The day progressed like a night terror.
At an excruciating pace.
Zach fielded back-to-back conference calls for his impending hostile takeover. Oliver busied himself riding racehorses and getting oral—possibly at the same time.
Meanwhile, I wolfed down chicken breasts and Brussel sprouts, washed the bitter aftertaste with Chicory coffee, and stocked up on gum, demanding Mastika brand from the concierge.
When I could no longer delay the inevitable, I left the hotel to purchase a ring for the bane of my existence.
It was of great importance that Dallas wore an engagement ring at least three times the size of the one her ex-fiancé had gifted her.
This had nothing to do with her and everything to do with ensuring that Madison wanted to stab his own pupils whenever she flashed it in public.
And if it proved too heavy for her delicate fingers, she would have to manage. It wasn’t as if she ever put them to use and actually worked.
I’d heard the whispers.
My future wife was exceedingly, notoriously, incomparably lazy.
As the store manager rang up the two-million-dollar statement ring on my limitless card, along with the hefty insurance that accompanied it, my phone buzzed with an incoming call.
Mother.
I pressed accept, but did not grace her with actual words.
“Well?” Romeo Costa Sr. demanded, instead. “How is it going?”
Leave it to my father to not know what half the Internet had already made memes about.
It was unfortunate, if not downright gauche, that I had become a social media sensation for ruining a young woman’s honor at a debutante ball.
In fact, much to the appreciation of the DOD, I’d made it thirty-one years without a single blemish.
I’d given Dallas Townsend my first scandal; she’d given me her future. It did not seem like an equitable exchange and marked the first time in my adult life that I’d ended up on the losing side of, well, anything.
All over a girl who would sprint into a stranger’s white van if it meant she could get her hands on a piece of candy.
“Chapel Falls is lovely.” I snatched the turquoise bag from the sales associate’s fingers, strolling out to the sidewalk. “How’re y’all doing?”
“Romeo, my goodness.” A distinct horrified tone vaulted forward, seizing the call. No doubt my mother clutched her signature pearls as she spoke. “I didn’t send you to Sidwell Friends, MIT, and Harvard, so you’d pick up horrid Southern lingo.”
“You also didn’t send me to Sidwell Friends, MIT, and Harvard for me to be a mere CFO at your husband’s company, yet here we are.”
We all knew I deserved the COO position, which the other bane of my existence, Bruce Edwards, currently occupied.
My father ignored my dig. “Did you find a bride? Remember, Romeo—no bride, no company.”
Ah. The crux of my existential problem.
The whole reason I was in this humid hellhole in the first place.
Ideally, I’d have simply tarnished the Townsend girl and sent Madison a few pictures of her virgin blood on my Egyptian sheets as a souvenir.
As it happened, my parents had delivered an ultimatum earlier this week—find a bride and settle down, or the CEO position would go directly to Bruce Edwards.
Bruce was the byproduct of top-tier Massachusetts inbreeding. Nine years at Milton Academy, four at Phillips Andover, and two Harvard degrees.
He and Senior shared the same dorm room in Winthrop House, eighteen years apart. Both initiated into The Porcellian Club, where good ole Senior served as his alumni mentor.
Though not a drop of Costa blood ran through Bruce’s useless veins, an affront to centuries of Costa nepotistic tradition, Romeo Costa Sr. considered himself too honorable to forget his Harvard juniors.
So, Bruce was, to my great displeasure, a fixture in our lives.
He possessed the infuriating habit of referring to me as Junior at every public opportunity. Eight years ago, he’d even taken to addressing my father as Romeo instead of Mr. Costa for the sheer justification of assigning me the nickname.
He was also, apparently, in the same room as my parents.
His deep, nerve-grating voice soothed Senior. “Romeo, Mon.” Mon, not Monica, as if they were golf buddies. “Children mature slower these days. Perhaps Junior isn’t ready. Not for marriage and not for the job.”
This.
This was why I preferred numbers and spreadsheets to humans.
I knew Senior half-expected—maybe even wished—I’d flake on his dare and stay single.
The only thing Bruce had that I didn’t was a wife. A mousy thing called Shelley.
There was nothing overtly wrong about Shelley, other than her taste in men. There was nothing overtly right about her, either.
