Chapter 26 - Daisy
DAISY
I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m nice. I’m incredibly mean, and everyone thinks I’m joking. —Daisy
If hanging out with Bianca for nearly twenty-four hours teaches me anything, it’s that women in criminal organizations party like there’s no tomorrow.
“I’m drunk.” That announcement parts my dry, cracked lips and is followed by a weak fist pump toward the rotating blades of the ceiling fan overhead.
Bianca’s snort of laughter has me turning my head slightly in her direction.
I catch sight of the spread of her lush, dark hair.
Man, I wish my hair was that nice, all silky smooth and shampoo commercial–style.
I wonder if I chop it all off and fashion a wig out of it, will it make me look like her? My arm slumps back to my side.
“You’re not drunk, babes,” Bianca says, “you’re high.”
“I thought those were cigarettes.”
“And I thought you said you don’t smoke,” she shoots back.
Touché, bitch.
She holds up one of the thin rolls from her pack. “The cigarette pack keeps Uncle Stefano from looking too closely,” she explains, her voice way more level than mine. “He doesn’t approve of the smoking, but imagine if he knew it was weed.”
Surely Uncle Stefano—Papá Stefano, I remind myself—can smell the difference. I suspect he does but ignores it because he loves his niece so much. Hell, I’ve only known her less than a day, and I’m already half in love with her myself.
“Fuck Giulio,” I say lightly. “Can I marry you instead?”
Her bark of a laugh is way too feminine and pretty.
Life really ain’t fair. When I laugh, I sometimes sound like a honking pig.
Sure, I tell myself it’s adorable, but whenever I end up snorting, I get weird looks.
Each one is a knife to my self-esteem. Right now, though, I have no self-esteem.
I feel like I’m fucking floating away, and it’s nice. I’m no longer angry, just…
“I’m hungry,” I grumble.
Bianca reaches for a tray that had been brought in earlier by an older woman in a gray frock that looked almost like a uniform.
A maid? Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me if Giulio grew up surrounded by maids and cooks and servants, but wait…
no, he hadn’t, had he? He was a foster kid like me before he was adopted by Papá Stefano.
That’s nice. At least he’ll never judge me about where I came from.
“I expected you might be.” Bianca’s words draw my head up and around as they disrupt my thoughts. She holds the tray out to me. My greedy little fingers latch on to the fruit and pop it into my mouth.
“Oh God,” I moan. “This is just what I needed.”
She snickers and lowers down a whole plate of the slices. I snatch it from her hands before she can pluck one free and then curl around it protectively. “Mine,” I snap, shoveling another into my mouth.
Holding both hands up in a gesture of surrender, she grins. “I’m shocked that you’ve never had weed before,” she comments. “I feel like everyone’s tried it at least once by the time they’re twenty-one.”
I shrug as I chew on the juicy fruit in my mouth and swallow. “I saw a bunch of kids get into the shit, and it always led to something hardcore. I wasn’t interested,” I reply. “I’d rather fuck a douchebag than snort coke.”
Her pretty face wrinkles in disgust. “Oh, ew, I didn’t need to know about my cousin’s sex life, thanks.”
“Giulio’s not a douchebag,” I reply, then pause.
“Well, actually, no, he’s being a fucking douchebag right now.
” I scowl as I recall why I’m here at the Luciani Family Estate in the first place.
“Do you know why he brought me here?” I demand, but before she can answer, I jump ahead.
“When Giulio saw Emil, he lost it. I get that the whole protective he-man thing can be hot, but it was not. Giulio said he was some big shot from a different family.” I glance over at her as I lift another slice of apple and hold it in front of my face, using it as a gesturing mechanism.
“Emil Cesari or something like that, and he—”
“Wait!” Bianca gapes at me, cutting me off mid-sentence.
“Um, rude,” I say. “I was talking here.” Then I realize how close that line is to the one from Midnight Cowboy.
I laugh and repeat it in the right accent.
“I’m talking here!” I laugh again, and what do you know, the pig honk comes right out, but I don’t care because my belly is full, and I’m flying high as a kite.
“You saw Emilio Cesari?” Bianca’s face appears over mine, and I realize I’ve slumped back on the floor once more.
She gently takes the plate of leftover apple slices from me and sets them to the side.
Her hands are cool on my face as she taps my cheek.
