Chapter 3
DAISY
Karmasutra: [noun] a list of all the ways I’m getting fucked in the ass by Karma and life, sans lube.
I don’t know what I did to piss Karma off, but I really, really need to find that girl’s address so I can send a very heartfelt apology and maybe one of those edible bouquets. Whatever act of arrogance I performed to put me on her shit list is definitely not worth this level of fuckery.
I’m currently standing in a wedding dress, and a godawful wedding dress at that.
Where the hell a bunch of mobsters found a wedding dress on such short notice, I doubt I’ll ever know, but it must be something straight off the rack because the damn thing doesn’t fit.
It’s tight where it shouldn’t be and could stand to lose a layer or two of the big tulle ruffles that scratch at my legs.
This dress is more torture device than it is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of gown.
Before standing where I currently am—right outside the double doors that lead into the small private chapel—I was forced into a separate room not dissimilar to the one where I found the original bride.
Half an hour later, a sweaty, red-faced Gabriel—the younger man who had been in the room with me, the other stooges, and the dead lady—arrived with a large black bag.
“It was the best I could find under the circumstances,” he mumbled to Otello as he unzipped and shoved the damn white contraption of hell into my arms before stalking out.
Now, here I am in a big, poofy, Cinderella-style wedding dress.
Cinderella was never my favorite princess—give me a Merida or Moana any day.
The tight vise of the fabric around my chest squeezes my ladies together into one big uni-boob that threatens to combust with each breath I inhale.
The large skirts around my thighs and calves protrude outward due to the layers and layers of tulle.
I reach down absently and scratch at the back of one leg before Otello nudges me to straighten.
If this were my wedding, I would not be wearing this.
It is your wedding, Mean Daisy comments.
Oh shit. She’s right. Well, fuck a duck.
You can still get out of this, you know, she says.
Her attention on the man at my side has me looking that way, too.
Otello is stoic, as if he’s trying not to look at me lest I start crying.
I’m not much of a crier. Never have been.
Even when I want to cry, I shove that shit back.
Why? Well, because foster kids have no one to cry to, that’s why.
The only reason I’d been even remotely close earlier is because I’m pretty sure shark week is on its way—even non-criers can’t help emotional bullshit when their period hits.
I’m not supposed to be here, I think, half numb by my befuddled panic. I’m supposed to be setting up the reception hall as a waitress—not the freaking bride!
So, do something about it, my inner psycho insists.
I bet he has a gun on him. You could get close, just act like you stumbled or something, and slip your hand inside his suit jacket, find it, flick off the safety, and then—she mimes the illusion of pointing a gun with her fingers—Pop!
Pop! It’s done. Before anyone realizes what’s happened, you’ll be gone.
I sigh. This isn’t the first time she’s suggested murder. It’s a wonder I haven’t taken her up on the idea before now.
Yeah, and then what, smart-ass? I reply, trying for reason. They know who I am, and you can bet your sweet ass they’ll come after me.
She crosses her arms over her chest and plops down onto the floor of my mind with a scowl. Fine, then marry the guy, she says. Why should I care?
Because she is me, and whatever happens to me happens to her, too.
“Don’t worry, Giulio is a good man,” Otello says, as if saying so will offer me a modicum of peace.
Considering that I suspect he’s only standing next to me on the chance that I decide to run, I’m not sure how to take his words.
He pats my arm in an almost fatherly sort of movement.
It’s nice, even if he is a mobster about to haul my ass down the aisle to marry his boss. “He will take care of you.”
Giulio. The man’s name rolls around in my head. I’m marrying a man named Giulio. Totally not the name I would’ve attached to the dark-headed, olive-toned man who had given me the ring currently sitting on my finger. That’s the one thing that does fit in this entire ensemble, ironically enough.
He should have been a Fabio—like the dude gracing the covers on my collection of old romance novels hidden under my bed back home.
I could’ve made fun of a name like Fabio in retaliation for what he said about my name.
After all, it wasn’t like I’d chosen it.
It came on my birth certificate—minus any parentage because, yeah, even the woman who birthed me refused to acknowledge my existence.
Another thought occurs to me, and I turn to Otello, the skirts of the big, both-too-large-and-too-small ballgown swishing around my legs. “What’s his last name?” I blurt out.
Otello just frowns at me, his face pinching as if that information is too much for someone like me to know.
I scowl at him. “If I’m marrying a man, I’d like to at least know what his last name is.” After all, I’m probably going to have to change mine after we’re married. The psycho stranger I’m waiting to be wed to is probably old-fashioned like that. Just my luck.
You know what else is old-fashioned? my inner psycho pipes up. Murdering your husband. May I recommend, if you don’t want to go the guns-blazing route, something more subtle… like poison?
