Page 7 of Mercy in Betrayal

The name means something, aside from the very cool alliteration, but I don’t want to pause to puzzle it out. There have been too many names in the past several months.

For the time being, we can simply be two women in a luxurious ballroom in the sky, sipping apple juice and talking to a cat.

“May I pet him?”

I hesitate. “Tonight is not good for pets, sorry. Clem is on duty, so it would be confusing for him.”

“On duty?” Vivi draws back the hand she had extended and eyes the cat with interest. He blinks up at her lazily.

“He’s my emotional support animal.”

“Oh! That’s…well, I love that. I heard about—” Vivi cuts herself off, laying a hand on my wrist and squeezing. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s okay. It’s what everyone is thinking.” I drain the rest of the apple juice and motion to the waiter, placing my glass on his tray when he reaches us. Clem, scenting one of the salami appetizers on the waiter’s tray, rises and swishes his tail expectantly until I nod. “Just a small piece, please.”

“I’ll have to get to pet him when we meet again, somewhere he’s not on duty.” Vivi shifts the subject away from the danger zone effortlessly.

“We’ll see each other again, then?”

Vivi tilts her head. “I don’t see why not. You seem like someone I’d like to know.” She eyes my dress, a vintage midi-length gown in blood-red velvet. “And maybe get fashion advice from.”

I brush at the vee neckline of the dress, which is now amply decorated in ginger fur, and grin. “It’s called just add cat hair. I just wasn’t sure if our families liked each other, or…engaged in the occasional collie shangie.”

Collie shangie. It was a new word I’d learned this week, a Scottish term meaning quarrels or fights—taken, of course, from collies that got in fights all the time in the close quarters between cottages.

Vivi is looking at me with a perplexed expression. “Collie…?”

“Shangie. It just means arguments. I haven’t learned all the family dynamics yet. I don’t know who likes each other and who wants to slit whose throat. It’s all very annoying.”

“Oh.” Vivi waves a hand, dismissing the notion. “You’ll find that sort of thing changes with the tides. One week, they’re fighting, and the next, they’re married. Nothing is written in stone except the strength of the Five Families. That isn’t likely to change.” She takes a small sip of her apple juice, her gaze traversing the room and touching briefly on several people before it makes its way back to me.

“And the Five are?”

“The Valachis, of course.” Her lips tilt in a smile that is as sly as it is sweet. “Then there are the Scarpettas, the Marzanos, the Papparados, and…the Romanovs.”

I lift my chin. “So, the O’Rourkes are not among the Five.” This would explain Evie’s lingering irritation over Luca Marzano’s snub in jilting her for the Scarpetta daughter. It cost her the chance to rise.

“Well…they’re very closely linked, given their ties to the Papparados.”

“That’s right.” I forget sometimes that Evie is a Papparado as well as an O’Hanlon.

Although technically, the O’Hanlons are no longer absorbed in a bloody battle for supremacy. That ended with my brother and Evie being the undisputed winners.

At what cost, though?

Beside me, Clem knocks his head against my knee, a gentle reminder.

“Reset.”

Vivi looks at me with something like shared sorrow in her gaze. “I’m going to give you my phone number, Rowan. I think… I think we could be good for each other.”

I hand her my phone and lift my gaze to the people who surround us—indisputably some of the most dangerous people in the city—and then look back at Vivi.

I guess we all have the potential to be dangerous for each other.

Perhaps this sweet, dangerous woman will be a genuine friend.

Chapter 3

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