My parents lived in a French Country-style manor wrapped in Boral bricks.
Despite living on the same street, it took a solid ten minutes to reach their gates, followed by another two minutes to traverse their mile-long driveway.
Their four-acre house was both grand and understated enough to scream old money. Inviting yellow lights glimmered through the vast windows, illuminating a long table filled with professionally prepared food.
I knew that, to anyone who wasn’t me, this looked like the picture of domestic bliss.
I shot Dallas a final warning before pushing the doorbell. “Remember—tonight, you are a well-bred woman.”
“Did someone say bread?” Dallas gasped, playing dumb. “Please tell me there will be gravy, too. Or anything I can dunk it into.”
Monica’s pumps clunked on the other side of the door. As soon as it opened, I thrust Shortbread into her arms, my human sacrifice.
“Mother, Dallas Townsend. Dallas, this is Monica, the woman who gave me life, possibly to spite me.”
“My goodness, look at you!” Monica neglected all decorum and etiquette by clutching Dallas’s cheeks with her talons, examining my bride’s delicate face with hysterical pupils. “I won’t pretend I didn’t make some calls to find out more about you. Everyone said you’re gorgeous, but the word doesn’t do you justice!”
Shortbread gathered my usually reticent mother into an embrace with theatric flourish. Though I didn’t particularly like either of them, I was satisfied they were a good match.
“Well, Mrs. Costa, I can already see you and I will get along just fine.”
“Please, call me Mom!”
I didn’t even call her Mom.
Also, why did she use an exclamation point for every sentence that left her mouth?
“Oh, if you insist. Do you know any good shopping spots around here, Mom?”
“Know?” Monica almost suffered a cardiac arrest. “I have a personal shopper in each of them.”
Her eyes caught the pearl necklace Dallas must have stolen from my room. I knew she’d snooped—left her greasy fingerprints everywhere—but just now noticed it on her collar.
Monica covered her lips with her fingertips, sparing Senior a glance. “Oh, honey, Rom gave Dallas your great grandmother’s necklace. They really are getting married.”
Behind her, Senior, Bruce, and Shelley peered at Dallas. I studied my father. The hard set of his shoulders. The way they rattled with each exhale.
He planted a hand on the railing. For support, I gathered, though he’d never admit it. He hated weaknesses.
The bad news was—Senior was still alive.
The good news?
He seemed a little less so than the last time I’d seen him.
Bruce and Shelley advanced after Dallas managed to unplaster herself from Monica’s hold.
“Dear.” Shelley squeezed Shortbread’s shoulder, a grim expression eclipsing her face. “We heard what happened at the debutante ball. Are you okay?”
“Miss Townsend.” Bruce slipped between them, grabbing Dallas’s hands in an Oscar-worthy performance. “If you need to discuss anything privately for a moment, I’m at your disposal.”
The prick wanted Shortbread to fall at his feet and beg him to save her from the big, bad wolf.
I’d predicted this behavior from Bruce, as well as Dallas’s response—she knew she had no way out of this.
No home to return to.
Chapel Falls would only accept her as my wife after our rose garden debacle.
Though I’d expected Dallas to shut Bruce down, I hadn’t foreseen her upturning her nose, regarding him as if he were a lowly servant.
“Bruce, is it?” Her eyes narrowed, foot sliding back.
“Yes.” He inclined his head in faux modesty. “No need to put on a brave face, my dear. I’ve seen the social media videos—”
“You know what they say about social media.” Shortbread examined her manicured fingernails with a patronizing pout. “It’s nothing but a false reality.”
Shelley stepped forward, trying to milk some kind of confession out of my fiancée. “But you looked so livid—”
“Oh, I was.” Dallas laughed, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. I noticed she had a wing-shaped constellation of freckles on her nose. “But then I had time to cool down and consider how completely obsessed with me this man is. Look at the lengths he went to in order for us to wed. I swear, every time he stares at me, there are tears in his eyes. He can’t contain himself. I hold his happiness in my fist. How romantic is that?”
I could kiss her in that moment.
Of course, she’d probably bite my lips off as payback.
Disappointed, Bruce and Shelley scampered to the sidelines as Senior finally strode toward Shortbread.
My blood cooled in my veins.
My muscles tensed.
I parked a possessive hand on her waist.
Dallas took in my father’s general welfare. Or lack thereof. A million questions danced behind her honey-hued eyes.
