Page 53 of Mercy in Betrayal

I pull out of her slowly, and she raises up to kneel on her knees, breathless.

Brushing her hair aside, I speak into her ear.

“That was fun. From here out, I give the orders.” My hand travels the length of her spine. “You’ll give me this body. You’ll be loyal to me above all others. You’ll finish your degree, because I want you to do that.” I tip her head back so I can meet her gaze. “You’ll be a good wife to me, Rowan, and I’ll be good to you. Do we understand each other?”

I press a kiss to her neck, sealing my demands, and when she nods unsteadily, I smile.

Chapter 18

Rowan

“Had we never lov’d sae kindly,

Had we never lov’d sae blindly!

Never met—or never parted,

We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

Once upon a time, Robert Burns’s poem made me think of love, bittersweet and gone. I’m a different person now. The first time I read that poem, my brothers were alive. I still had my parents.

I wasn’t married to a man who had wooed me with betrayal.

I toss the book of poetry I’m studying for one of my classes to the floor. Enzo has ruined what used to be one of my favorite poems. There’s a kind of irony there, I guess—Cassidy says he ruined me, so it’s appropriate.

Getting up from where I’d been lying across the bed, I move to stare out the window at the expanse of lawn. Clementine blinks from where he’s stretched out along the foot of the bed, napping, but doesn’t stir, the lazy beast. I’ve only been here with him a day, but he’s made himself quite at home.

The Scarpetta mansion sits on the banks of the Hudson, and Enzo’s suite of rooms has a view of the rear gardens sloping down to the river. It would be a peaceful sight if my soul wasn’t in such turmoil.

I cross my arms over my chest. Staring out at the river makes me think of the Lady of Shalott. She left her island to seek Lancelot, and it killed her. Some fairytale ending.

I had this little spark of hope while we were in Canada that maybe…just maybe, the Enzo I had met on campus might actually exist. That he might be real. He was by turns tender and easygoing and interested in me, and for a while there was no such thing as the famiglia.

Maybe…just maybe…I could have my fairytale ending, regardless of how it began. We could start over. Begin again.

But then we came here, to his home, and it was like a mask dropping into place.

You’ll be a good wife to me, Rowan, and I’ll be good to you. The fantasy faded away, swiftly as it was born. He was Don Scarpetta, and I was his wife.

Upon arriving after the honeymoon, as he shed his coat in the huge circular foyer, I stood looking around, uncertain where to go or what to do.

“What now?” I had asked.

He paused in the middle of handing his coat to a woman I assumed was the housekeeper. “What do you mean, what now?”

“I mean…what should I do? And where is Clementine?” I twisted my fingers together, my gaze darting toward the different doors leading off from the foyer.

Enzo’s chest rose and fell, and I could practically see him calling for patience. “I don’t know,” he muttered, waving a hand as he turned toward one of the doors. “Do whatever it is you wives do. Spend my money. Decorate the house. Go to school when it’s time to do that. But no more of that coffee cart foolishness. Classes only.”

He was about to disappear down a hallway, and I suspected I wouldn’t see him again for hours if he was anything like Cassidy or Evie. “And Clementine?”

He stopped but didn't turn around. “I’m sure the cat is around here somewhere. Ask Sarah.”

Sarah, the housekeeper, led me to Clementine. I had spent the remainder of the day curled up in bed with him tucked in around my neck, his rumbly purr the only thing holding me together.

Cuttycrumbling. Scottish for the purring of a cat.

Enzo didn’t come to me last night, and I don’t know where he slept or if this is even his room as well as mine. I haven’t seen him since he walked away from me yesterday.

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