  My mother was slaughtered. That’s why I became an agent.

  And every year, I’m taunted by flowers on her grave.

  As if the psycho watches from the shadows, feeding on my tears.

  I don’t have time for love. I only want justice.

  #

  A masquerade ball. A crowd of masks. A kiss they’ll never forget.

  Law-abiding Juliette is drawn to the mysterious tattooed man with the dark eyes and sinful mouth. And despite every bone in his body screaming that she is the enemy, Romero finds himself quickly entangled. Madly. Deeply. Irrevocably.

  His hands are covered in blood. Her heart is full of pain.

  Can a serial killer and a federal agent be together? Or is their star-crossed love damned from the start?

  **The Aqua Vitae Duet is dark, suspenseful, taboo, & forbidden. Consensual sex. Drinking. Violence. With brutal scenes like a car crash you can’t look away from, Her Villain and His Poison will leave you feeling like you need to take your own trip to confession for absolution. Romero & Juliette’s love is twisted and passionate with a tragic Shakespearean edge.**

  Copyright © 2021 Ellie Meadows

  (Eli Constant Books)

  Cover © Wilde book Designs

  1st Edition Edits by The Editing Soprano

  https://theeditingsoprano.com

  This book may not be reproduced, in any fashion, without the explicit permission from Ellie Meadows/Eli Constant Books. Ellie Meadows asserts her right to hold ownership of this work. The unauthorized reproduction and/or distribution of this work is illegal.

  This is a work of fiction. Any locations that resemble something in reality are used in a fictitious manner. Similarities to organizations and locales, existing now or in the past, are purely coincidental. Characters are creations of the author’s imagination. Similarities to actual persons, living or deceased, are also purely coincidental. The events in this book should not be construed as real in any capacity.

  Want to set the mood?

  Listen to the Her Villain playlist on Spotify!

  How do you Like it – Jynjo, Spritely

  Somebody Told Me – the killers

  High Heels – JoJo

  Sociopath – StayLoose, Bryce Fox

  Smooth Criminal – Alien Ant Farm

  Serial Killer – Beaurial

  Tainted Love – Marilyn Manson

  Twisted - Missio

  And more...

  A U T H O R N O T E

  Let’s talk. **wink**

  Many hours of research go into a fiction book. We authors endlessly torture ourselves over every tiny detail, hoping to make things as realistic as possible (unless we’re writing vampires and shifters, in which case all bets are off. Want Dracula to sparkle? There are no rules! Actually, just kidding, we still do tons of research). Yet sometimes the pursuit of perfection gets in the way of an engaging plot. It can become necessary to suspend reality in order to create something that draws readers in and makes them crave more.

  Her Villain, a dark bully romance between an antihero serial killer and a tortured FBI agent, features various law enforcement organizations. I scoured websites, manuals, enlisted a close friend to explain what they could about regulations, weapons, archives, etcetera. I even watched crime panels and dove deep, entrenching myself in that world so I could make the material approachable.

  Is it perfect? No. But it doesn’t have to be.

  ###

  So, suspend reality for a while and meet me in the dark room...

  Two households, both alike in dignity,

  In fair {New York}, where we lay our scene,

  From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

  Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

  A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;

  Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

  Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

  The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,

  If I had known from the beginning where all of this would lead... would I still fall for Romero Montego?

  The answer is, unequivocally, yes.

  1.

  Juliette

  It’s the hottest month of the year again.

  The rain never seems to stop. It’s been pouring for almost a week.

  July is always the worst.

  New York is humid, steam rising from the sidewalks and roads.

  July is always the worst, but not just because of the weather.

  It’s because it’s when you died, Mom.

  “Goddammit!” I screamed, falling to my knees and slamming fists into my mother’s marble headstone, fingers wrapped around the two thorn covered stems. My palms were bleeding, but I didn’t care.

  “Leave me alone! Leave her alone... God, please, leave us alone.” By the time the ‘please’ spilled from my lips, I wasn’t screaming anymore. I was almost whispering, the last few words getting lost in the hot humid wind that whipped my hair into a wild dance around my face. The dark brown strands were a manic curtain around a window left open, a perpetual yawn, letting in the outside elements to tear the house asunder.

  A sea of headstones floated around us.

  They seemed to bob up and down, carried by the bad weather and my never-ending tears.

  How could I still hold so much grief? How could I still miss her so much? She wasn’t perfect, always commenting on my weight and hair. A little vain, a little too worried over her own looks, but she was my mother. God, she was my mother.

  I broke all over again each time I came to the grave in Woodside. But I had to come here. I had to remind myself why I became an agent, and why I had to keep trying.

  I had to see the damn roses. I had to...

  “Julie.” A hand curled gently around my shoulder. “Julie, I think you should stop coming here. I don’t think it’s healthy.”