I hoped Senior saw each and every one.
He hated the idea of people knowing what had happened to him. That his imperial body had failed him, and he’d soon wither into himself.
Which was why he’d chosen to retire before the general public could witness what his disease did to him.
Senior captured Dallas’s hand and brought it to his lips, making eye contact with her. “Romeo, she is ravishing.”
“I have eyes,” I informed him.
“You have hands, too, and they seem to be all over her. Relax.” He chuckled. “She isn’t going to run anywhere, is she?”
Dallas studied the human ring surrounding her, trying to read the atmosphere. It was obvious bad blood ran between the men present.
Hedging her bets on a safe stock, she laced her arm in Monica’s and smiled. “I’d love to help you in the kitchen, Mom.”
“Oh, I haven’t entered my kitchen since 1998.” She waved a hand. “It’s all servants.”
Dallas flashed her dazzling smile, but I could tell she didn’t like Monica’s usage of the words servants.
Did my young bride have morals? Unlikely.
Best not to find out.
“Shall we sit down for dinner?” Senior suggested.
“Certainly, Romeo.” Bruce all but rolled over and showed him his tummy for a rub.
When the four of them poured into the dining room, Shortbread held back and leaned toward me, her voice low. “Is your father okay? Is something wrong with him?”
There was a lot wrong with Senior.
Friedreich’s ataxia happened to be the only thing right about him.
It would kill him, eventually. Too slow for my liking. But in the meantime, I enjoyed the progression of his symptoms.
Each time he struggled to walk in sudden bouts. The fatigue. The slowed speech. The only time I ever listened to him speak, really.
“He has a rare inherited disease that causes progressive nervous system damage.” I strode to the dining room, refusing to match her volume.
I didn’t care if Senior heard me.
In fact, I would enjoy it.
Her forehead creased. “Inherited? Will you—”
“Get it? No. It requires two recessive genes.” I leaned into her, my lips brushing the shell of her ear. “Careful, Shortbread. Wouldn’t want to mistake you for caring.”
Dinner consisted of Bruce and Shelley cross-examining Shortbread about the debutante ball, Monica trying to lure Dallas to European shopping sprees, and Senior prying her for obvious flaws.
Of which there were many.
My bride slumped in her seat like an overcooked shrimp, most certainly to grate on my already raw nerves.
I could tell Shortbread didn’t enjoy defending our relationship, for the simple fact that it did not exist. She was forced to lie through her teeth for a man who had plucked her from her charming life.
By the time dessert was served, shockingly, she didn’t even touch it.
Bruce and Shelley grilled her with their millionth question about her relationship with Madison Licht. She took frequent sips of water, her usual fire long doused.
“…just find it odd that after Madison sang your praises to half the DMV, you two would break off an engagement following a short flirt with our little Junior—”
Bruce would’ve drilled the subject until oil poured out if Shortbread hadn’t blurted, “May I be excused?”
My parents shared a puzzled look.
“Go ahead.” I stood, pulling her chair for her.
She disappeared faster than a bikini top in a Cancun spring break party.
Bruce turned to me. “Junior, son, what you are doing to this child is deplorable.”
“So is what you’re doing to me,” I pointed out.
“What am I doing to you?”
“Existing.”
“Romeo,” Senior faux-chided. He fucking loved our competition for his throne. “Stop mocking Bruce. You know better than to disrespect your elders.”
I sipped my brandy. “He started it.”
Bruce frowned. “How so?”
“By being born.”
Nothing brought out my inner child like arguing with my nemesis in front of my father.
“Madison is going around telling people the DOD will make them an offer for an annual contract.” Senior dug into his pie, changing the subject. The fork pinched between his fingers rattled, either from irritation or his disease. “The one we’re currently grandfathered into. You know, their company holds the rights to the taser shockwave system prototype. My sources tell me it’s a deal breaker. They have cutting-edge blueprints we don’t.”
A direct consequence of Senior relying on engineers and experts with dated knowledge and no field experience to speak of.
Senior hadn’t just dropped the ball. He’d let it roll all the way to our enemy’s home field.
During my undergrad at MIT, he’d admonished my engineering degree as wasteful since Costa Industries boasted an army of engineers, yet here we were.
A decade behind, pants around our ankles.