“Daisy, pay attention. Did you see Emilio Cesari?”
I bob my head up and down. “Yeah,” I say. “And his dog. She was supercute. Her name’s Luna.”
A strange expression crosses Bianca’s face, but a moment later, it’s gone, and she sighs.
Her hands move down to my wrist, and I groan as she forces me into a sitting position.
“All right, I think you’ve had enough,” she murmurs.
“Come on, let’s get you to one of the guest rooms and into a shower.
I think some cold water might help you come back to yourself. ”
More groans and shuffling ensue as Bianca urges me onto legs that don’t feel all that capable of walking. “I can’t believe he just walked away from me like that,” I grumble as Bianca slings one of my arms around both of her shoulders. “How come you’re not as high as me?” I ask.
“Who walked away from you?” she replies and then shakes her head. “I’ve smoked weed for the last ten years, kid. I’ve got a tolerance. You don’t.”
“Oh.” We move to the door and out into the hallway. All the bronze and crystal and old-world opulence hurts my eyes, so I close them.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Bianca chastises. “Keep those pretty hazels open for me, babes. You gotta help me get you to the guest room.”
My eyelids feel like bricks, but I heave them upward anyway. “You’re nice,” I tell her as she nudges me toward the front of the house and up the grand staircase. “I like you.”
Her smile is small, but her reply brightens my whole chest. “I like you, too, Daisy.” She shuttles me along the hallway to one of the many closed doors.
My eyes fall all over the place—the walls with the ornate portraits hung like they might be in a castle and the supersoft, red rug beneath my too-sluggish feet.
When she gets to one of the many doors that all look alike, Bianca glances up the hall and then turns the knob before moving both of us inside. The door snicks shut.
“Bathroom,” she says, and then we’re on the move once more, toward a second door past the four-poster bed that takes up most of the room with heavy draperies hung from the bars atop each post.
“Jesus,” I mutter. “Who lives here? The Duke of Norfolk?”
“The duke of what?” Bianca looks at me like I’m crazy, and hell, maybe I am.
I did marry a stranger, after all, and I don’t care all that much that he’s a criminal.
Then there was the whole attacker, killed-a-man thing.
When I admitted to Giulio that I wasn’t remorseful, I expected him to scorn me for it.
I suppose I should have known better. He’s killed more people than my measly one.
I’m a little annoyed by that, I realize.
Not because I want to kill people, per se—I’m just competitive, and I don’t like feeling like I’m losing.
Even if it’s not really a competition… but if it were, I could totally kill more people than Giulio. They’d never see me coming.
“Do you think Giulio doesn’t think I can handle shit because I haven’t killed as many people as him?” I ask.
Bianca’s brow creases with confusion as she locks my arm over her shoulders with one hand and opens the bathroom door with the other. Unlike the classic vibe of the mansion, the bathroom is modern, thank fuck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bianca asks as she sets me against the counter. I latch on to the cool marble ledge to help me stay upright.
She reaches into the glass shower and twists a few knobs, putting her under the spray for several moments.
“That guy I killed,” I remind her. “I’ve never killed anyone before, but who knows…
maybe now that I’m a mobster’s wife, I’ll start a trend.
” A snort of laughter bubbles up out of me.
Almost as soon as it starts, though, the amusement dries right up.
“Is it because I’m not from this world that he thinks I can’t handle myself? ”
Sandaled feet appear in my vision where it’s planted on the floor.
Bianca’s hands go to my clothes, and she quickly begins to pull them off me.
“I don’t think he respects you any less because of who you are, where you come from, or for killing a man.
If anything, he probably respects you more.
You weren’t raised like we were. Normal people don’t take up for their friends or themselves like that. ”
“Then why doesn’t he want to tell me anything?” I whine as she gets me all the way down to my bra and panties.
“Do you need my help, or can you do the rest?” she asks, taking a step back without answering me.
I glance over myself and then just wave her toward the door. “I got it,” I say. The high-flier vibes are waning anyway, and now all I feel is tired. Bianca disappears into the bedroom with no further prompting, and I strip out of the rest of my clothes before hopping into the shower and soaping up.
My head, once so light and airy, is quickly coming back down to earth. “This sucks,” I mutter to myself as I wash off the sweat of the previous day.
First the nerve-racking interview, then running into Constantin, and Emil, and Giulio…