Chapter 20 Daisy
DAISY
A good man who does bad things is still a good man, but a man who gives you orgasms until you pass out is a better man.
I move around the messy, paper-strewn living room of Giulio’s penthouse, singing along to the high-pitched blast of Spice Girls’ “Wannabe.” I haven’t felt this high since I took a hit of my first joint behind the shop class building in high school.
I stop and perform a little bump and grind as the Spice Girls hit the next note. Once it’s over, I go back to my task.
Never thought a girl could be so happy to be dating a man who’s already technically her husband, but damn…
I am. Good sex will do that, I suppose. Not just good sex, but fucking delicious sex.
It’s the kind of sex that makes you see stars and start thinking about popping out babies—even if the idea of opening your baby maker for business also makes you want to blow chunks.
Unfortunately, that thought had been quickly followed by the mutual realization that neither of us had considered birth control and baby making is not what either of us want right now.
A quick message to Giulio’s family’s personal doctor, and I now have a brand-new prescription sitting on my bathroom sink and plans to jump my husband’s bones as often as I can.
I stop dancing in front of my computer to bend down and move my finger over the touch pad once more. I scan the list and then look to the papers set out on the coffee table, couch, and floor.
They’re arranged in an order of couch = old résumé and applications, floor = lists of publishing houses and notes on which ones I’ve already applied to and which ones I’ve yet to apply to, and finally, the coffee table = my updated and edited résumé and all of the new applications that I plan to send out today.
Of course, everything will be sent online, but I always do my best with the old-school red pen and physical paper in my hand.
If I’m going to take advantage of the reprieve from work that Giulio is giving me, then I’m going to go full monty.
Cover letters and recommendations from college professors as well as the single small-town paper I worked at before moving to the Big Apple are scattered among the chaotic paper mixes.
Picking up one of the cover letters that still needs tweaking and taking a seat in one of the only available spaces on the floor, I reach up, lay it flat on the coffee table next to my laptop, and go to town.
I’m halfway through the page, and already it’s filled with red scribbles—some minor errors, some things that need to be updated, and more than a few areas I’d like to work on and strengthen—when the door lock disengages and opens.
I lift my head, hitting pause on the music playing from my computer even as I crane to see over the couch and a smile lifts my lips.
It’s far too early in the afternoon for Giulio to be back now.
A hopeful part of me wonders if he’s come home to have lunch with me.
Would that count as another date? Can I convince him to have a quickie before he heads back to work?
I spot a dark head of hair and get up, but as soon as I see the face, the swell of excitement fizzles out with disappointment.
“Dante?” I frown as the man steps further into the penthouse and then closes the door behind him.
“Hey, Daisy.” He offers me a smile and lifts a hand in greeting before his eyes go to the mass of papers behind me.
I spy a bit of red at the cuff of the crisp white shirt he’s wearing.
Somehow, it doesn’t bother me to know that it’s blood.
I don’t ask where he’s been or what he’s been doing, but I am surprised by my own indifference to it.
I’m getting used to Giulio and his family faster than I thought possible.
“What are you doing here?”
Dante moves further into the room and unbuttons his navy-blue suit jacket before laying it over the back of one of the breakfast counter barstools.
His fingers move to the edge of the white shirt, and he absently unbuttons that as well.
The not-so-mysterious red splotch disappears as he rolls the fabric up his forearms.
“Just came to see how you’re doing and if you needed anything,” he says before nodding to the mess at my back. “What’s all this?”
“Oh.” I turn back and plant my hands on my hips, staring down at the papers and pens and computer. “I’m just fixing up my résumé to start applying for jobs.”
I feel rather than hear Dante come closer. Much like Giulio, I’ve noticed, he moves like a silent ghost. “Jobs?” Dante sounds confused. “Why do you need a job? Is Giulio not giving you any money?”
A laugh bubbles out of me, and I flash him an “are you serious?” look. “Of course he is, but I’m not a housewife, Dante,” I tell him. “I want to work. It’s the whole reason I moved to New York in the first place.”
He pauses next to one of my newer résumés and picks it up. I shift from side to side as anxiety swells. With his expensive-looking suits and air of confidence, I’m nervous to see him point out all of the flaws that I know I have. His eyes scan the paper before lifting to meet mine.
