And I couldn’t get the image of her climbing into someone else’s damn car and driving off like it was nothing, like I was nothing.
I force myself to focus as Weihao Xu, the developer from Singapore, launches into his pitch. He has a slick 3-D AI animated image that takes us through the entire project first as a fully rendered housing village. Then he’s highlighted the step by step phases of construction and development. Three city blocks will be razed to the ground and rebuilt into a glittering complex worth billions of dollars fashioned around a playground for the rich. There will be restaurants, retail, movie theaters, and an inlet syphoned from the ocean for boating and water sports. Townhouses and high-rises will be surrounded a mega business center, and by pools, gyms, a spa, with tennis, basketball, pickleball courts and a manmade lake to keep the illusion of nature and serenity alive.
It’s ambitious. I’ll give him that.
“The only concern,” he says carefully, “is the historic library and senior center. The city is dragging its feet on declaring it derelict. The community wants to keep it. There’s hold a few community events, but all of those things can be moved. Once it’s cleared, nothing stands in our way.”
“Impressive.” I nod though my mind ticks over the real problem: displacement. Whole neighborhoods could be priced out by the project and families will be uprooted. He knows this, I know it, and soon the city will be up in arms about it.
“What’s the price point for an average two bedroom?” I ask, wondering if this is going to be worth our sweat and heartache.
I’m sure I shattered his optimistic delusions a little with the question, but I’m here for the bottom line. I didn’t get into this business to be a visionary. I’m in Real Estate investment for the money, period.
He smiles thinly. “The average two bedroom in this housing complex is going to start at one point five mil to buy and six to eight K a month to rent. These are going to be high-end smart homes with a little outdoor space and top of the line amenities. We’ll bring in new clientele. People who want the prestige will pay.”
He’s not wrong. High-end clientele will pay for a lifestyle they deem worthy, but the community we’re tearing apart is far from this price point.
“If I’m going to bring in my financial team and their investors, the rents need to stay high and there has to be three and four bedrooms for twice that proposed price with singles and one bedrooms at only a slightly lower rate. Every dwelling in this housing project needs to be occupied at the higher end of your estimate, otherwise we’ll be under. I don’t waste my time on half-measures. If I have to relocate to Rhode Island for months to oversee the ground-breaking, it has to be worth my while.
“I’m only in if we get a seventy percent pre-sale based on this proposal. We need to be at near occupancy before we open. And there must be a subway stop exclusive to the project,” I add, knowing that the European and Asian markets will invest only if there’s easy access to public transportation.
Xu hesitates. “That increases cost dramatically.”
“And adds value.” I lean back, cool, deliberate. “Without it, I’m not on board.”
He nods, taking the blow like a man who is used to them.
Good. I can work with a guy who isn’t afraid of me or of how he needs to bleed to make money.
After an endless amount of negotiating, the meeting finally concludes. My assistant chatters about schedules, contracts, flights, but I’m already miles away thinking of Juliet.
Instead of heading back to the hotel, I go for a drive. I’m aware of how mentally unhealthy it is to stalk and obsess over someone you shouldn’t want, but let’s be real; I’m way past caring at this point. I’m fully locked into an obsession. I tell my driver I’m scoping my potential investment as he takes me down tiny neighborhood streets that are frozen over from the snow storm. Despite this there are still bundled pedestrians walking to and from their local bodegas. Grannies talk on stoops and couples stroll along the boardwalk watching the raging sea. We pass manicured parks buried under a blanket of white, the local grocery store with windows dripping with condensation, and head straight toward the address Griffin dug up for Juliet’s grandmother.
I don’t give a shit. I need to be in her world. I may never approach her again, but at the very least I can watch her life. The house sits quietly on a tree-lined street, an old New England neighborhood looking weathered but proud. I park down the block, hidden, and wait. I tell the driver to go and get lunch, and I sit there hoping to see Juliet at some point. We were snowed in at the airport the day prior. I’m assuming the man she better notbe dating brought her to her grandma yesterday at some point, but I sit there for almost two hours, she never shows.
Is she still with him? Now that I introduced her to the world of pleasure is she letting him fuck her? That sweet trimmed, tight pussy ... is she allowing him to put his mouth on her or worse stuff his cock in? Is he wearing a condom? I didn’t and for one perverse second I’m fucking glad I didn’t because I am the first to have laid a claim. My sperm, hopefully not too much of it, christened her. He’ll always be the second man in. But fuck him if she’s let him get anywhere near her. And those beautiful breasts, those perfect tits are mine. He better not have put his mouth on her or I’ll rip out all of his teeth.
I have a violent streak, it’s not unexpected for a man who’s been neglected all of his life. How does a little boy get the attention of parents who don’t want him? Saying ‘I love you,’ only gets a passing glance and at best a repeat of the same baseless, empty words. Causing a ruckus, getting nannies to quit, having the prestigious boarding school threaten to expel you, all of that is what really makes them take notice. Break a kid’s nose and your dad might spend three or four hours lecturing about how real men handle their problems. Not once did my dad suggest that the child’s nose not be broken ... no, he just wanted it indelibly marked on my brain that ‘others’ should be doing the breaking. Simply put, I needed minions.
“Real men never do their own dirty work.” That was one of the most bonding conversations I’d ever had with my father.
My blood is still running hot at the thought of Juliet with the golden-haired adonis when my driver comes back. The image of her in his arms, waking in his bed, letting him kiss her the way I did makes my teeth ache.
The driver gets back into his seat and looks at me. “Where to now sir?” he asks.
I have half a mind to call Griffin and have him find Juliet’s phone carrier, her number, and get a remote tracker on her phone. I think even Griffin might balk at that level of illegal intrusion so I tell my driver, “Just take me back to the hotel.”
I should be thinking about zoning permits and subway lines. Instead, I’m sitting in a car, stalking a grandmother’s porch like some lovesick idiot. All because a twenty-four-year-old girl from Whoville woke up a part of me I never knew I had.
Chapter Nine
Juliet
Thad’s cat, Wilbur, purrs against my knee as the end credits roll on another cheesy Christmas rom-com. The Connecticut sky outside the window is purple and gray like a bruise, promising more bad weather. Thad hands me another mug of hot chocolate and grins, his blond hair tossed into a disheveled halo. “How many is that?” he asks, knowing my obsession with Christmas romances.
“Don’t judge,” I say as a preface to the next.
We’ve been watching Christmas rom-coms and couch rotting for almost two days while we wait for the weather to clear. When it does, Thad will drive me to Rhode Island. He’s going to hang out with us for a few days because his mom lives near Gran. His dad, Junior, was killed ten years ago in a motorcycle accident, when Thad was seventeen. Thad moved to Connecticut for work after college. Lyla, his mom still lives in Rhode Island where she grew up and raised Thad, which is short for Thadius Simon Rockfall the third.
