My Dark Romeo: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance(13)

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.