“Madison is right. We’re old blood. Weak in the teeth.” I slammed the tumbler on the table, staring Senior in the eye. “Make me your CEO, and I’ll give you a state-of-the-art weapon. I’m talking nuclear-level destruction.”
“Romeo.” Bruce gulped. He was in it for the money. We both knew Senior needed to make a decision soon—and that decision would either be our windfall or drought. “You should sleep on it. At the very leas—”
“Let’s see you walking down that aisle first, Son.” My father tried and failed, yet again, to slice his pie. Definitely his disease. His fork clattered to his plate as he reached for his drink. “And then I’ll seriously consider it.”
I’m not your son.
Not where it matters.
I crushed my gum between my teeth.
Other than wanting the Costa dynasty to continue, Senior also saw my reproduction as entertainment for his wife. He figured that if he blackmailed me into marriage, I’d have children, a family, something to keep Monica engaged and fulfilled.
She wanted grandchildren and cheesy Christmas vacations and Hallmark-worthy holiday cards. The makeshift family she’d never had because my father was too busy dicking down anything on the East Coast with a skirt to pay us any real attention.
Monica lifted her glass. “Romeo?”
“Yes?”
“Where is Dallas?”
Good question.
She’d escaped my mind.
And possibly the premises.
Since there was a reasonable chance the answer to it was running off to live in the woods with a family of badgers, I tossed my napkin over my plate and stood. “I’ll check on her.”
Monica touched her throat. “Look at him. I haven’t seen Rom so involved with anyone since Morgan.”
Morgan.
I didn’t even bother checking if Shortbread was in the kitchen, the garden, or Senior’s library. I knew exactly where I’d find her and took the stairs two at a time.
I rounded the massive mahogany hallway, flinging the door open to my childhood room. Sure enough, Dallas was there, perched on the edge of my teenage bed, flipping through an old photo album.
Morgan and me vacationing in Aspen.
Morgan and me in New York.
Morgan and me kissing. Hugging.
Existing in our own little universe.
She didn’t look up, even when I entered the room and shut the door behind me.
“Why didn’t you marry her?” Her voice sounded faraway. In another galaxy. “Morgan. You obviously still love her.”
Why wouldn’t Dallas assume so?
My old room was a shrine to my ex-girlfriend.
Photo albums. Framed pictures. Stubs from concerts we’d attended. Memorabilia from exotic places we’d visited.
I refused to throw away the evidence that I was once a fully functioning human.
Morgan’s face stamped every inch of this room. Her slight ballerina frame. Her dimpled smile.
She was as graceful as a perfect autumn day. Exceling everywhere my current fiancée fell short.
Approaching my future wife, I swiped the album out of her hands and tucked it back inside the nightstand drawer, its usual residence.
For all I cared, I could burn every memory of Morgan to the ground, then piss on the remains to avoid a fire. I’d completely recovered from our five-year relationship and the broken engagement that had followed it.
But I couldn’t destroy the proof of our relationship, or the members of my so-called family would misinterpret the reason.
“Marrying her wasn’t an option.”
Mainly since I’d kicked her out of our shared penthouse stark naked on the day our engagement had fallen apart, then filed a restraining order against her when she continuously found her way to my door, begging for forgiveness.
“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?” Dallas slanted her lovely face upward, blinking with those dark, curly lashes that made her look like a Disney animal.
Denial settled on the tip of my tongue before I realized that, if I said yes, I’d spare Shortbread from heartbreak when I eventually got rid of her.
Already, her body was too attuned to mine.
Beneath the rebellious streak was a young woman capable of great love. Love I certainly wouldn’t return. It was better to establish we’d be nothing but a business transaction.
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
It was the first time in years that actual laughter gathered in my throat.
Me. In love with Morgan.
I had more sympathy for the devil.
Dallas’s throat bobbed. She nodded, gathering her dress and standing.
“What about you?” I asked. “Does Madison have your heart?”
This was what Frankie had claimed.
I’d been meaning to sniff around the subject. Not because I cared, but because I needed to know if I should monitor her.
Just because I didn’t have feelings toward her didn’t mean I was receptive to a scandal that would rock D.C. to its core.
She paused at the door, her back to me.
“Your co-worker and his wife are getting on my last nerve.” She ignored my question. “I would like to go home in the next ten minutes.”
I would’ve pushed her about Madison, but I simply couldn’t find it in me to muster the curiosity.
“I’ll call Jared.”
