Chapter 16
Aurora
Last night.
I press my hands over my eyes, but it doesn’t stop the scenes from replaying in my head. It doesn’t stop me from remembering that incredible high when Curse was touching me.
And the low of the betrayal afterwards.
Not that it could even be considered a betrayal. He told me from the very beginning that he was sent to come and get me. He never made this anything personal. Only I did. Only I can’t fucking let go.
Well, I’ve sure as hell let go now. I’ll never forget the ice in his eyes and the sneer on his lips when he told me about papà’s businesses all going to whoever manages to marry me next.
When I was a kid, back in Buffalo, I used to fantasize about marrying Curse all the time.
I’d have a big, frothy dress and shoes made entirely out of diamonds.
My hair would be done up in fancy curls that somehow managed to stay in place despite the pin-straight nature of my strands.
Curse would wear a suit. We’d get married on a sunny beach somewhere.
And then eat hundreds of wedding cupcakes. Lemon ones, of course.
It seems extra cruel, somehow, that I will end up married to a man named Curse.
Just not the one I wanted.
If I go through with this. I don’t think that he can force me to marry him. Can he? If he could, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Get the clock started on the month as soon as possible?
When that month is up, what will he do with me?
I don’t believe that he’ll kill me. But maybe he’ll abandon me.
I sit up quickly, sensing a lifeline for the first time since Curse dropped the truth on my head like a hammer last night.
Once we’ve been married for a month, he’ll have no further use for me.
We could get divorced. There’d be no reason for him not to agree to that.
I could become Angela LeBlanc permanently.
Find a job somewhere. And an apartment. Curse has untold power and connections. Maybe he’d even help me do it.
For the first time, I could be free from the expectations of the men who rule my world. I have no idea what a life like that could be. But it has to be better than a life with Curse. And certainly better than a life married to one of the other New York bosses.
Even just thinking of New York makes my heart drop down into my guts.
No matter where I end up, it can’t be there.
I don’t even think I dare to cross the border again, even if I go to a different state.
I have no idea if the police are involved with the investigation yet.
Curse didn’t say who the “they” was who found Marco’s body.
But even so, I already know that I can never go back.
I’ve managed to bring my baggage with me, though. All of papà’s businesses interests. All his assets.
In my name.
Why did he never tell me?
Did Marco know?
Marco seemed content enough to have a long engagement to me.
I know he had his many mistresses, so he certainly wasn’t hurting for a woman in his bed.
But once Papà died, it was like all bets were off.
Wedding preparations got underway with a speed and urgency that made my head spin.
We got married barely three months later.
But we didn’t stay married for a month.
We didn’t even stay married for six hours.
I push the warm grey duvet off of myself, wondering where Curse is. And where he spent the night. I doubt he left the house. And I doubt he let himself sleep if it wasn’t beside me. Can’t risk his cash cow disappearing on him.
I want to be angry, but even that insult to him doesn’t seem quite right.
Curse Titone doesn’t need a cash cow. He probably doesn’t care about papà’s money at all.
He’s never been the business mind of the Titone famiglia.
He’s always been the one with the gun. The one with the knife.
The one who makes people bleed, not the one who makes them pay up.
He’s doing this for Elio. Elio is the one who’s taken over from Vincenzo Titone. Elio is the one growing their empire and their bank accounts with an iron fist.
I’m not sure if the fact Curse is doing all this for his brother is better or worse.
Worse, probably. Because it means that he didn’t have his own agency or interest in coming to get me at all. Not even my papà’s money would have been enough to lure him. He had to be ordered to do it.
Well. Fine. That’s how it is then. My rose-tinted glasses have been fully removed. Frankly, they’ve been crushed, the lenses nothing but glittery pink powder. And I’m likely all the better for it. Even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.
No. Right now, it still hurts to breathe too deeply because my heart feels bruised. It hurts just to get out of the bed and walk to the bathroom. But I make myself do it, and I feel just the tiniest bit proud of myself that I do.
I will survive this. I’ve survived so much already.
Curse Titone will not be the end of me.
