“Egyptian cotton,” Giulio says from across the room. I’m surprised he understood what I was asking since now his back is to me.
“Egyptian cotton fucking rocks,” I mumble as I wrap myself up like a burrito and wiggle against the perfectly cool softness of the fabric.
Thoughts of burritos remind me of what I missed. Food. My stomach rumbles to life at that exact moment and makes itself known with a rather loud, fleshy moan. Giulio appears in myperiphery, arching a brow as he places a glass of water on the nightstand.
“Erm… sorry,” I mutter as I sit up with my little caterpillar hood hanging over the top of my head. Struggling out of my own trappings, I reach for the glass. As soon as the cool liquid touches my tongue, I gulp it down.
Once I’ve polished off the water, Giulio takes the glass from me and sets it back down before crooking a finger that obviously means he intends for me to follow him toward the door. It takes me more than a moment to untangle myself from the soft plushness of the comforter and sheets—and let’s be honest, I don’t try all that hard at first. I like it too much. But Giulio gives me a dark look, and I move faster, throwing off the sheets and clambering out of bed onto the floor.
The low heels I was wearing earlier are gone. The dress I had on is gone, too. In place of my earlier ensemble, I’m dressed in a pair of loose-fitting gray sweatpants that sag against my waist, held up only by the dump truck of an ass I’ve got going on in the back—Michelle’s words, not mine. Reaching past the big black T-shirt that swamps my upper half, I tighten the rope ties of the pants and quickly follow Giulio as he leads me out of the room and into a long hallway.
I shiver as the coolness of the air conditioner that’s obviously on full blast hits me in the face now that I’m out from beneath the covers. Wrapping my arms around myself, I pad behind Giulio, taking in the sights of his home. It’s a big place. Hell, the bedroom itself was larger than my entire apartment. When we step out into a living room area, complete with a sunken center and a sectional couch that I couldn’t fit past my apartmentdoor even if I tried, I spy the wall of glass windows on the other side that illuminate the entire space.
“Come,” Giulio says, his tone an order rather than a suggestion. “Sit.” He points to a long dining table set between the living room and the open kitchen.
And like a well-trained dog—or a girl a little terrified of the mobster she married—I do. Giulio moves away from the dining table and enters the kitchen. Leaning this way and that, I try to see what he’s doing behind the counter, but whereas the living room is sunken in, the kitchen is on a raised platform, and I’m not very tall. It’s hard to see, especially when he turns away from me and the sound of glass clinking and something scraping echoes back to me.
A few minutes later, Giulio sets two bowls in front of me, then he returns to the kitchen to retrieve his own serving. One of the bowls is a bit shallower, containing a smattering of leafy greens with a brown and white glaze crisscrossing over them.
The second bowl, however, is where my eyes lock, and I reach for the fork at my side. Before Giulio returns, I’ve got the red sauce–smeared pasta in my mouth and am moaning at the delicious, creamy flavor. My stomach rumbles in happy approval as I shovel forkful after forkful into my mouth. It’s piping hot but so good that I don’t care if my tongue gets a little burnt in the process. It isn’t until my pasta bowl is officially empty that I realize Giulio is seated next to me and carefully making his way through his own food. I eye his bowl of pasta, and when he notices, he points a sauce-covered fork at my second bowl.
“Eat your salad,” he orders.
I pout but reach for the second bowl anyway. Salad is nothingmore than leafy green bullshit. It’s a lie and a way to fill your stomach so you don’t eat too much real food. I don’t say as much as I stab at one of the tiny little half cuts of cherry tomatoes arranged artfully on the side of the bowl.
“Who cooked?” I ask before popping the red fruit—yes, tomatoes are a fruit, look it up if you don’t believe me—into my mouth.
“I did.”
Giulio’s answer has me inhaling so the tomato lodges itself directly into my airway. Choking and sputtering, I slap the table and cough and wheeze as I try to angle my head from side to side and get the damn thing to go down. It does, after much fanfare. Gasping and a little teary-eyed, I find Giulio’s ice-cool gaze on me.
“You cooked?” I clarify.
He nods. “Is that a problem?”
“No.” I shake my head quickly. “No, of course not. I just… I mean…” I gesture around to the lavish apartment that looks out over the vast city that is New York. “You live here, so I assumed that you had someone to cook for you.”
People who live in places like this in Manhattan aren’t just your average rich people—they’re the crème de la crème. The cream of the crop. The top one-percenters. Trust fund finance bros or something like that. I never expected that he would not only know how to cook but wouldn’t mind doing it for both him and me.
“I am careful about what I eat” is all he says.
Side-eyeing the salad that already almost killed me, I stab my fork into a particularly dressing-covered leaf and lift it to mylips. Chewing slowly and methodically, I think about what to say next. I’m halfway through the salad before I realize I have absolutely no clue. Then, he saves me the hassle of having to come up with something by speaking for me.
“I’ve contracted a moving company to pack your things and bring them here,” he tells me as he finishes the last bite of his food and reaches for the glass of water in front of him. I have one, too, I realize, but I’d been too focused on eating to notice it before now.
“My things?” I parrot. “What things?”
“From your apartment,” he says, as if that should be obvious. Why the hell would it be obvious, though?
“Why would you do that?” I ask.
Giulio releases a frustrated breath, and the glass clinks on the tabletop as he sets it back down a bit roughly. “Daisy, I understand that the last few days have been a bit hectic, and you’re confused about the situation.”That’s putting it lightly…“But there are things that will be expected of you now that we are married. You—”
“Is it because you don’t trust me?” I blurt the question, interrupting whatever he’s about to say simply because I can’t hold it in anymore. The idea ofmemoving inhereto live withhimis not only ridiculous, it’s giving me some serious heart palpitations.
“That is part of it, but married couples are also expected to live together,” Giulio says. “We may have married under duress because of extenuating circumstances, but we are obligated to see this through.” Married under duress—that should be the title of this whole story. It’s got a catchy vibe to it.
“Daisy, are you listening to me?”
