Chapter 9 Daisy #3
If he’s hot, though, does that make it okay? I look to Mean Daisy for an answer. She just shakes her head and poofs back out of existence without a single helpful answer. Unhelpful bitch.
Getting up off the couch, I shuffle all the papers he’s shown me to the side and leave them resting on the cushion.
The credit cards, including a black Amex, with the name Giulio La Rose printed in fancy script across them—no plain print for Mr. Cheesecake Rich—go on the coffee table before I follow after him.
I find Giulio in a big room down the hall.
Though it’s not nearly as large as the living space I just left, it’s spacious and open with a wall of bookshelves to the right behind a large, ornate desk and the same wall of glass windows that were in the living area.
Giulio stands in front of the windows looking out over the vast skyline of New York with all of its high-rises and skyscrapers.
As I slowly approach, my eyes fall automatically to the square of green that’s visible from here.
With all of the concrete and glass that make up the city, Central Park is like a beacon for those still wanting to remember what it’s like to live on Earth and not a damn city space station.
This view, though, looking down over it to see the bright shirts of joggers passing through and the broccoli-shaped little trees, makes it feel like I’m standing on top of the world.
I cast a look at the man who stares at it without a single hint of emotion on his face.
How often does he look at it? Has he ever gone down there? Been to Central Park and just sat under the sun, petting the occasional dog that wanders away from its owner in the early morning hours?
At first, I don’t say anything. A part of me wants to give him his space as he’s obviously annoyed by me, but I’ve never been good at letting things lie and staying quiet.
So, instead of just backing out of the room, I move further into it and come up to stand at his side until I’m so close to the glass wall of windows that I can practically fog the surface with my breath.
“Pretty,” I murmur. “Isn’t it?”
He doesn’t immediately look at me. I know because I watch him out of the corner of my eye, waiting to see what he’ll do or say. I’m hyperactive and more than a little ditzy, even I have to admit that, but I’m not so stupid that I can’t understand that Giulio La Rosa isn’t like me.
I’m so out of my damn league.
“You are an innocent in all of this,” Giulio finally says, surprising me enough that I turn to look up at him.
He keeps his eyes trained on Central Park down below.
“But like it or not, you are in it now. We are married. Your life is no longer the one you knew, and it’s time you accept that.
I know you wish to keep your friend, and I won’t stop you from seeing her, but you should know that the more often you see her, the more she will be placed in danger. ”
I consider his words for what feels like forever. Is it better if I give Michelle up? Should I just let her go so she’ll be safe? I can just imagine trying to explain that to her. A snort rises up out of me before I can stop it.
Whirling toward him completely, my hand whips up and slaps over my mouth. “I’m sorry!” I say behind my fingers. “That was an accident.”
With a scowl, he, too, turns to face me.
His hands come down to grip my upper arms, and I drop my palm away from my lips.
Even mad, he’s still ruggedly hot. Masculine.
Sexy. Jesus, when was the last time I got laid?
Before I can recall the answer, Giulio shakes me slightly, causing me to rock on my heels a bit as I stare, wide-eyed, up into a face etched with anger and something else.
“Do you truly not understand the gravity of your situation, Daisy?” he demands.
“Someone killed my fiancée because they wanted to stop me from becoming Don Luciani’s official right hand.
Getting rid of you might not reverse the decision to place his trust in me, but it will certainly call into question my ability to protect those under my care. ”
Something hits me then. Even if it was obvious that Giulio was only marrying his original bride for his position, he must still feel guilty for her death. Reaching up, I clasp a hand around one of his where it rests on my bicep.
“Giulio,” I say soothingly, “I’m fine. Trust me, I’m not interested in dying any time soon.
I wouldn’t have married you if I was suicidal.
” Mean Daisy chooses that moment to pop back out of the darkness and side-eye me for that comment.
I ignore her and focus only on the man in front of me.
“I promise to be careful,” I assure him.
“You’re right that I’m a little out of my depth, but I wouldn’t have made it this long on my own by being a complete idiot. ”
His lashes lower as he closes his eyes, and when he reopens them, his grip eases ever so slightly, distracting me from my circling thoughts. “You’ve only been in the city for a year or so, cara,” he murmurs. “That doesn’t make you an expert.”
I’m sure “cara” is an Italian endearment, but considering his highly strung emotions right now, I try not to let my heart beat any faster at the kindness.
We’re marriage partners, captor and captive in a way.
Maybe we can be friends, but just because I wear his wedding ring doesn’t mean that he actually cares about me.
“You’re right,” I tell him again. Men like to hear it when they’re right, so I hope saying as much will get him to calm down.
“And considering I haven’t managed to even get an interview for any publishing house in the twelve or so months I’ve been here, I can see why you might think I’m ignorant, but—”
“I did not say that,” he growls.
I pat his hand again, deftly trying not to notice how big and strong those are, too.
He drops them away from my arms completely, taking a full step back.
“I know you didn’t,” I say in what I hope is a soothing tone.
“What I’m trying to say is that we’re in an impossible situation, you and I, but you can’t tell me that this is going to last forever. ”
When his lips part, I hold up a hand. He blinks as if shocked by the silent command.
