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Ella popped an orange macaron in her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and said with an arched eyebrow, “What’s the verdict, Dar?”
The answer was inevitable.
Ella listened to me over the last hour as I recounted the tragic tale of how I’d gotten fucked over by a man—again—and how he happened to be the most attractive one I’d ever seen. I told her what happened at Chaleur and she swooned hearing how he’d kept my hairpin.
Until I mentioned he was blackmailing my family.
My best friend had the same reaction as my older sister. She cussed and almost chucked her hot drink at a patron who sneered at us, before I calmed her down.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” she’d grumbled under her breath. “Please, tell me you’re not really considering this. I mean, who has arranged marriages these days? Is that even legal?”
After I whispered to her what Zeno had on Dacia and me, Ella digressed.
Her face lost its natural tan and the blue in her right eye seemed even more vivid than usual. Ella reached forward to hold my hand and I smiled wistfully at her left wrist. It encased her watch, Cartier bands, and that one worn-out friendship bracelet I made her when we were eight.
“It’s obvious that the situation is a dead-end.” She sighed. “But tell me still: what is your heart telling you?”
My vital organ was torn between two decisions.
“If you tell me right now ‘Ella, I don’t want to marry him,’ I will drag you halfway across the globe where he cannot find you. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you’re safe.”
But running away from your problems was never the answer.
Ella and I weren’t kids anymore. Gone were the days where she’d come pick me up in her Porsche Cayenne past midnight to go raise teenage hell. Back then, it was easy to forget about our issues and get lost in living life.
It was hard to imagine a time existed where we wished to grow up.
Now that we were grown, we realized the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side.
From my vantage view, my grass was looking a lot like the dead of fall right before a harsh winter.
“While I appreciate your offer to rescue me, I can’t run away. I’ll be putting my family in danger. No matter how much Mother and Dacia drive me crazy, I can’t leave. I would never do that to them.”
Ella’s face fell. “Fuck, I know. I’m sorry, darling. I was just trying to help you out.”
“I know and I love you for it.”
“So what’s it going to be, Darla?”
Peer pressure crawled down my spine in an awakening rush. I unglued my tongue from the roof of my mouth and forced out six words that would change the course of my life forever.
“I am going to marry him.”
The grey overcast mimicked my mood as I parked my car in the parking lot of MacGregor, an old Irish pub in the heart of Fredview Strip. My mother conveniently told me where Zeno would be today and here I was, about to do the devil’s bidding.
I had two hours left to accept the proposal.
As I stepped out of my car, a light drizzle fell from the skies, heightening my inner turmoil. My stomach was in knots, but I refused to go down without a fight.
I was going to marry Zeno Gianni De la Croix, but I was going to do it on my terms.
Fingering the blade in my blazer’s pocket, I walked towards the side alleyway sandwiched between MacGregor’s and an old laundromat. The weapon was a gift from Vance Remington—Cade’s father—on my twenty-first birthday. He’d given one to both Ella and me, saying ‘Badass women have blades,’ but I knew it was because he worried about us being caught in a bad situation.
Zeno’s parked matte black Lamborghini came into view and suddenly, the brick walls fortressing the alleyway seemed like they were closing in on me.
I paused.
Inhaled.
