Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“She’s beautiful, unhinged, and would rather eat her own eyeballs than marry me.”
Zach saluted me with his electrolyte water. “I’ll make popcorn.”
“Don’t be so smug. You’re next in line.”
“But the line is long.” He clicked away on his mouse, already drifting from the conversation to his work. “And I’m very good at stalling.”
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.