Ha! I bet few people have ever bossed him around.
Maybe Papá Stefano or even Dante, but anyone else?
Nah, I can’t see it. I’d bet my left tit—a.k.a.
the biggest one and therefore my favorite—that anyone who’s tried has ended up with brand-new concrete swimming shoes.
Being the wife of a mafia man gives me a few perks, I guess.
“I’m grateful that you decided not to kill me,” I tell him.
“I mean, I know you only married me to get a… promotion?” I arch a brow, but when he doesn’t answer the slight question at the end of my words, I shrug and continue forward.
No time like the present and all that. “But we both know you have no intention of remaining saddled with a girl like me for the rest of your life.”
Divorce. Annulment. Call it whatever you want, but I’m not so naive as to think he’s planning to stay with me forever, especially not with how we started.
Shockingly, though, Giulio doesn’t appear assuaged by my words. In fact, his expression darkens as his brows lower and he steps closer. The spicy hint of his cologne invades my nostrils. God, has he always smelled that good? Mean Daisy fans herself in the corner of my mind.
“And just what kind of girl have I married, Daisy?” Giulio asks.
Blinking up at a face that makes no effort to hide his anger, I offer him the only answer I have.
“A nobody,” I hear myself say as if the words are coming from down a long, dark tunnel.
“I’m nobody compared to you, Giulio. I don’t have money or even a good job.
” No prospects of one, either, if the list of rejection letters sitting in my inbox is anything to go by.
“We don’t know each other that well, but I know I bring nothing to the table for this relationship.
I just appreciate that you chose it instead of getting rid of me. ”
He could have made me disappear easily, I suspect, and because I don’t have any parents or family, the only person who would have noticed is Michelle.
People disappear all the time, and I’m not anyone of great importance.
The cops would have done their best to help, but after a few days—maybe weeks, if Michelle was dedicated to finding me—they would have closed the case as unsolved, and life would have gone on as normal.
I shake my head and dispel the depressing thought.
Giulio reaches up, his hand hovering between us, and I glance to where it barely grazes the side of my shoulder, lifting a lock of the plain, sable-brown hair that hangs there.
Shifting the strands between his thumb and forefinger, Giulio doesn’t respond for several long moments.
“You’re right about one thing, cara,” he murmurs almost absently.
The pinch of his face and the sensation of his emotions, all darkness and repressed fury, hover in the air between us.
I swallow roughly, suddenly aware that I’m standing before a man who wouldn’t think twice about snapping my neck if he wanted to—and his hand is mere inches away from said neck.
“Wh-what’s that?” I stutter.
Cool blue eyes lift to meet mine. “We don’t know each other well,” he says. “But I intend to change that. Even if you think this marriage would be easy to get out of, I am a man of my word. I was raised a certain way, cara. The men of my family—we do not divorce.”
He steps closer, and all of the air in my lungs evaporates. My eyes widen, and my head tilts back as I crane my neck to keep my gaze locked with his.
“I suggest you erase the thought of it from your mind, darling Daisy,” Giulio says, “and accept that you are my wife now. You will live here, in this house, with me, and you will take all that I give you.”
My hands clench into fists at my side. Not because he’s ordering me around—hell, half of the world does that anyway.
From cranky temp bosses to pushy salespeople at the mall.
I don’t care if he tries to command me like a soldier in his mobster army.
There’s just one thing I won’t give up. No matter what.
“I will still see my friend,” I tell him.
“Michelle is important to me. I promise to follow your rules and to play the part.” For as long as this farce goes on.
“But I won’t give her up, and any attempt to make me will be met with a hell of a lot of backlash, mister.
” As if to punctuate that statement, I unclench one hand and lift it to poke him in the chest far harder than I had before.
His chest is a brick wall beneath my fingertip.
Warm. Sexy. Brick. I bite down on my lip to hide the small agony of accidentally nearly breaking my own finger with the action.
But damn, I’d break my entire hand for a chance to feel up on his chest without the cotton fabric of his T-shirt between us.
A man as hard as Giulio must have the body of a god underneath his clothes.
I wonder if he’d let me have a little peek…
For a moment, Giulio doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say a word. Then—and I’m not sure if I imagine it, but I swear—the corner of his mouth curves upward. He still doesn’t speak, but he drops my hair and takes a step back. I watch him go with narrowed eyes, sure he’s about to explode at me. He doesn’t.
Giulio La Rosa simply chuckles, shakes his head, turns, and leaves the freaking room!
“Did I just… win an argument with a mobster?” Considering there’s no one left in the room to answer me, it comes as no surprise when Mean Daisy pops up and snorts derisively in my direction.
Yeah. I have to agree with her. There’s no way Giulio would let me win an argument that easily.
But Giulio doesn’t come back, and a few hours later, when the doorbell chimes announcing the arrival of movers, I’m left to make my own decisions about where to put all my things.
Michelle is going to flay me alive when she finds out she’s living on her own, I think as I start unpacking. But I’ll make it up to her. I glance over my shoulder as I push a particularly large box down the hall. The black credit cards that Giulio gave me are still sitting on the coffee table.
The perks of marrying a mafia man.