She was the white bread of humans. As bland as unseasoned chicken breast and just about as alluring.
“I’m not going to hand over one of the most profitable corporations in the United States to a soulless bachelor half the company is too scared to approach.”
My father was wrong.
It was precisely my soullessness that made me the perfect candidate for the job of delivering heavy-duty weapons into the hands of dubious governments and banana republics.
Not that he cared about my marital status.
He only cared about one thing—continuing the Costa bloodline.
“Come on, Romeo.” Bruce wedged himself back into the conversation. “This can’t be good for your blood pressure.”
Bruce’s brother ran a goliath pharmaceutical corporation that made Pfizer look like David, so he often pretended to care about Senior’s health.
The truth was, we both wanted the man dead. And we both played nice to succeed his position as CEO before he kicked the bucket.
Well, I played nice.
Bruce had his tongue so far up my father’s rear, I was surprised it didn’t tickle his tonsils.
Senior ignored Bruce, continuing his rant. “Especially with Licht Holdings breathing down our necks.”
Licht Holdings—you guessed it—belonged to Madison Licht’s father. A rival defense firm gaining popularity with the bigwigs in D.C.
To be sure, by calling it defense, what I truly meant was weapons.
My family made an extraordinary volume of weapons and sold most of them to the U.S. of A. Underwater guns, precision-guided firearms, armed robotic systems, taser shockwaves, hypersonic missiles.
If it could kill thousands in one blow, we probably manufactured it.
War was a profitable industry.
Much more than peace.
Sorry, Tolstoy. Commendable idea, though.
“Actually, I found the one.” I sighed with displeasure when I remembered that my so-called one was probably currently changing her name, forging a fake passport, and running off to a country without extradition laws.
“You did?” Monica gasped with excitement.
“You did?” Senior asked skeptically.
“You did?” Bruce sounded like I’d just shoved a ballistic missile up his rear.
“Indeed.” I called an Uber to take me to my future bride’s residence, since this hellhole didn’t even have a car service. “I cannot wait for you to meet her.”
“What’s she like?” The pearls in Monica’s fingers probably twisted with her eagerness.
“The proud owner of a pulse and a womb, your only two requirements.”
Not that she’ll be using that womb of hers.
Monica barked out a delighted laugh. “Oh, Rom. You really can be crass sometimes.”
An Uber Lux pulled to the curb. Last year’s Range Rover. I needed out of Chapel Falls yesterday.
I slid into the cab of the vehicle, ignoring the eye contact the driver tried to impose on me. The only thing that would make today even more inconvenient was small talk with a stranger.
“When are we going to meet the girl?” If it were up to Monica, Dallas would be delivered to her doorsteps via Two-Hour Prime shipping.
“As soon as humanly possible.”
I needed to destroy any chances of Bruce becoming a viable alternative to me as CEO. That, unfortunately, meant a few more hours in a confined space with Dallas Townsend.
Monica hovered on the cusp of exploding with joy. “Aww. Are you really that excited to show her off?”
I stared out the window. “Bursting at the seams.”
“Junior…Christ, kid.” And that was when I knew Bruce had found one of the viral videos from last night. “Mon, Romeo, I think you should see something. Remember Clinton Brunswick from the Pentagon? His wife forwarded a video to my Shelley. I regret to bring it to your attention, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable not addressing it since Junior did a terri—”
That was my cue to hang up.
As I killed the call and watched Chapel Falls zip past me in all of its small-town glory, I thought marrying the Townsend girl wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
I would leave her to tend to her own business—shopping? Luncheons? Botox parties?—only reentering her life periodically to drag her to black-tie events or important summits that required me to appear like a respectable family man.
She’d probably slink back to Chapel Falls within a year or two and age ungracefully, spending her time drowning in materialistic extravagance and meaningless gossip to numb the taste of her own pointlessness.
I would return to my normal life in Potomac.
My work. My friends. My plans.
After a few years, ten or twelve, when the burn of becoming a mother really seared through her, I would consider granting Dallas a divorce. Depending on how useful to me she’d be by then.
She’d sign a prenup, though.
That woman was not worth half the Costa fortune.
Yes, I decided. Marrying the Townsend girl will be an anecdotal incident in my life, not a pivotal moment.
It didn’t matter how loud she was.
My silence would always be louder.