Oh, poison might work, I think. After all, doesn’t cyanide taste like almonds? I can probably work with that. Wait, no, what am I thinking? I can’t kill someone. I am not a killer! Damn it. I need to get a handle on Mean Daisy; she’s a sneaky bitch.
Hearing that, my inner psycho grins at me and gives me more of her finger guns. Crazy bitch.
Otello seems to take a moment to consider my earlier words, and I force myself to focus on him. With a nod, Otello straightens his shoulders. “Giulio La Rosa,” he murmurs, answering me.
La Rosa? That’s not such a bad name. Daisy La Rosa. Hmmmm. All the flowers, it appears. Geez, and he had a problem with my name.
The doors open before I can voice a response, and all of the air I’d been struggling to hold in evaporates.
Otello grips my arm as the blood in my face rushes away and my stomach drops out from under me.
It’s only by the grace of Otello—playing the part of both guide and guard—that I manage to take those first steps up the aisle as the pianist begins to play.
One foot in front of the other, I can’t help but look around as several men and women on either side of the aisle stand. The music rings through my head, getting louder and louder, or maybe that dull, drumming beat is just my heart. That makes sense. Either way, they sound the same.
Otello gets me to the end of the aisle without me falling on my face, and I could kiss the man—even if he’s not on my side, this wouldn’t have been any easier if I’d made an ass of myself and tripped on the way to the death of my single life.
Not that it’s been a spectacular single life, but I’d at least have liked to be able to choose my own husband.
Beggars can’t be choosers, Daisy, I can hear Michelle murmur in my ear. Of course my best friend’s voice would pop up at this moment. Then again, she’s the reason I’m in this mess. It should be her standing here in an itchy, uncomfortably—not to mention, ugly—wedding dress.
To be fair, though, marrying this guy would probably be better than her current tool of a boyfriend.
How she keeps managing to find reason after stupid reason to stay with a loser who rarely has a job and never takes her on dates or even remembers her birthday—but who am I to judge?
I’m about to marry a criminal so he doesn’t kill me.
Damn, I think as Otello helps me up the small dais and onto the platform where an ancient-looking priest and my soon-to-be husband wait. I’m never going to live this down. Then again, I won’t be living if I don’t do it so, yeah.
The model guy from earlier—Giulio La Rosa, my mind reminds me—holds out his hand, and Otello dutifully passes me over.
Is this what women in the 1800s felt like when their fathers would marry them off to husbands a thousand years older than them for a cow?
Giulio keeps my free hand in his, as my other clutches the bouquet that had apparently been held in a separate room and therefore hadn’t needed to be replaced. I drift a bit as the priest begins to talk.
Michelle is going to be so pissed that she wasn’t at my wedding.
Then again, this is just a wedding in name only, right?
It’s not like I’ll have to live with this guy.
This is just to make sure they know I’m not going to traipse off to the police about the original bride’s death.
I relax at that. Yeah, this is totally going to be fine. It’s not even real.
“Miss Turner?” I blink, coming back to myself as I realize that the priest is referring to me. How the hell does he know my last name? I certainly didn’t tell him. My eyes shoot to Giulio, who looks at me expectantly. Oh fuck, wait, I’m supposed to say something.
My eyes move back to the priest. “Wh-what?”
He sighs, but before he can answer me, Giulio leans down. “Say, ‘I do,’” he hisses between clenched teeth.
“I do.” The words fall out of my mouth on autopilot, the instinctive need to say whatever the psycho next to me wants me to say so he doesn’t put a bullet in my brain taking over.
The minister turns to Giulio. “You may now kiss the bride.”
Ice-blue eyes bore into me.
Oh. Fuck.
Giulio leans down, and my heart rate picks up speed, growing faster and faster as if the organ can somehow use speed as a way to break out of my rib cage and go running back down the aisle.
At the last second, though, Giulio turns his head to the side and presses his lips to the side of my cheek in a very chaste peck.
My breath releases, and my shoulders sag.
I’m not sure, though, if it’s disappointment or relief.
I’ve never been a make-out-with-strangers kind of girl, but neither have I been a scaredy-cat.
I watch horror movies for fun, so I can handle things that go bump in the night—even though something tells me this man would totally beat the boogeyman’s ass.
There’s just something about starting a marriage to a stranger with a public kiss meant to hold so much meaning, love, and care that rubs me the wrong way. So, I’m glad he didn’t follow through with that. It almost makes me think I might be able to trust this guy—almost.
“Smile,” Giulio reminds me as we turn back down the aisle hand in hand. The pianist begins to play again. I don’t know if I follow Giulio’s command and smile, but I do know that I don’t remember the walk back.
My last thought? The wedding march sounds a hell of a lot like a funeral march under the wrong circumstances.