Ro (A Cyberpunk Retelling of Romeo and Juliet)

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"Violent delights have violent ends."

***

RO MONTAGUE

I shoot my father between the eyes as he sleeps. Then my brothers, just in case they want to steal my position as head of the family on account of my being a girl.

As my father would've said, it was nothing personal. Just business.

I take the write-ups in my hands, the dirty money they'd taken for selling me to a brothel down the lane. My old grandmother-nurse, Viviana, she'd tipped me off before they could do it.

She's a good one, Viviana. Super devout, worships the Mother Goddess and has a pentacle tucked beneath her sagging breasts. Her dark, aged eyes hook onto mine as she makes a quick gesture to ward off death.

"They would have sold me, Granny Viviana. It was me or them." I pocket the cash. The money and the trousers I'm wearing used to belong to my brothers. I'd have to get the cuffs hemmed eventually. I'd ask Viv to do it, but she was a mother to me, and I couldn't work her half to death.

"Yo sé eso." I know that. She whispers, voice harsh in the quiet, eyes lingering dispassionately over the scene. "¿Entiendes lo que has hecho?" Do you understand what you've done?

I nod my assent. "A task. Nothing more."

"Good..." She whispers, lowering her eyes. "No te he perdido. I haven't lost you."

I tear the locket off my father's bloody neck. The locket that holds the holo-image of a woman. Gold skin, long, wavy hair, and half-moon eyes, so mysterious that they can trap the world within them.

Ichika, my mother. He wore her image till the day he died.

I did that.

I killed him like his damned profession killed her.

My real mom was murdered by a rival crime family, the Capulets. All I have to remember her by is her name, Ichika, and my dark eyes that, as my father used to say, "could pierce body armor". Somewhere, I think I can taste the soup she used to make for me when I was sick. Thin and a tang like blood.

I put the locket around my own neck. Take the monitor ring from my father's thumb, that carries all his bank accounts, and I bind it to myself with a droplet of my own blood. A scan of my retina, and a fingerprint on the scanning stone. Organic tech, year 2098 model, the sign of a true Monty.

Or maybe it's all a dream. My mother being replaced. The other women in my father's life, giving birth to my half-brothers, who grew up hating me. Hating me for being the firstborn and a girl to boot. What kind of girl can run a crime family?

I'm not sad they're gone. They tried to sell me to a brothel, after all.

Leaves me more time to face my realenemies. The Caps.

The Capulets, when they aren't busy being murdering mothers, are the proud owners of Capulet's Casino. The only one who is allowed to kill a Monty is another Monty, so the fact that a Capulet killed my mom makes us hate each other all the more. Hated even more than the cops.

We're all Montys, it's short for Montague. We're the drug runners for the peasants and princes, anyone who can pay. I know how to make all the best stuff. Things that could speed up your heart rate or slow it down. Things to stop it from beating entirely, just for kicks.

I run my fingertips over the vials corked on the counter, the needles next to them.

I look at the bruises on my dad's sun-browned arms, clicking my tongue at them. "Biggest mistake is to use the drugs you deal. That's rule number four, isn't it, dad? But maybe you and my brothers would've heard me if you didn't use them, so that's a plus."

Dad doesn't answer. Dad's dead.

I sweep the needles and vials into my pocket. I chuckle softly as Granny Viv's eyes go wide. "Relax, sweetie. They're for Officer Mercy to deal with, not me."

Whistling, I grab for my own matching pentacle for the Mother Goddess. "Gracias, madre." I then spit, per usual, in the direction of the Capulet Casino. I lean against the front's pillar, we like to pretend we're an alternative medicine store. And, like the patient doctor that I'm not, I wait quietly for the law to come.