  I blinked back angry tears and looked up into my father’s face. He’d gone so gray this past year. His beard was nearly white. So many lines around his eyes and mouth. His deep blue gaze had faded, going a hazy pale aqua that smacked of cataracts.

  “This stupid patch of ground. This stupid hunk of marble.” I reached out and punched the stone again; the impact stung like fire, my hands naked and sweaty. Wetness blossomed on my knuckles. Blood. I couldn’t hurt the headstone, even though it was where Mom’s killer taunted me the most. I couldn’t hurt it, because in the scope of my life now, it was as close to her as I could get. Lifeless rock sunk into artificially green grass.

  Ten years... She’d been dead over ten years.

  The crime scene photos haunted me.

  Hugging my father as we identified her at the morgue haunted me. They hadn’t let us see more than her face then.<
br />
  Because the rest of her was so, so badly damaged.

  Her body was in a mid-grade wooden coffin that was guaranteed to last five decades unless we bought the lifetime extended coverage. I could still close my eyes and see my dad’s face, appalled that we needed a warranty on a coffin that would never be moved. And then we could opt for a lawn crypt. A concrete chamber to further protect the casket that protected the lifeless body of my mother. As if the protection helped her now.

  ‘It shouldn’t last longer than my wife’s body. She loathed getting older, and she’d hate rotting away inside a perfect tomb. I know my wife. She cared about being beautiful, cared about being loved. We don’t need the warranty. A standing grave marker is fine, no crypt.’ Those had been Dad’s words, tearing through a broken heart. The slimy, slicked-hair funeral director had been ten percent comfort, and ninety percent capitalism. He only cared about people long enough to learn if they were gilded casket buyers, or low-rent pine. He didn’t understand why Dad, who had plenty of money at that time, didn’t want the crème de la crème of death boxes.

  We’d made up for the less expensive coffin by booking an extravagant funeral though. I’d read that they cost around eleven or twelve thousand on the high side. Mom’s ended up being closer to fifteen, not including the charitable donations she’d requested in her will which came to a whopping hundred thousand dollars.

  The public closed-casket funeral was held at St. John’s, but we kept grave side separate. Just the two of us. Alone in our grief.

  Afterwards, it had felt almost impossible to face the catered evening gathering across the city, a reception in her honor that acted as a dual fundraiser. She’d have wanted that. Dad shook a million hands and thanked people repeatedly for their condolences. A crowd of faces, most of which I hadn’t recognized. It was the first time I’d gotten a full picture of the influence my mother had on New York. And not just in high society.

  The funeral home helped us organize a smaller, more intimate dinner a few days later for close friends and some of mom’s extended family, but by that time... God, we were so numb to it all.

  Everything felt like such a blur.

  Not just her death and the funeral, but the years that spun by afterwards.

  More than a decade.

  Dad’s hand still rested against my shoulder, trying so hard to comfort me. I’d learned, over time, that nothing could really comfort you against the weight of loss.

  The ground beneath my knees was wet.

  Oxygen inside the coffin would be scarce.

  Over ten years, she’d been in that box. In the ground.

  Grave Wax. Her body fat would be changing, chemically reacting, into a sort of soap.

  “Mom’s soap,” I said randomly, my voice flat. Emotionless.

  “What?” Dad’s voice, in contrast, sounded startled, his hand falling away from my body.

  I pulled myself up off the ground using the top of the headstone; my fingers still clung to the two roses. When I was standing, I gave the stems a hard squeeze, feeling the thorns set deeper in my skin and fresh blood well up across my palm. And then I set them atop the small monument to a wonderful, if a little vain, woman. The green stems were stained with red now.

  But the black and white petals were still perfect.

  “Mom. Is. Soap.” I said again, each word distinct. “Her killer still walks free, and she’s been dead over a decade. Isn’t it funny? That she’d be soap now. She always did like to be incredibly clean. Next to godliness.”

  “Let’s get you home,” Dad mumbled, moving to me and wrapping his large arm around my body. His jacket arms scrunched up, revealing his scarred wrists. Seeing the old wounds was almost as painful as the roses, because maybe he wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t run off to California, address: 1880 Academy Drive. I’d wanted that badge. Wanted the power.

  “We’ll come back another day, when things aren’t so fresh,” Dad pressed, urging me to walk.

  “It’s always fresh, Dad.” But I let him lead me away, slumping against him like I was a little girl who hadn’t mastered walking on her own yet.

  Her birthday always hurt. My birthday always hurt. Their wedding date made my dad sob uncontrollably. But the anniversary of her death was the worst. It gutted me.

  Because each fucking time Dad and I visited the cemetery on the date of her murder, the flowers were there.

