Chapter 43 Cole
Cole
“Checked out? You’re sure?”
The man behind the reception desk, wearing a suit and tie in the blistering heat of Rome, clicked his mouse over the screen again. “Yes. Just over two hours ago.”
What the fuck? Charlotte had gone? “But where was she going?”
“I don’t know, signore. All I know is that she returned her room card.”
The piped music pouring out of the speaker made my blood boil. Charlotte had taken a leaf out of Gabe’s book and wasn’t replying to my messages or answering my calls. Just a text. I want a divorce. My jaw tightened. Why would she forgo five million pounds? Surely life with me wasn’t that bad.
My teeth gritted. “Where the fuck is my wife? Did you call a car for her? Did she book a flight? I want to know. She can’t have just vanished from the lobby. Someone must have seen her leave.”
The man behind the desk shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Do you have a problem, Cole?”
My father’s imperious voice grated my ears. I turned to see him with Gabe Rivers at his side. Great. Why didn’t they just get their contract out here and sign it right in front of me? They were probably about to ask me to be a fucking witness to the signatures.
“If you’re looking for your wife, she left here with Reuben.” Philip’s face dripped smug superiority.
Oh, he fucking loved that. The golden boy. Now Charlotte’s choosing him, too.
“Reuben?”
“He was flying home today, so he offered her a lift.”
Of course. This just kept getting worse.
“Maybe you should have spent more time with your new wife, and less with your nose in my business.”
Don’t react. Don’t show your hand. I’d always prided myself on my composure, but a taut wire snapped inside of me. My anger spilled over and I barked the words out.
“Oh, fuck off, will you, Philip? Give it a rest.”
Gabe raised an unimpressed eyebrow. My father stared back at me with a glint of amusement in his eye. I’d lost control. He’d won. This was over. It had been over for so long, and I’d kept going, trying to force a meeting with a man who wouldn’t even take my calls. It was humiliating.
I moved in the other direction, back to my room, away from my father’s smug grin, but some reckless impulse made me swing back to him.
He glared at me, and for the first time I noticed how old he looked.
Gray, sallow skin. Age spots dotting his forehead.
A slight tremor around his lips. Once, he’d been the most powerful man in my world, and now he was tired and fading.
Was this what lay in store for me? A vengeful shell of a man. Petty and tragic.
“You call me pathetic, but look at you. I saw you with Reuben last night. The only son you have who can stand to be around you, and you talk to him like that. Let the poor kid go. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Gabe coughed awkwardly and averted his gaze. Charlotte had told me arguing with an old man in a hotel lobby wasn’t a good look, but fuck it. Chalk it up. Another couple of hateful lines for my Wikipedia page.
My father shook his head, feigning embarrassment. “I apologize, Gabe. Ignore my son. He’s never learned how to be gracious in defeat.”
Behind Philip, against the wall, stood a vast stone Roman urn with fluted sides.
Green foliage with flat, broad leaves poked out of the top.
The Romans had cremated their dead. Roy had taught me that.
That urn would once have held the ashes of someone’s parent or sibling or child.
Now it was a planter in a hotel lobby. I had the strangest urge to kick it over.
To watch it smash all over the marble floor.
The urge made me recoil. I didn’t want to be a destroyer.
I hadn’t always been that way. Charlotte had known me before. She saw the boy I’d once been.
A sharp lump rose in my throat. “This hotel means something to me. It was always personal. But you know that, Philip. Good luck to both of you. I hope you’ll be happy doing business together.
” I swung to look at Gabe. “You can kiss goodbye to La Dolce Vita. My father will turn this place into a faceless piece-of-shit motel, like he always does. He has a chronic lack of style. It can’t be helped.
Apparently, good taste is the one thing money can’t buy. ”
Gabe’s lips pressed flat. He raked a hand over his hair uneasily.
My father narrowed his eyes. “It’s over. You lost. Now you’re just embarrassing yourself.”
The piped music grew louder, grating my brain.
“He’ll destroy it. Smash it to smithereens.
He destroys everything. His staff. His wife.
His kids. He breaks us all. It’s a damn shame, because this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever stayed.
Although, you need to sort out your Wi-Fi.
How can you have perfect reception in an underground crypt and not in a penthouse suite?
That’s a fucking shambles, but the rest?
The food is the best I’ve ever had. The risotto was so good, we were wondering if you’d put drugs in it.
