The Wife Who Stopped Playing Chapter 02

The Wife Who Stopped Playing Chapter 02

I wasn’t always like this – all fire and no filter, demanding cakes at 9:30 PM and pouting when I didn’t get them.

Back in the day, I was sweet. Agreeable. A proper little lady. My old man had me trained up like a show pony from the time I was old enough to hold a fork, the perfect prize for some arranged marriage that would benefit the family business.

Pretty. Obedient. Didn’t talk back.

Rich families from Boston to DC were falling over themselves to get to me. They’d come over for tea at our estate in Connecticut, and I’d sit there ramrod straight, smile glued on, sipping Earl Grey from a bone china cup like I was born with a silver spoon in each hand. I knew the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork by the time I was six. I could discuss wine pairings at twelve. At sixteen, I was fluent in three languages and could play Chopin’s Nocturnes from memory.

But I never saw a single spark of real interest in their eyes. Not one.

All they wanted was a wife who wouldn’t make waves. A business asset in a pretty dress. A broodmare with good cheekbones and an unblemished family tree.

My one and only act of rebellion was ditching my father’s gala and hiding out on the rooftop terrace, my heels kicked off, my vintage gown getting ruined on the gravel. The city spread out below me, all those lights blinking like Morse code, and I thought: *Someone down there is living their own life. Why can’t that be me?*

That’s where I met Vito Colobo.

He came up through the service stairs, a whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, looking like he owned the whole damn city – which, as it turned out, he basically did. He was younger than me, maybe twenty-four, but he had the eyes of someone who’d seen things I couldn’t imagine. Sharp cheekbones, dark hair falling over his forehead, a mouth that looked like it knew how to smile but didn’t do it often.

“Rough night?” he asked, leaning against the railing.

“You have no idea.”

“Try me.”

I don’t know why I told him. Maybe it was the champagne. Maybe it was the way he looked at me – like I was interesting, not just useful.

“So,” he’d said, a smirk playing on his lips, “want to get hitched, Miss Ross? Name your price. Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

I’d never heard that word before. Not like that. Not like it meant something in the real world, not just in fairy tales.

I just stared at him.

He chuckled. Dark and low. “Yeah. Anything. I’m a man of my word.”

Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe I was just tired of being a good little puppet after twenty-three years of holding my tongue and crossing my ankles. Whatever it was, I heard myself say:

“…How about a trial run? Four years. If it doesn’t work, we call it quits. No hard feelings. I sign the papers, you sign the papers, we go back to our separate corners.”

I expected him to laugh in my face. Walk away. Tell his associates the Ross girl was crazy.

Instead, he looked at me for a long, long moment. The city hummed below us. Somewhere, a siren wailed and faded.

And then he smiled – really smiled, not that cool, collected Don routine, but something softer underneath.

“You’ve got a deal, Miss Ross.”

He held out his hand. I shook it.

I didn’t know then that I’d just made a deal with the devil. Or that the devil, as it turned out, was desperately in love with me.

—

My old man had done his job well. I was the perfect bride. A pretty, tame little lapcat who’d never make a fuss, who’d pour his coffee and hang his jackets and never, ever ask where he’d been all night.

So that’s what I tried to be after we got married.

Don’t ask questions. Don’t bother him. Don’t cross any lines. Don’t be a problem.

We lived in this massive house in the hills, all stone and iron and old-world charm, with a garden that bloomed roses in the summer and a kitchen I was too afraid to cook in. I’d wander the halls at night like a ghost, barefoot on the cold marble, wondering if this was what my mother had wanted for me.

I got lost in our own gated community once, three weeks after the wedding. Wandered around in the October cold for over an hour, freezing my tail off, because I didn’t want to call him. He was in a meeting. He was busy. He didn’t need his new wife bothering him with something as stupid as not being able to find her own front door.

I twisted my ankle on a decorative rock near the fountain. Sat there on the cold stone curb, watching my breath fog in the air, trying not to cry.

My phone screen glowed in the dark. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I typed and deleted. Typed and deleted.

【Hi, sorry to bug you during work hours, but I’m completely lost. Could you tell me the address again? I know that’s pathetic. I’m sorry.】

Too needy.

【Never mind, I’ll figure it out.】

Too cold.

【Come find me?】

Too familiar. We weren’t there yet.

I was still agonizing over it when a hand – long-fingered, warm, with a heavy silver ring on the middle finger – plucked the phone right out of my frozen grip.

I looked up. Vito was standing over me in his dark coat, no hat, his hair ruffled by the wind. He looked down at my screen, then at my face, then back at my screen.

Then he deleted my whole essay and typed three words.

【Come get me.】

He took my thumb – my actual thumb, like I was a toddler – and pressed it to the send button.

My heart was about to beat out of my chest. I could feel it in my throat, my temples, my fingertips.

The man who started it all just crouched down, scooped me up like I weighed nothing, and said, “Let’s go home. You’re freezing.”

“Your meeting—”

“Can wait. My wife can’t.”

He’d always known who I really was, underneath the polish and the good posture and the fear of being a bother.

And he was the one who told me to let loose. To be demanding. To be difficult. To be *me*.

“You’re a brat,” he told me once, laughing, when I threw a pillow at his head for finishing the last of the gelato.

“You made me this way.”

“Damn right I did. Best decision I ever made.”