35. Rico
Rico
I’ve been married for three weeks. Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. But who's counting?
Since my sweet little wife altered the terms of our contract, I’ve gladly given her what she wants. Every single night. Okay, fine—I want it too, but that's beside the point.
She didn’t speak to me for three days after that escort comment. Not a word. Radio silence—unless you count the moments where we tore each other’s clothes off like there was a damn stopwatch running.
Angry fucking, plain and simple. Hours of it. Two, sometimes three. Not a single word spoken. Just teeth, nails, and skin.
Pretty sure we left permanent dents in the drywall after that time I had her pinned against the hallway, too impatient to do anything but shove her skirt up and take what we both wanted.
And no, I haven’t mentioned the escort again. Even I know there’s a line. I might be an asshole, but I have a conscience. It’s just… highly selective about when it clocks in.
Unfortunately, despite extensive research—including medical journals, psychology articles, and one very disturbing Reddit thread—I’ve found nothing to explain why I’m still craving her as much now as I was the first time.
If regular access was supposed to cure the craving, I’ve been grossly misinformed.
Yesterday, I had to physically stop myself from leaving the office before six just to rush home and bend her over the dining room table before she could set it for our weeknight meal.
For the record, I've never given a damn about appetizers. Not the literal kind, and certainly not the filthy euphemism. But now? Now, I want the whole fucking seven-course meal, garnished with desperation and a side of please, God, more screaming from her mouth.
Thankfully, I’ve kept my distance outside of our nightly encounters and the forced-proximity dinners that redefine torture.
Forget waterboarding. Just make me sit across from my wife while she chatters about her day, looking soft and flushed from the kitchen heat, while I pretend I’m not wondering how long it would take to clear the table and make her scream my name.
I still clung to the idea she’d stop texting. Nope.
Every morning: Have a great day, Rico!
Every afternoon: How’s your day going?
Every evening: Dinner’s at seven.
Every. Fucking. Day.
And every time, I read the message and do nothing. Not even a thumbs-up emoji, which is the universal sign for I’m ignoring you but pretending I’m not.
I’m not sure how much longer I can let this horrifyingly one-sided conversation thread grow before she realizes my silence is the loudest answer she’s going to get.
Though, to be fair, I am reading them. Which means she sees that I’ve read them. Which technically means I’m actively ignoring her, not passively. That counts for something, right?
Apparently not.
Thanks to this damn marriage—or, more accurately, that I said I do while fully sober—my brothers have decided I’m fair game for social interaction, too.
We used to coexist at work like well-dressed shadows. Quick hellos. Silent meetings. Maybe a nod in the hallway. Words were only spoken if someone died, and even then I just nodded and acted like I gave a shit who Larry from accounting was.
Now? Now, they stop to chat. Chat.
“How’s married life, Rico?”
“Has Allie redecorated yet?”
“Will you be at Sunday dinner and actually ride together this time?”
And because the universe has a twisted sense of humor, they’ve turned my living room into a chapter of the Unwilling Married Bastards Club.
Every Wednesday, while the women are at cooking night—read: drinking wine and plotting how to tighten the leash on their husbands—Alex and Dom show up with a bottle of scotch and smug expressions.
Want even worse? Oh, I have it. I’m now on the Google calendar for every company meeting.
Every. Single. One.
My calendar pings twice a day like a digital middle finger, reminding me I’ve been roped into every brainstorm, project review, and corporate pep talk. I’m seeing emailed invites in my nightmares.
Which is probably why sleep has become a luxury. That, and the fact I occasionally forget myself and fuck my wife in her bed—rookie mistake.
It took me a week—seven excruciating, sleep-deprived, sandpaper-eyed days—to realize that if I didn’t have sex with her in bed, I wasn’t obligated to sleep next to her. A true life hack. Never did I think my success would be cracking the code of marital survival.
And yet, here I am, now enduring a game of how far my patience can stretch while sitting in another fucking meeting.
Evander Harrington sits across from me, looking every bit the golden boy Manhattan heir he was born to be.
Blond hair slicked back, navy three-piece suit tailored solely for him and those signature Harrington eyes.
Harrington Enterprises owns half the luxury hotels in the country and pays us an obscene amount to keep their cybersecurity airtight.
