Chapter 1
Daisy
It’s strange to be surrounded by a sea of people and still be lonely. I walk the campus path to class, hugging my iPad close to my chest, a backpack slung over one shoulder. I’m dressed in a dark gray sweater and jeans, my hair’s pulled into a nondescript ponytail, and I’m roughly the same age of everyone else attending school, give or take a few years.
But I don’t blend. I don’t think I even know how.
Maybe it’s because I’ve killed a man? Maybe it’s because the love of my life is an ex-mafiya assassin? Maybe it’s because the last year has given me more life experience than a lot of these people will ever have, but I’m still considered the “sheltered” one?
Who knows. Whatever it is, I feel like the square peg in a class full of round holes.
I duck into my Financial Management class, and as I do, there’s a row of women at the front I recognize from a class last semester. They’re taking the accounting block of classes, like me, because I want to learn how to manage Nick’s money and help him make more of it the legal way. They’re smiling and laughing, but when they see me, they get quiet. I see their expressions freeze over and they don’t make eye contact.
And so, even though there’s an empty seat next to them, I move to the back of the class. I try not to let it bother me.
I really thought it would be easier to make friends. I really did. But outside of my fiancé, Nick, whom I love and adore with all my heart; my father; and my old roommate, Regan, I’m alone.
Last semester, things were going fine. I enjoyed my classes and socialized with people. But then we got word that Daniel’s sister Naomi had been stolen out from under his nose while he and Regan were accompanying her. Rumors of a Bratva takeover started trickling through Nick’s networks. And my Nick? He is utterly cautious when it comes to my safety. So instead of letting me go to class on my own, he insisted on walking me to class and waiting at the door for me as each class finished.
I think that’s when the ostracism started. People started to look at me weird. Girls that I used to eat lunch with no longer go to the dining hall when I do. Maybe Nick inadvertently said something to someone. Maybe just seeing my big Ukrainian with the tattoo-covered neck and the designs crisscrossing his hands screamed danger.
Whatever it was, the women in my classes steer clear of me.
I can’t blame Nick. He wants to keep me safe, and I love him for it. After my kidnapping last year by Yuri and Vasily, I don’t mind his hovering. It makes me feel secure, even if it chases away any chance of friendship with “regular” people.
As I swipe my iPad and open the text to the class’s lesson, I tell myself that these things don’t matter. That the approval of my peers does not matter to me. I have Nick, and that should be everything.
But in some ways, not having any girlfriends to chat with makes me feel as if I am still that isolated young woman living in a boarded-up house with my father. I had no friends then, either. And funnily enough, I thought that friends and life would come easily once I escaped his house. And while Nick blazed his way into my life like a comet and paved a path for me, I still struggle with everyday things.
Like small talk. I never realized how much of a favor my friend Regan did me when she took me under her wing. But now Regan’s in Texas and I’m having to figure things out on my own.
The class fills up as we wait for the professor’s lecture to begin. There are two unfamiliar girls a row ahead of me discussing something called Real Housewives. I think it’s a TV show, based off of their conversation, but Nick and I don’t watch a lot of TV. There are so many other things to do with our time, like fix up the old apartment building, or go to the zoo, or take walks together . . . or simply make love. TV falls somewhere far down that list.
Still, I make a note on the margins of my notepad to check it out. Maybe I can watch a few episodes over the weekend and return to class armed with knowledge and a way to break into their huddled conversation.
Even as I think it, I scratch the words out. I can watch a few episodes . . . and then what? Introduce them to my assassin fiancé? Invite them over for dinner to the large, empty apartment building that Nick and I purchased and that no one else lives in yet except for my father? But could they please let me run a background check first?
I sigh and concentrate on my finance class instead.
If I cannot make friends, I can at least have knowledge.
***
My next class occurs after lunch. Even though Nick would prefer that I remain in class until he comes to escort me home, we’ve compromised. I won’t eat anywhere but in the crowded lunchroom, where I can be surrounded by people. It doesn’t matter that I brown-bag my lunch every day; there is safety in numbers. But I hate lunch. I hate that when I choose a table, I’m always the only one seated there.