Page 6 of Vicious Temptation
“The botanical gardens.” I hold up my camera. “Just to get some fresh air and some pictures.”
He nods, facing forward again without another word. Derrick gets in and starts the car, turning the air conditioning up. He started doing that when I first started venturing out again after coming back home, the second time he saw me wearing a hoodie in early summer. He didn’t ask why, he just made the car colder, and that was it.
I appreciated that more than I think I could ever tell him.
I lean back against the seat as we pull out of the driveway. It’s a bit of a drive into the city, and I close my eyes, feeling the sense of panic recede a little bit more with every mile of space that we put between us and my family home. This was the right call, I think, as I feel myself calming down. I just need some time away. That, and to see Clara. Both of those things will help.
Clara is waiting for me outside the gardens when we arrive. Derrick stays with the car, and Jacq follows me at a distance, close enough to make sure I stay safe but far enough back to give me some semblance of privacy. Clara waves when she sees me, and I wave back.
She looks me up and down as I get closer, and I wince. Clara is wearing jean shorts and a crop top with red nautical stripes, her blonde hair pulled up in a high ponytail, and sparkling hoop earrings dangling from her lobes. “Hey there, Bel,” she says as soon as I’m within hearing distance, closing the space between us and giving me a hug. “Aren’t you warm in that?” She eyes my long-sleeved shirt again, and I know what she’s thinking. This isn’t my usual wardrobe, and it’s hot enough out now for it to be strange.
I shrug, trying to make it seem as if it’s nothing. “I’ve been cold a lot lately. I went to the doctor, and it’s just some health thing. Nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, like low iron?” Clara raises an eyebrow, and I feel a flicker of guilt for the white lie. But I can’t talk to her about the real reasons for all of this. So I just nod, falling into step with her as we walk into the botanical gardens.
“Something like that.”
Claire knows I was engaged, that it was an arranged marriage, and that it didn’t work out. That’s the extent of it. My disappearance for over a month and inability to see her was chalked up to me getting over the marriage being broken off on my wedding day, before I even had a chance to say I do. Before the priest got past the part about if anyone has a reason why this man and woman should not be wed.
There were objections. Violent ones. I shiver despite the humid warmth of the greenhouse we’re walking into, thinking about it.
It’s a delicate thing, having a best friend who has nothing to do with the mafia. Claire knows who my father is and what he does, but I shield her from most of it. And even if she did know the truth about who I was supposed to marry and that he was Bratva, and what that meant, I couldn’t tell her about what came after.
I couldn’t even talk to my therapist about it. I haven’t been able to talk about it out loud at all, to put words to the things that happened to me. I can’t say it, so it all stays stuck in my head, tormenting me.
All I can do is find ways to make myself feel safer. Like covering up even when it’s hot out.
“Are you okay, Bel?” Clara shoots me a sideways look as we walk past a particularly gorgeous showcase of flowers, all bright yellows and pinks and oranges. I lift up my camera, looking for the right angle to get the perfect lighting. “You seem upset. And you said you needed to get out of the house. What’s going on?”
I let out a slow breath. Clara is the kind of friend who won’t push past the point where she realizes someone doesn’t want to talk about something, but she will push right up to that point, because she genuinely gives a shit. And I know she cares about why I was upset enough to need to bail out of my house on such short notice.
“My dad wants me to get married.” There it is, out in the open. Hearing myself say the words aloud twists my stomach. “He had me come sit down in his office this morning to see photos of the guy he picked.”
The look on Clara’s face reminds me of how strange the mafia world seems to someone who’s not a part of it. “Seriously, Bella? He just—sat you down and pointed at a picture and said ‘this guy’? After the last one he chose clearly went so well.” She frowns, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Bella, but that’s really weird.”
You don’t know the half of it. I swallow hard, focusing for a moment on taking another photo of a display of frothing greenery. The light is hitting it in a way that some of the leaves look translucent, and I want to capture it. “I know. But he doesn’t see it that way. I guess he’s been trying to find a new match for me for a while, and there haven’t really been any takers.”
Clara snorts. “Please. Maybe you just need to come out into the real world for a while. You’re fucking gorgeous, Bel. And smart, and talented. Guys would be lining up by the dozens for you, in any bar you walked into in New York. You could walk down the street and they’d be begging for the chance for a date.”
Except I don’t want a date. I want to be left alone, by men, at least. And smart and talented probably doesn’t go far when it comes with a side of trauma and neuroses. I smile thinly at Clara. “My dad doesn’t live in the real world, though. He’s mafia. So this is how it’s done. One arranged marriage falls through, another gets drawn up. It’s normal to him. And he doesn’t understand why I don’t want to do it.”
Clara can’t fully understand either, of course, because I haven’t told her the whole truth. But she’s not a part of the mafia world, so she doesn’t have to know all of that to be horrified by the idea of an arranged marriage.
“You can’t just be forced to marry a stranger if you don’t want to,” she splutters, and I pick up my camera again, taking a quick shot of her framed by varicolored roses. “Oh my god, Bella, you’re a menace with that thing.”
It’s said with love, though. I can hear it, and I can tell she doesn’t really mind, as long as it’s making me happy. And it is. My stomach is still churning at the thought of marrying someone my father picks out for me, and the never-too-distant memories are banging around in my skull, threatening to cause the panic to flare up again—but the camera calms it down. It gives me something else to focus on. A purpose. It quiets everything, for just a second.
It never lasts long, but any relief is something.
“It happens all the time. It’s normal for mafia families. I’m the one who’s rebelling, by not going along with it.” Again.
“Then be a rebel.” Clara spins around, walking backward as she talks, and I snap another quick photo. “Just leave. If he wants to control your life, show him he can’t. Walk away.”
“I’ve thought about it,” I admit. I’ve thought about it a lot, over the past couple of months, once I was able to think about anything again. But I come to the same conclusion, every time. “But where would I live? I don’t have access to any of my family’s money. Even my trust fund is controlled by my father, until I’m married. He doles out a very small allowance to my card every month. It’s not enough to put a deposit on a place to live, or get me by until I could find a job and get a paycheck.”
I zoom in on an orchid, capturing the delicate, paper-thin petals, the dew of the sprinkler system they use to water the flowers clinging to the edge of it.
“You could come live with me,” Clara suggests, crossing her arms under her small breasts. It makes her cropped shirt ride up, exposing more of her flat stomach and the sparkle of a piercing at her navel, and I see a man about our age sneak a glance at her as he walks by. It makes my skin crawl, to see the way his gaze slides over her body.