“Um… not really?” My statement comes out as more of a question and is answered by a hard stare. It’s not that scary now that I’ve seen him with his dad, though. I mean, Giulio was more than respectful to Don Luciani. He’d called him “Papá” with concern and admiration in his voice. He can’t be that scary if he loves his dad, can he?
Yes, he can!The Mean Daisy that lives perpetually inside of my head mentally bitch-slaps the fuck out of me when Giulio stands from his seat and moves to lean over the dining table.He’s not your fucking friend. He can and will totally kill you if you fuck this up, you brain-dead amoeba!
I’m internally screaming as Giulio leans ever closer, the ocean blue of his eyes all I can see as he hovers over me, his big body blocking out most of the fading sunlight pouring in through the wall of glass at his back. “You are my wife, Daisy. As such, you will move in here and live with me,” he states. “That is the end of the discussion.”
Um… no the hell it’s not, I think snidely as I donkey-kick the Mean Daisy behind a wall of feminine affront. Glaring back at the man who is my husband, I poke him in the chest with one finger. “Excuse me, buddy,” I snap, “but I’m not a dog that you can just order around as you please. As you’ll find, wife or not, I have a mind of my own. Besides, I couldn’t move in with you even if I wanted to.”
Those ice-blue eyes of his move down to where my finger rests solidly against the wall of his chest and then back to my face “Why, exactly, can’t you move in with me?” His tone is deep, and despite the tight anger he keeps so carefullycontained, it makes me shiver as something warm unfolds in my lower belly.
My finger falls away from him as I inhale. “Michelle and I just signed a new lease agreement last week,” I tell him. “I can’t afford to break that.”
Giulio blinks, and all of the anger falls away from his face. It’s clear that a legitimate explanation was not at all what he was expecting. I nod, sure he understands the issue, and cross my arms over my chest. “So, you can cancel your moving company,” I state. “I couldn’t afford them, either, anyway.”
“What do you mean you can’t afford it?” He stares at me as if I’ve sprouted two heads.
In hindsight, I feel like I’ve caught him looking at me like that quite a lot since we’ve met. “Uh, you’ve seen my apartment, right?” I ask. He nods. “I picked up that gig for your wedding reception before the whole… you know,situation,” I say, waving my hand as if that encompasses thesituation, a.k.a. his original dead bride, “because I needed the money. I know it’s not”—I gesture around meaningfully—“but that apartment was the cheapest place we could get and still be able to afford our other bills.” I turn my head and mutter, “Stupid student loans.”
Giulio closes those pretty blues of his and leans away from me, giving me a little breathing room for the first time in what feels like forever as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Daisy,” he begins, “you can afford to break your lease, and you can afford to pay for a moving company.”
“Um… no, I can’t.” I know rich kids are out of touch with reality, but for some reason, it surprises me about Giulio. Thenagain, I’d learned at the reception that Giulio is an adopted son, so maybe he had a different kind of upbringing.
He drops his arm and stares at me. “You’re married to me,” he states. “We signed legal papers, or don’t you recall?”
The whole night was a big blur, but I do distinctly remember my sweaty fear as I signed my name on a bunch of documents immediately following the wedding ceremony. “Yeah? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oddio.” Whatever he says is lost in translation, and even if it wasn’t, I’m pretty sure by the hard smack he delivers to his forehead that he’s not talking to me. Giulio abruptly straightens and turns away from me, stomping toward the living room and then beyond as he moves into the hallway we came from when he first led me out here.
After several minutes of listening to his distant, annoyed sounds, I wonder if he meant for me to follow him. I don’t. Instead, I pick up our bowls and all of the silverware still on the table and carry them over to the kitchen before depositing them into the massive, stainless-steel sink. If I could cook, I think I’d love this kitchen with all of its top-of-the-line appliances and whatnot. Unfortunately, the best I can usually whip up is some mac and cheese or omelets. Everything else, much to Michelle’s horror and dismay, either ends up undercooked or burnt.
When Giulio comes back out several minutes later, I’ve left the kitchen and am sitting reclined against one of the many comfy cushions of his giant sectional couch overlooking the veranda. He doesn’t even bother to say anything as he strides right up to me and plops down a sheaf of papers on my lap.
With a glare and what I assume is another curse mutteredin Italian, he crosses his arms and waits for me to look at them. Half wondering if he’s maybe off some sort of much-needed medication, I lift the papers and start to read. I get through a few of the pages before something becomes clear:
My husband is rich as fuck.
He’s not just kind of well-off or evencomfortable—as I assume most rich people like to say so as not to make the lower class feel poor even though we are. Giulio La Rosa is The Cheesecake Factory rich and I’m not talking about a casual meal there. Giulio couldbuyThe Cheesecake Factory… Every. Single. Restaurant. And it still wouldn’t put a dent in his finances.
“Why are you showing me this?” I demand. Is it to rub it in my face? What is the point of that when I already know he’s wealthy?
“Because, Daisy, as my wife, you have access to this money,” he states, continuing to glower at me.
“I do?” My chest feels too tight all of a sudden, like a string has been coiled around me for too long, slowly cutting off circulation from one half of my body to the other. That doesn’t seem right.
“Yes,” Giulio snaps. Then, as if to punctuate his answer, he reaches into the back pocket of his dark slacks and removes a leather wallet. Opening it, he takes out several cards and drops them into my lap. “The boutique I took you to was nice. Why don’t you get some new things from there? That’s what the cards are for.”
Oxygen… cutting… off.“They… are?” I mean, yeah, okay, I know what credit cards are used for, but I’ve always been too scared of getting even deeper into debt if I were to get one.Student loans—and the bullshit interest rates the government cons teens into agreeing to before they even know what they mean—are debt enough, thank you very much.
“Yes,” he confirms. “In return for acting as my wife, I will afford you all of the luxuries befitting your new status.”
“My new status.” I can’t help it; I’m parroting him. My brain seems to have either flown the coop or malfunctioned. The only thing I can think isThe Cheesecake Factory rich, repeating the words over and over in my head until they run on a continuous loop with little to no effort on my part to keep it going.
Giulio is talking again, but my head is full of the different cheesecakes I could have. Strawberry cheesecake. Double chocolate. Tuxedo. Oreo extreme. Pineapple upside-down cheesecake. It’s too much power for one girl to handle. I mentally start humming “The Imperial March” in my head as I imagine myself dressed to the nines in front of a massive spread of all the cheesecakes in the world with nothing to stop me. It’s a heady fantasy.
“—Daisy?” I blink and look up at the man standing over me once more. “Did you hear me?”
Numbly, I shake my head. All I can hear is the sound of silverware over porcelain plates as my fat, rich ass devours cake after cake.
Giulio sighs. “You won’t have to break your lease with your roommate,” he informs me. “I’ve paid the lease out for the next year. That should give her time to find someone else to cover the bills.”
