The Body #4: Nico and Cosi

Chapter 3 (Cosi): In Love

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

I'd cleared everyone out of the room because sometimes a girl just needed a minute to herself without everyone fussing and hovering over her. In just ten minutes, I was due to walk down the aisle to become Nico's wife, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

It didn't get to me often, but today I was missing my father who'd died when I'd been so young. I didn't have many clear memories of him, but I wished I did. I wished I had the memory of his voice, of what a hug from him felt like, something to remind me of a man who was no longer but was so much a part of me. Maybe it was simply missing the loss of what what should have been on this day -- walking down the aisle to my soon-to-be-husband on my papa's arm. Maybe he'd glance down at me and smile encouragingly, knowing how scared I was to be the focus of all that attention. Instead Desti's papa would be walking me down the aisle.

Not that my step-father hadn't been kind to me. He had. But I always knew that Desti was his daughter and I...was not. I secretly always thought my mother had done a better job of not distinguishing between Desti and me, but then I immediately felt horrible because he'd never been mean to me and men in the Body weren't always the best with other men's children.

I stared at myself in the mirror for a minute, my white dress fitted closely on top, with simple cap sleeves, flaring out into a full skirt. My hair was twisted into an intricate arrangement at the back of my head, and woven into the updo was a wire vine with tiny crystal and diamond petals. I'd decided against a veil, much to my mother's dismay, liking the simplicity of Nico's gift in my hair.

Nico had sent it over a week before the wedding, and this morning, my mother had delivered a diamond and pearl necklace from him. The simple card said only For my Costanza.

"He's going to run through all of his training money at this rate," my mother said with a soft smile. 

Body men were given a base sum of money each year of their training, and they could increase that amount for every challenge they completed successfully during training. My mother told me privately one evening after a Nico visit that my step-father had told her that Nico had proven himself time and time again during those three years and had almost quadrupled his base sum of money each year. 

That wasn't the first time I'd heard my mother say he was going to use up all of his money. Each of the times he saw me, Nico had brought a gift for me that he never wanted me to open in front of him, but always later. His gifts were jewelry and usually had consisted of at least one diamond. I'd tried not to make a big deal over them, but Desti either asked or noticed if I had some new piece on.

If she was angry over the next year that my so-called thug continued to give me diamond jewelry and she still wasn't betrothed, she never showed it. After Easter, her father had promised by summer, but oddly enough, nothing had come from that. Desti had confronted him in July -- and she had never mentioned becoming betrothed again. Refusing to talk about it, sometimes I heard her crying in her room, but she never gave me any information.

A loud knock on the door made me jump, and Desti came in. She was to be my only attendant. The girls and I, to ensure our friendship remained undetected and off anyone's radar, didn't attend each other's weddings. It was something we'd decided a long time ago, when we swore our blood oath to one another. We had to protect our friendship.

I was the last one in our group to get married. Ginevra -- now calling herself Janie -- had been the first of us to marry and had experienced a wedding night that was such a disaster she'd disappeared before the sun rose, and Lucio, her husband, had no idea where she'd gone. The following night, we'd tracked down the mistress Lucio had taken to his bed instead of Janie...and although we opened a can of whoop-ass on Chiara, as Moxie said...we also opened a can of worms. We'd stumbled onto a trafficking ring that the six of us knew we had to take down.