I brush my teeth with the pink toothbrush Curse bought me and go pee. Then, I step into the shower. Warm water this time. I wash myself everywhere, trying not to remember how it felt for Curse to hold me here last night in the cold.
Once I’m done, I run into the same problem as yesterday.
I don’t have anything to wear. But I no longer feel awkward and guilty about taking something from Curse’s closet.
I no longer feel like some kind of burden to him.
Now that I know how valuable I actually am to his family – or at least how valuable my papà made me – I figure it’s the very least I’m owed.
I stride into Curse’s closet with my head held high, snatching another soft T-shirt and a pair of men’s black trackpants from the shelves.
Of course, everything is way too big. That’s mostly fine where the shirt is concerned, but the pants are so droopy that they slide down my hips and land in a pool around my ankles the second I try to take a step.
I give up on those, replacing them with a pair of silky boxers.
I pretend they aren’t his underwear, telling myself that they’re just shorts.
They certainly fit me like shorts. They’re baggy, but they don’t seem to be at risk of falling down, so I keep them on and leave the room.
I make my way down the stairs to the kitchen. I pass Curse’s office, but don’t let myself look to see if he’s in there. I don’t want to let him affect me in any way going forward.
In the kitchen, I see a clear clamshell-style package of baked goods. Stomach grumbling, I pop it open to find Danish pastries inside, shiny with butter and drizzled with criss-crossing white stripes of icing.
They’re all lemon.
I’m not letting Curse affect me, right? So I push down the instinct to reject the food that he’s obviously set out for me. Maybe he’s trying to bribe me with that flavour so that I go along with his plan. I don’t care. They look amazing. So I’m going to eat them.
I’ve just polished off one delectable pastry, and I’m considering eating another, when a large collection of bags near the front door catches my eye.
I wipe my sticky fingers on Curse’s shirt – something I never would have considered doing yesterday – and head towards them.
A peek in one bag makes it clear that these are the shopping items I requested.
I crouch down, rifling through the bags.
Maybe this is all meant to bribe me, too.
Because this stuff is nice. When I wrote down that he could order me any brand, apparently he took that to mean the most expensive ones available.
Multiple bottles of salon- and spa-brand shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body crème, body oil, and scented bubble bath fill an entire bag on their own.
Instead of one hairbrush like I requested, there are four.
A round one for blow outs, a paddle brush, a wide tooth comb, and a boar bristle one.
There are tampons, pads, and ten, yes, ten different kinds of deodorant.
Which normally might be kind of offensive – who the hell needs ten freaking things of deodorant unless they absolutely reek?
But in this case it’s obvious that I’m not expected to use them all, just choose my favourite of the fragrances.
I’m faced with similar excess in the lip balm department.
And not just lip balm. There’s lip salve, lip butter, lip jelly, lip gloss, lip masks.
Then there are the clothes. There have to be eight or more bags devoted just to all that.
Jackets, jeans, leggings, blouses, sweaters, shorts, skirts, sundresses.
There’s quite a bit of summer clothing, I realize.
Even three swimsuits and two pairs of designer sunglasses.
Well, I think bitterly, I won’t be needing all that if we’re divorced by April.
But then again, I will still need something to wear in the summer, won’t I?
Even if I’m no longer married to him. It’s not like I can go back to Buffalo to get all my old clothes, and I won’t have money of my own to buy new ones.
There’s no reason Curse wouldn’t let me keep all this once he gets what he wants from me.
I’m just checking out the bag of buttery-soft, pastel-coloured PJs when a presence behind me makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Anything missing?”
“No,” I say. I close my eyes briefly, steeling myself to see him. “Well, actually, I guess there is one thing missing.” I rise and turn to face him. “A wedding dress.”
God. I had hoped after last night, I wouldn’t keep reacting to him the way I did before. But I do. He’s still so beautiful it physically hurts. My ribs ache.
Curse regards me in silence, his eyes narrowed. Calculating. Finally, he says, “Is that a joke?”
“Nope.” I gesture flippantly towards the bags. “I don’t see it.”
“Guess I hadn’t gotten quite that far yet.”