  One black rose. One white.

  The Rose Killer. Mom’s killer.

  I just hadn’t discovered who the bastard was; no one had.

  *

  Dad dropped me at my building, waving from the car and then driving off.

  He didn’t live in the city anymore, not since it happened. He’d sold the rowhouse in Cobble Hill after I’d gone off to California, moving to Glen Cove and into a little cottage by the water, something he and Mom always talked about for retirement. It was all he could afford after the funeral and donations and hiring every private detective in a fifty-mile radius to try and find Mom’s killer because the police were failing. But hell, even that had been over half a million. For two bedrooms and a single bathroom that needed loads of love to make livable. But it had good light, Dad had said. Good bones.

  He was an artist again, living on the leftover money in various accounts and hoping his broker could keep the stock portfolio profitable, what was left after cashing out on some things. Dad had never been good with money. From the beginning, Mom falling for him and marrying him was unexpected. A love story, though her family hadn’t seen it that way at first. They’d come around eventually though, before my grandfather has passed away from cancer. My grandmother went soon after. Mom only inherited a small fraction of her parent’s money, so maybe they hadn’t ever really accepted her marriage. I had extended family on my mom’s side, but I never saw them. And Dad was an orphan.

  All we had was each other after Mom’s murder.

  When I’d gone off to LA for undergrad on a scholarship, he’d almost followed me. But he couldn’t bear to be that far from the cemetery. From the empty shell of his wife that meant very little now. He found solace in living their quiet retirement dream. Found peace painting unassuming coastal landscapes.

  I didn’t want peace. I only wanted the quiet.

  I was different back then after the funeral, desperate for some distance from the newspaper stories about Sandra Capuleti, charity darling of New York, who’d died tragically during a suspected mugging. A random act of violence. But her body had been so badly brutalized, sliced to damn shreds. Except the skin on her face. That had still been milky perfection. Lifeless amber eyes set beneath thick dark brows. Her pearls were still around her neck when the police found her. Her purse was untouched, almost staged on the concrete beside her.

  I was never convinced it was a robbery gone wrong. Not with the valuables still in place. And I knew Mom would have given a mugger anything they wanted. She wouldn’t have fought so hard that she had defensive wounds all over her arms and legs, not unless the person was set on killing her.

  And why would she have been in that alley? In that part of the city?

  Brownsville.

  Drug Alley.

  But the police had reasoned that maybe the perps beat her up, then realized who she was. They got scared, ran off. Sandra Capuleti was well known, adored. Any of her valuables would probably be too hot to fence.

  It just all sounded like absolute bullshit to me.

  *

  My building was art deco. A towering monolith with copper accents that carry the patina of too many seasons in the city. Its double doors opened automatically as I approached, and I nodded to Baron the security guard and Joe the desk clerk.

  “You ever gonna get a car, Miss Capuleti?” Baron teased.

  “Who needs a car in New York?” My normal response, for our normal banter.

  “Best public transportation in the world,” Barron volleyed back.

  “Exactly.” Home was in the Bronx, work in Manhattan one borough
over. The commute on the Line 1 subway wasn’t bad, around thirty minutes and three dollars. A car always seemed senseless.

  “You okay today, Kid?” Baron must have seen something on my face.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” I waved goodbye quickly, making my exit. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Not today.

  Both Baron and Joe were New York lifers, and they’d recognized my name the second they’d received the updated renter roster back when I leased my place. They were kind, both giving me their sympathies when we’d first met. Thankfully they hadn’t brought up my mom’s death again.

  Capuleti. Even after ten years, my mother was still well known. And thus, so was I. The date of her death could be found by a ten-second internet search.

  The elevator had a line, so I took the stairs. Two at a time, wanting the solace of my apartment. Five flights up. Number 406 because the entrance level I’d come in from was G level whilst the street on the other side of the building entered at level 1. I leaned my forehead on the cool steel door, relief washing through me.

  I spent my days holding back fear. Fucking basket-case, though I’d learned to play the system and keep the Bureau in the dark. Around every blind corner, I expected to find the truth. It made me reckless sometimes.

  Four locks on 406. The super had given me hell for adding on the extra deadbolts, but I’d promised to pay for a replacement door when I moved out.

  I always left the apartment foyer light on; yellow glow spilled out onto the burgundy carpet of the building hallway. I walked inside slowly, controlling my urge to race for cover, and I closed the door behind me gently. Like a sane person.

  Of course, walking into the living room and seeing an entire wall of bloody crime photos and case notes, stitched together by multicolored lines and push pins, did not make me look sane. Not in the least. But hey, there was a modern television right in front of the horror scene. It... sort of balanced things. Watch a little romantic fluff, don’t get totally consumed by the blood and gore.