Only now my little hacker friend has gotten bored with poking around our system and knocked on the Harringtons' digital front door, just to prove they could.
Wiped the logs clean, left without so much as a fingerprint.
Ghost-level shit. I hate being impressed.
To my left, Silas and Cruz Locke sit like twin Abercrombie mannequins—perfectly tailored suits, California tans, and that sun-bleached hair that screams bro trip to Maui.
It’s almost offensive how out of place they look against the cold, glass-and-steel backdrop of our Manhattan headquarters.
They're here under the guise of "monitoring progress," but Cruz—who the fuck names their kid that?
—came to "help." As if his Stanford degree and bleached white smile can out-code me.
And then there’s Jaxon Wolfe, our family’s overpaid legal guard dog, lounging at the head of the table.
Someone, somewhere, nicknamed him the Big Bad Wolfe, which would be ridiculous if he didn’t lean into it with every perfectly arched brow and $4,000 suit.
I don’t fault him for the nickname—idiots will idolize anyone with sharp teeth and a sharper mind.
I do fault him for billing me in six-minute increments while delivering lectures on “corporate liability” like I didn’t build half the systems he’s trying to protect on paper while I’m the one doing the actual code.
“This hacker’s slick,” Evander says, tapping his Montblanc pen against a leather notebook. “I combed through the logs, flagged anomalies, even ran a deep forensic sweep. Came up empty.” Admitting defeat stings, especially when you’re supposed to be the Harrington prodigy.
He’s decent enough, though. Not like his older brother, Griffin, who wears his arrogance like a crown.
That man is certifiable—ruthless, brilliant, and allergic to human connection.
Kindred spirit. Only difference? He surrendered to matrimony, and now he’s been reduced to a damp kitten instead of the roaring tiger Manhattan once feared. The Monster turned house cat.
What the hell is it about powerful men in this city getting neutered the second they slip a ring on someone’s finger?
Is there an epidemic where men hand over their balls for regular access to what’s between their wives' legs? Because I’m related to two victims already, and I’ll be damned if I’m the next man down.
I glance at the clock, calculating how long I’ll have to sit here nodding like a bobblehead while mentally running brute-force sequences.
Every wasted minute is a minute I’m not at home, taking out my frustration on my wife.
I'm aware of the contradiction, my cock is not.
Sex with her is like stress relief in human form—hot, soft, and perfectly responsive, like squeezing one of those therapeutic stress balls.
Except mine moans and glares at me afterward.
“I rechecked the firewall's redundancies,” Evander continues. “If this hacker’s in, they’re deep. No breadcrumbs, no active pings. Either they’re a ghost, or they’re smarter than us.”
My lips twitch, but I smother the smile. Smarter than us. Maybe smarter than you, Harrington. Not me.
“I’ll find them,” I mutter, half to myself. Half challenge.
Silas Locke leans back, fingers steepled like he’s posing for Forbes’ “Top CEOs Under Forty” cover shoot — which he was in, and something tells me it plays a vital role in his oversized ego. “Do we need to bring in an external team?”
The urge to laugh almost chokes me. External team? Sure, let’s call in the JV squad while the varsity team sits courtside.
“I don’t need backup.” I don’t do collaboration, especially not with men named Cruz and Silas who look more interested in catching the next wave than sitting in a Manhattan high-rise.
My laptop hums quietly in front of me, the screen glowing with activity logs for the Harrington account.
Cruz Locke hovers behind me like a gnat — irritating, persistent, and one breath away from getting swatted.
This, right here, is my sanctuary. Lines of code.
Except now my peace is contaminated by sun-kissed West Coast arrogance and a room full of corporate chest-thumpers pretending they understand cybersecurity.
Evander is across the table, deep in conversation with Alex, Dom, the Locke bros, and Jaxon— because apparently Jaxon represents both us and the Harringtons.
Conflict of interest? Please. This city runs on conflicts of interest, caffeine, and generational wealth.
Jaxon’s an all-purpose fixer, which is a polite way of saying he bends the law until it begs for mercy and somehow never gets caught.
Meanwhile, I’m here chasing shadows.
No phishing attacks. That would’ve been too pedestrian for my hacker friend. No brute-force login attempts, either. Of course not. Amateurs kick down doors. Professionals pick locks.