“Your gold-plated toilet seats are excessive. Tacky, actually. But everything else is worth it. The art. The sculptures. You can’t put a price on beauty. It should be cared for with the respect it deserves.”
A sudden ache speared my chest. I want a divorce. Charlotte had gone. I hadn’t given her the respect she deserved. The most beautiful person in my life. We should have been at the Trevi Fountain right now, but I’d chosen this. She’d walked out of here alone.
I drew a sharp breath. “But most importantly of all, my mother was happy here. That’s what mattered to me.
I would have paid anything for this hotel, and I wouldn’t have changed a fucking thing.
My father is a destroyer of beautiful things.
I choose not to be. I would have protected every inch of it. ”
Gabe frowned and eyed my father warily. “You’ve committed to keeping the staff. Preserving the building and the tunnels.”
My father inclined his head in a nod.
I couldn’t help my bitter laugh. “He’s lying. Just look at his previous purchases. Look at the Luxe in Milan or the Hotel Fernando in Granada. Look at what he did to them.”
A tense silence wrapped around us. People were looking. My heart pounded. I’d failed. My father had won. And Charlotte had left me. A divorce? Why? Was I really so fucking bad? She’d rather be broke? With me, she could travel the world, but she’d rather choose Ecclesdale?
We’d had the most amazing time together.
The sex had been incredible, but that was nothing compared to how it had felt having my best friend back and just hanging out, talking, laughing, holding hands, watching her have new experiences, making her nose scrunch when she smiled.
She was gone. It was a knife in my back and I was bleeding out all over this fucking lobby.
The loss of this hotel paled in significance to the panic flooding me.
Charlotte didn’t want me anymore. Even five million pounds wasn’t a tempting enough proposition to endure me.
Because that’s how she’d always seen this.
I loved every moment in her company, and to her, I was something to be endured.
My father glared at me with disdain. He made everyone around him miserable, and I’d done the same to Charlotte. The truth was so blindingly obvious. It hit me like a punch in the gut. My voice came out a whisper.
“You destroy everything, Philip. You made me leave the only place I’ve ever felt happy. You’ve already cost me too much. I can’t do this with you anymore. You only have all this power over me because I give it to you.”
A muscle worked in his jaw, but he said nothing. There was nothing he could say anymore that mattered to me. I’d fallen in line when I was a kid, but I’d got away from him, and now I could make my own choices. Enough. This can’t go on.
Charlotte had looked so sad this morning, and I’d chosen my vendetta over her. So many times over these past two weeks, I could have been with her, but I’d pulled out my laptop instead. I’d wasted so much of our time here when we could have been together.
My eyes drifted back to the urn. To the detail in the stone that had been so lovingly crafted.
Time moves on. Empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye.
Life is short and precious. My father was an absolute bastard, but he was right about one thing.
I should have kept my nose out of his business and paid attention to my wife. My beautiful, smart, incredible wife.
Yes, my mother had been happy here, but would she be happy to see me like this?
To read my Wikipedia page? To know that I’d taken on my father’s cruelty and pettiness instead of her kindness?
Whatever it took, I needed Charlotte to know that this was real.
That I loved her. That this had always been real.
That I should have stopped being a coward and come back for her so much sooner.
I’d just never had the balls. Love wasn’t a weakness, but putting your heart at the mercy of someone else took strength.
I could be strong. I had to be, because Charlotte was written on every page of my first act, and she was the rest of my story.
It could be a happy story. A love story.
I’d fucked this up. I had to rectify it.
I inclined my head to Gabe. “I don’t care if you don’t sell to me.
I shouldn’t buy it, anyway. My shareholders are going to have me by the balls if I do.
But this place is too special. You don’t like me, and I get it.
I don’t like myself much at the moment, either.
But do yourself a favor and sell it to anyone else but him. ”
I headed for the door. My stuff was in the suite, but it didn’t matter. Someone would handle it. Everything in that room was replaceable. Charlotte wasn’t.
“Wait.” Frowning, Gabe looked up from scrolling his phone. “Are you still interested in making an offer?”
“Not right now. My wife is my priority.”
The doors slid open, and the heat and bustle of the city hit me full in the face—the crazy whine of mopeds, exhaust fumes, sightseers, history. I breathed in the chaos. It was fucking glorious.