I stand there, jaw tight and my fists clenched. Pissed doesn’t even begin to cover the range of emotions roiling through me. I’m furious, enraged, incensed and, of course, I don’t have a phone number for her or any way to scrabble Juliet back. I may be a billionaire with a brilliant business mind but fuck, I’m shit with women. By the time my limo arrives, I’m boiling. Two hours in the backseat to Rhode Island and I can’t stop replaying the image of her smiling at him. It gnaws at me until I fire up my phone and start the world’s deepest dive.
Her name is all I need. A few keystrokes, and I’m inside her life. Her social media presence is laughably small. She has a handful of Instagram posts that share very little personal information. There aren’t any vanity shots or curated selfies, nothing that screams for attention. Most of the photos are group shots with a horde of carefree, hippie-looking friends from her college. They are all beautiful people with suntanned skin, sparkling clothing, thrifted, knitted, and festooned with way too many flowers. They follow her to music festivals, bonfires, and one helluva camping trip. She looks happy.
My throat constricts. I scroll deeper, hunting for a photo of the man who just rode off with Juliet. Combing every corner of the internet, I don’t find him or anything about him. I’m fairlyhappy about that, it means he’s either an old flame who still wants her or isn’t anyone she considers important. I realize, however, that I’d ruin this perfectly beautiful life of hers if I got close. She calls me Grinch with a sparkle in her eyes as if she is blameless of being coldhearted and uncaring. She’s right, of course, I am a Grinch, an bitter older person who is wrong for her in every possible way. I repel joy and she basks in it. But I keep stalking, hoping to find something to turn me off of her. Maybe she smokes or passes out drunk? Perhaps there’s a bitchy remark, a cat fight, a parking ticket ... any fucking thing that doesn’t scream awkward, adorable, vegan who is curvy perfection in every way.
Nothing.
Not one single thing tarnishes her. Not on her social media or on others. She’s exactly who she portrays herself to be: kindhearted, gorgeous, giggly ... and loved.
It doesn’t take much to find her college’s residential information. I have its address and a dorm building that houses seniors, but she’s not there now. No. She’s in Rhode Island. Which means I need better intel.
I wait until I’m secured in my penthouse suite at the hotel before I call Griffin. He’s usually up late with the baby. He has a little boy who is turning two, and since Selena, his gorgeous wife, is still in law school, Griffin takes the late shift with their son. He picks up on the first ring. Griffin can find anything on anyone.
“Hey, it’s me,” I say in greeting.
“It’s midnight, Marcel. What the fuck?” He’s a little more pissed than I expect him to be.
“Baby still teething?” I don’t bother with pleasantries.
“No, he’s good. It’s a client. Motherfucker has a clause in here we didn’t catch, we could lose our shirts. I’m weaving a loophole, but this fucker is good.
“What’s going on? You okay? I heard Rhode Island is snowed in.”
I told the quattro about my trip, just because we have each other’s backs. No one dies alone on our watch.
“It is, but I made it. I may never make it out though, another storm is coming through. I hate these small states with their shitty infrastructures.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Rhode Island is bougie,” he corrects me and he’s not wrong.
“Whatever, I need you to dig someone up for me.”
“Sure, who are you trying to trap?” His voice lilts with interest. “A business associate or a bad fuck?”
“Worse—a good one. I just want some deets; nothing too scandalous, unless you drum something up.”
“Okay, I’m intrigued, who are we looking up?”
“Juliet Limons. She should have a grandmother in Rhode Island and parents somewhere close. She goes to the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Humboldt in Northern California.” I’m about to tell him more and he’s already parroting back to me on the phone.
“She studies Historical Architecture with a minor in Social Work, hmmm bleeding heart. I’m surprised, Marcel—a nice girl,not usually your type. Grandma is Violet Rockfall, married until last year, to Simon Rockfall who passed away from cancer. They have three kids, Gloria Rockfall, married to Darnell Limons, your girl’s father. Rochele Rockfall—sounds like a stripper—never married, maybe that’s why. And Simon Jr., called Junior Rockfall, who died in 2014 in a motorcycle accident, driver error. Yikes.
“That’s just what my super bot scoped from current news. I can do a deeper dive and send you the files. This is kind of fun; your girl is all American and pretty ... damn.”
“She’s off limits to everyone, including me,” I tell him.
“Good call.” Griffin has known me way too long, he gets it.
Within the hour, he sends me exactly what I want: information on Juliet’s grandmother. Her name, her address, and info on Juliet’s family. The grandmother’s social media accounts are open. She’s got a handful of photos depicting holidays, birthdays, quiet snapshots of a life still being lived despite tragedy. Juliet appears in some, glowing even in the grainy candids. I spend the rest of the night reading the comments on both Juliet’s socials and her Grandmother’s. What hits me the hardest is that people adore Juliet. Everyone. Friends, classmates, even strangers are falling all over themselves to tell her how beautiful, how kind, and how radiant she is in as many ways as a person can say it.
The worst thing I discover about Juliet is that she has no idea how many people love her. She moves through her life oblivious to how many covet her light, including me. If she wanted a man, or even one of these cute crunchy granola women she seems to attract, she’d only need to say yes to theinvitations, innuendos, and straight out asks that are posted all over her socials.
I move on to find her parents. Their feeds are distasteful and shows how shallow and self-centered they are. There are pictures of them and of their material goods like a new fishing boat and her mother’s sapphire pinkie ring. The posts about the brother’s death ... those cut deep and highlight that they are a family bleeding in the open.
I lean back in the penthouse desk chair after hours upon hours of internet perusal with the blue glow of the screen reflecting in the hotel window. It’s long past two in the morning and exhaustion drags me under. At least I know that if I ever want to find Juliet Limons again, I can. That thought soothes something ugly inside me and I can finally go to sleep.
The next morning I go to my meeting. There are several men and one woman all wearing dark suits sitting around a conference table in a room that smells like a combination of colognes and canned air. This is the sort of meeting I built my empire on, hungry people ready to jump hoops to prove themselves and make a buck or two in the process. They crunch numbers, leverage human lives, and hunker down into big projects that reshape skylines and shatter communities to bring them up bigger, brighter, and in a higher tax bracket.
Instead of diving into this and relishing the development of something big and worth several billions of dollars, I’m thinking about Juliet. I’m fixating on her laugh and the way she fit perfectly in my arms. I replay our sex which was raw and awkward for her because she was going against every single fiber of her nature to be with me. Basically, I stuck my cock into a saint. All that awkwardness was her trying to get a handle onher adulthood and make it make sense to do something so vapid when all she cared about was meaning and depth.
