I feel like we just made an unspoken pact.I’ll keep being brave if you do.
One of the men in black suits and earpieces taps Vin on the shoulder. “Jet’s ready, Mr. Morello.”
We step out onto the tarmac. I wish it wasn’t windy and rainy. I wish the clouds weren’t so thick. None of it eases my nerves.
I manage the weather better than I expected. I manage the quiet whir of the idling engines, and the employees in high-vis jackets holding things that look like tennis rackets.
I manage it all, until I read the black logo that runs down the side of the white private jet.Green Aviation.
My feet slow to a stop.
Any bravery I’d had dissolves into the frigid air. Pure, undiluted terror seeps in to fill the void.
Thirteen letters, five syllables that mark my parents’ forested grave. Possibly the last two words they ever read.
The metal blades on the engine look vicious. The windows of the cockpit curl into a snarl. The wings look too thin, too fragile to withstand takeoff.
Vincenzo turns around a few paces ahead, beckoning me forward. “Come on. Can’t miss our takeoff slot.”
Panic overtakes my chest, all other rational emotions losing out.
Thirteen seconds for them. Endless agony for me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, taking the first step back.
Belladonna swivels where she’s stopped, halfway up the steps into the jet. Her face is stormier than the skies above us. She hands her laptop and coffee to the flight attendant and marches back down.
“Backing out?” she asks me, like it’s a challenge she thinks I’ll have to take her up on.
“It’s—my parents died in a Green helicopter.” I stutter over the syllables, can hardly get the final word out.
If looks could kill, I’d be bleeding into the tarmac. “Under a different CEO.”
She looks at the hesitation in my expression and casts her eyes up to the cloudy heavens, cursing in Italian. There’s no kindness in her eyes, no patience remaining. “So help me God, Ophelia. Your man is having the worst day of his life over there, and all we’re asking of you is that you’ll go to him. For once in your shitty life, we’re asking you to put his issues ahead of your own.One time.Just get on this fucking plane and go back to moping another day.”
And then the strangest thing happens. I … get on a plane. The one thing I swore I’d never do, a lifetime of scaring myself and accepting my fate just seems to splinter in two as my boots carry me up the metal steps.
It’s like an out-of-body experience, watching someone who looks like me step through the doorway and into the jet. I’m on the sidelines, flipping violently between cheering and clapping, and begging her to come back.
I’m so stunned that I don’t fully register what’s happened until my boots come to a stop on a plush, pale carpet and Belladonna has asked the staff to close the door.
Vincenzo sinks down on one of the four cream leather seats around a small table while I stand in the center of the aisle, frozen still. “You were harsh, Bella.”
Belladonna sinks down beside him. “No one has ever smacked any sense into her, and it shows.”
My eyes dart around, frantic. The interior is furnished in soft creams and natural wood. The carpet is soft. There’s a screen folded into the wall at the table that Bella, Vin, and Jack have seated themselves at. There’s a sofa along the right-hand side, and twomore empty seats farther down, each with a screen of their own. Four security guys are sitting around a table at the far end. Two flight attendants busy themselves by the door.
It’s quite comfortable, for an aluminum death machine.
I run to the window like a dog watching people play outside, nose against the glass. There are patches of silver on the wings that have the contents of my stomach roiling. “Oh my god,” I choke out. “It’s being held together with fuckingsticky tape.”
They glance out the window and laugh, bucking their seat belts.
“No one is worried about this?”
“It’s speed tape,” says Jack, watching me self-combust.
“I don’t want extra speed. I just want a safe, regular speed.”
