“Be my good little wife today, and you can choose your reward tonight,” I say to Eliza. “Act like a little brat today, and I choose your punishment.”
Something flickers across her face, some unreadable expression. I could dissect all I saw in that one flash of her eyes, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter. She slips her hand into mine, lacing our fingers like we’re a real couple, but I know the gesture for what it is—a handshake. She’s agreed to my deal. She smiles serenely at her father’s mistress, and I can’t help but wonder about the true feeling she harbors for this woman. She’s too good at faking it, better than I am. But I won’t be outmatched. I won’t be outsmarted and manipulated.
My life depends on doing my one job—bringing our families together. So, that’s what I intend to do. If I have to make a new bargain with my bride each day, so be it. I’ll compromise, like a good husband. One bribe at a time, she’ll give me what I want. If she doesn’t, she’ll get what she’s asking for.
five
Eliza Dolce
“Girl, why are you still here?” Bianca asks, staggering against me and throwing an arm around my neck. We stumble a few steps into the water, which is frigid even in July. “That’s what I don’t understand. Shouldn’t you be bleeding on that beautiful man’s white sheets right now?”
Even in my drunken state, my heart lurches at her words. I know better than to believe the promise of a Valenti, to believe he’ll leave me alone tonight because I was a good girl today. That’s why I’ve postponed the inevitable, why I’ve gotten sloppy drunk with my bridesmaids instead of spending the reception next to my groom. If I take enough shots, surely it won’t hurt too bad. If I drink enough, maybe I won’t even remember it tomorrow.
I don’t do well with pain. I live for pleasure. What really scares me is that once I do this, oncewedo this, it’s real. The deal is sealed. There’s no undoing it, no getting out of the marriage. Part of me knows it’s already too late, but that’s the rational part, the one that recognizes the ring on my finger and the marriage license in the safe.
Some other part of me, somewhere that doesn’t care about signatures and official documents, the real Eliza, inside my heart, knows. It knows that once he’s been inside me, he owns me. There’s no going back from that, no getting out of it. Once it’s done, King will control me. He’ll have all the power. Maybe that’s an illusion, but it’s all I have to hold onto. The only bit of control left to me. My own body.
Because I can’t control where I’ll be forced live, who I live with. My whole life uprooted from the bedroom at Daddy’s that I’ve slept in since I was a baby, when Mom went through an artistic phase and painted giraffes and lions and safari animals on the walls.
The same room where I got my first period, and Mom wasn’t there to ask, and I didn’t want to ask Daddy, so I just lay there in bed bleeding all night, thinking I was dying, that something in my belly had ruptured and that’s why my abdomen hurt so bad. The next day, the housekeeper found my bloody sheets and had to tell me about periods because that wasn’t the sort of thing I learned about in Catholic school. Then she told the whole staff, and everyone knew, and shame burned in my cheeks every time I passed them, as if they could see what they hadn’t before, that I wasunclean.
But at least the nanny asked if maybe it was time we painted over the babyish safari animals still on my walls. It wasn’t the kind of thing my father would notice or think to ask, and I was grateful when she offered me buckets of paint with a hopeful smile that I didn’t realize was more about her bid to ride the Anthony Express than to help me.
When we opened the cans and I saw the paint was bright pink, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t like pink. Back then, I didn’t understand Mom. I was angry. Those animals had always made me feel like maybe one day things would be okay. As if knowing she’d once cared enough to hand paint each stripe and spot on every zebra and giraffe proved that she somehow loved me, even though she hadn’t contacted us once in the years since she left.
But now that I was a woman, as the housekeeper informed me, I had to accept the truth. I had my dad and the nanny parade, and that was all the family I’d ever have. My brother was dead, and my mother might as well be. I told the nanny I loved the paint, even though it was hideously bright and looked like something an eight-year-old would pick. I even asked if I could help. I relished each stroke as I rolled the garish paint in wide swaths over the beautiful animals my mother had painted with love and care. It felt positively criminal—and I loved it.
I halfway expected her to walk in as we were doing it and scream at us for ruining her hard work. Or to call the very next day and casually ask, and I’d have to admit what I’d done, slathering on the pink paint so thick it ran like Barbie blood down the walls.
I didn’t understand Mom’s decision then. Now I get it. Now I know why she left, what was worth so much that she’d disappear from her own daughter’s life forever, not even showing up at her wedding, what people say is the most important day of her life. Mom knew. She had one when she was eighteen, too. She knew this day isn’t the beginning of a new life to celebrate, my married life. It’s a death to mourn.
“If you don’t fuck that man tonight, I will,” Lizzie purrs, swaying her hips in a seductive slow dance as she twirls at the edge of the water, her hands twining into the breeze above her head like silk scarves. I wonder if she’s dancing for my husband, if he’s watching her, wishing he could fuck her instead of the frigid bitch he ended up with. An ugly streak of jealousy darts through me, but I push it away. I don’t want his eyes on me. If he’s watching her, wanting her, he can have her. I hope he goes to bed, and she sneaks into his room and fucks him for me.
I glance at the bay windows overlooking the beach, but I don’t see him there. I turn back to my bridesmaids—my friends, enemies, and competition.
“Like you’d bleed,” I scoff at Lizzie.
The other girls break into a chorus of giggles.
“Oh, I’ll bleed for my husband,” Lizzie says. “You just have to know what you’re doing. Let him rough you up a little when you’re still dry, and you can bleed any time you want.”
“Really?” Bianca asks, gaping at the other mafia daughter.
“Sure,” Lizzie says, giggling. “It’s not exactly pleasant, but it gets the job done if anyone wants proof on your wedding night.”
“You should have told me that years ago. I would have slutted it up like you,” I lie.
“Hey,” she protests.
I’ve never met someone as in love with herself, with pleasure, as Lizzie Salvatore. I hate her out of envy as much as anything. She said a big fuck you to tradition and had sex when she wanted to, consequences be damned. And she never looked back. The rest of us are simultaneously in awe of her and disgusted by her, but I’m sure the other girls are as envious as I am. For all our talk about carving our own paths and making our lives, Lizzie has really done it, in her own way. Even if all she owns is her sexuality, it’s something.
“Like any guy will think you’re a virgin,” Bianca says, linking her arm with Lizzie’s on the other side. “Everyone knows you spent half of high school on your back.”
“I probably won’t get lucky enough to marry a guy as young as Eliza’s King,” Lizzie says. “So it won’t matter. No one past high school knows about my rep.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Gianna says quietly. “My family keeps tabs on me everywhere.”
“Oh, who the hell cares?” Lizzie says, the liquor making her braver than she is. We all care what our families think. They might love us, but that doesn’t erase what they’re capable of.