Page 48 of Mercy in Betrayal

“I said it’s not okay. It’s not all right. I need Clementine. You had no right to keep him from me, no right—”

“We’re going on our honeymoon, Rowan—”

“A honeymoon I didn’t ask for, after a wedding I didn’t agree to, after a non-existent engagement I wasn’t party to. This is all a farce. It’s a joke.” I glare across at him, everything boiling to the surface suddenly. “You took everything from me, Enzo. I got married in a red dress.”

“Yeah?” He shakes his head, as if to say ‘so?’

“A red dress. Girls have dreams, you moron. I wanted a white dress. The poofy princess one. My own wedding, with pink peonies and something borrowed. Something blue. Instead, I’m in a tin can, thousands of miles in the sky, and I feel like I can’t fucking breathe, and I - just - need - my - cat!”

“Stop being so dramatic, Rowan. You’ll see the damn cat soon enough.”

“Dramatic?” I gasp but have trouble pushing the breath back out. The air sticks in my throat, stale and heavy. Reaching for my champagne, I jerk the glass up and toss its contents swiftly in his face.

That’s dramatic. The air in my throat releases in a keen of sound. “Re…set. Re…set.”

Enzo’s expression goes blank. His hand stretches toward me, and I flinch away, scrabbling at the latch on the seatbelt. Dragging in quick, shallow breaths, I get it unbuckled and fumble my way into the aisle, away from him. “Don’t - touch - me.”

There’s a bag in his hand, one of the white air sickness bags.

“You’re hyperventilating, Rowan. Sit still—”

“Get - off - of - me—”

I stumble against a seat and glare as he pins me into it, forcing the bag against my mouth. “Fucking breathe.”

“Fuck…you—”

“Later.”

Several painful minutes later my breathing evens out, and I’m able to push his arm away from my face. “I’m fine.” Turning my face, I stare out of the window.

With a sigh, Enzo drops into the seat across from me. A stewardess brings him a towel and he wipes his face without comment after she disappears down the aisle again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you needed the cat the way you do.”

I don’t look at him. “I started having panic attacks and trouble with anxiety after my twin brothers were killed in a car bombing,” I say. “Clem helps me redirect when I start getting overwhelmed.”

“He helps you reset.”

I nod.

Several minutes pass. Then: “It won’t happen again.”

The storm is no more than a nuisance, and we land in under two hours. Another private terminal and a brief car ride later, we stand in the honeymoon suite of the Oakes Hotel on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. For all the hype given by the hotel concierge, the room doesn’t appear to have been updated since the nineties, an odd contrast to the luxury of the jet we flew in on. It’s relatively simple, with a bed, wardrobe, and fairly standard hotel-grade furniture.

I give the king-sized bed with its brown coverlet a cursory glance and walk past it to look out the window at the falls. The snow is too thick to see anything, but I continue to stare out at the blankness of the storm as Enzo moves around behind me.

“I called ahead to make arrangements with the hotel staff,” Enzo says. “There should be clothing for you in the drawers.”

My fingers stroke over the velvet of the hideous bridesmaids—bride’s—dress. “Thank you.”

“Not much of a view, is it?”

I look at his reflection in the glass. “You get what you pay for, I guess.”

He huffs a laugh and tugs at the buttons of his tuxedo shirt, revealing several inches of smooth, muscled chest. “I expected the storm.”

Reset.

We’re both speaking on levels beyond the obvious, and I’m suddenly impatient with everything unsaid. With a small sound of frustration, I whirl around and stride past him to the bathroom. I pause to grab the bottle of champagne that’s chilling in a bucket of ice before slamming the door behind me and locking it with a satisfying click.

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