Pretty Prize (Rags to Riches 2)

Chapter 15

Hunter

After enriching half the stores on Via Dei Condotti, I take my wife to dinner. She’s exchanged her slightly rumpled yellow dress for a gorgeous white silk frock with large hand-painted red and pink flowers. The top has two long strips that the store clerk tied under Rose’s chin, drawing attention to her perfect skin. Light pink sapphire ovals dangle from her delicate ears and a matching fourteen carat white diamond bracelet with matching pink sapphires glitters on her wrist. The entire ensemble is finished with pink crocodile shoes and a purse. Despite being hardly bigger than my hand, the purse cost more than the shoes and the dress, but she looks at it like it’s an ancient treasure dragged up from the bottom of the sea. Before we left, I ordered five more in every color I could think of.

Seated by a bank of windows overlooking the Rome skyline, I find myself unwilling to look away from Rose. The low light of the room creates interesting shadows that play across her cheekbones and shadow part of her face as she peers down at the menu. It doesn’t surprise me that she can read Italian. She’s very smart—too smart to be kept inside a beautiful cage. Her job applications were all very ordinary, though. A business analyst position at one company. A research position at another. None of these jobs seemed appropriate for a woman like Rose, but, then again, what do I really know about my wife? I knew the simple answers because I went digging. I want to know all of that but those things are only surface. I don’t know what she wants deep inside of her or how she dreams her life to be. These are all of the little things that I want her to share with me of her own accord.

Guilt makes my chest tight. I place my menu on the table and take a long gulp of my five-hundred-dollar-a-bottle red wine.

“What will you have?”

She sticks a finger in the side of her mouth. “I can’t decide. I like scallops but I also think this steak looks good. Have you eaten here before?”

I have but I don’t remember it. It was a dinner meeting and I was too focused on gloating over my acquisition of a villa overlooking the Sea of Capri to recall whether anything I put in my mouth had any flavor.

“Yes. It was all good.” For the price I paid, I assume it was.

“Hmm. I guess I’ll order the scallops then. I can get steak anywhere.”

I give the order in Italian, requesting two steaks to be brought out in addition to the scallops.

Rose watches me, bemused.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

“Did you order that for me?”

“And if I did?”

“That’s nice of you.”

There’s an odd note to her voice, as if she doesn’t expect kindness, particularly from me. Her assumptions are grating, mostly because she’s right. No. Was right. I don’t feel that way toward her now and haven’t since I met her. Before she was an object I wanted to own and now…now I want her to say that she wants me in return.

Those feelings make me damn uncomfortable and like a cornered animal, I strike out. “Shall I treat you poorly? Trot you around the richest parts of Rome in rags your brother bought you? Make you sing on the street for a few coins so you can buy yourself pizza from a street vendor?”

She colors the same pink as the print of her dress and snaps back, “What should I expect from a man who does business with my brother? You bought me and now you’re treating me nice? Shouldn’t I be concerned?”

“I can’t believe you’re sitting in a ten thousand dollar outfit asking if I’m going to mistreat you.”

Her hands fly to the bow at her neck and tug it loose. “If you’re going to count every penny that you spend on me, I’d rather wear the rags my brother bought. At least he never showed up at my door with a receipt.”

She pushes back out of her seat and bolts away—not even toward the bathroom but the exit. The waiter arrives at that precise moment with dome-covered plates. I throw a few hundred Euros on the table and run after her.

The hallway outside the top floor restaurant is empty. The lights over the elevator bank indicate that one of the cars is heading to the first floor.

Fuck.

I forgo the elevators and run for the stairs. I take them three, four, even five at a time, using the railing to propel me down to the lobby. I burst through the stair access door but she’s not in the entry.

I grab the first bellhop and ask where the beautiful dark-haired lady wearing the rose flowered dress is. He points to the doors leading out. I press another wad of Euros in his hand and dash outside, where I find some asshole in a tux looming over her, his dirty hands on her shoulders. A horrified expression covers her face.