“Publishing?” he surmises.
“Yeah.” I nod and sink down onto the couch, pulling papers out of the way as I go. “I like books, and it’s been my dream since forever to be an editor at one of the big five.”
One dark brow arches. “The big five?”
I smile to myself. Of course, no one outside of the industry would know, especially someone who didn’t spend their entire life consuming book after book because the public library was the only place they ever felt safe. “Publishing houses,” I answer. “There are five big ones in the US.”
Dante hums in the back of his throat before lowering the résumé again. “You know, many women would be overjoyed to not have to work,” he says.
I shrug. “I think it depends on the circumstances. I’d argue that plenty of women like to work because they like having their own money and power.
” His brows shoot upward, and I can’t help but smirk.
“Maybe it’s just the women you’re around who are used to not working and don’t know how to ask for more. ”
He blinks as if surprised by my words, and with his eyebrows so high and his mouth ajar like that, he kind of looks like a cartoon character. I laugh and shake my head before reaching for one of the papers on the coffee table.
“I haven’t had a chance to dedicate a lot of time to fixing up my details while I’ve been applying,” I tell him.
“Plus, a lot of getting a job is about who you know and timing and… well, I don’t know anyone, so I’ve got to do it all the old-fashioned way.
” I hold up a paper. “I’m not going to waste time at home doing nothing. ”
I scan the page in front of me, but I’m profoundly aware of Dante as he moves closer, lifts a few papers from the couch cushions, and takes a seat. “You’re wrong about one thing, Daisy,” he says, drawing my head back up.
A frown makes the skin between my brows tighten. “What do you mean?”
He grins. “You do know someone; that’s why I’m here.”
“What’s why you’re here?” I ask, tilting my head.
Dante reaches down to grab one of my newer résumés. “The Luciani Family has its fingers in a lot of legitimate businesses, too, you know,” he says. “G mentioned that you were working on applying for positions at some big places here. He asked if I could put some feelers out.”
“He did?” My stupid heart leaps against the inside of my chest. I was already grateful that Giulio let me talk his ear off at dinner every night that he’s come home after our date about my plans for the future, but to know that he went out of his way to send someone to help me…
I’ve never even had a boyfriend sit and listen to me before.
I guess that’s the difference between a boyfriend and husband.
One just hums as you talk and he plays video games, and one gives a shit.
“It would be stupid not to take advantage,” Dante continues, eyes scanning the paper in his hand. “I’m sure one of our exterior business ventures can bring some good connections and opportunities to you.”
“I…” I don’t know what to say so I let the word and what it could be drift off.
When Dante meets my eyes, it’s with a crinkling smile.
Blood on his rolled-up cuff. Darkness in his eyes.
Just like Giulio. This man is just like Giulio.
He’s done dark, awful things. He’s helped to cover up a murder—more than one that I know of, if I count Giulio’s original intended.
Yet, I feel like I can trust him with anything. Even my life, if it came down to it.
“Why?” I finally ask, unable to help myself.
The potential of Giulio and me is so new. I keep asking myself, what if it could be more? but I’m scared. Scared to hope that it might be. It can’t be this easy, can it?
Hope is a cruel creature, and I shrink away from it even as Mean Daisy comes out of the dark recesses of my mind, carting a pickax that she holds over it lest it get too close and hurts me.
Again. Hope has always hurt me. That’s why Mean Daisy exists.
She’s rude, inconsiderate, and biting, but she’s my protector.
She has been ever since I realized that no mom or dad was coming to save me from the shadows in my closet or the monsters under my bed.
As if he knows exactly what my mind is full of, Dante gently puts the résumé down on the coffee table, ruining my otherwise sloppy organization, and then reaches for me. He touches my shoulder, and when I don’t move away, his hand slides down to take one of mine.
“I think you’re good for him, you know.” I have no question who the “him” he’s referring to is.
“Your relationship might have started unconventionally”—that’s putting it mildly—“but the two of you? I think it might last, which makes you family, Daisy. Giulio is my brother—mio fratello. That makes you my sister.”