The Trophy Wife

ONE: Evelyn

My goal is to post a new chapter on Radish every Thursday (for free) and then I'll upload it here on Friday.

I know this chapter is short but trust me, they get much, much longer.

I suppose it all started on my wedding day.

Enzo, my husband, he was an incredibly successful businessman. Although I assume that most men as successful as him must engage in some sort of underhanded activities, his definitely surpassed theirs.

Just to give you a sense of what he was like, Enzo was the type of man who would actually pay for his women. Most of them, I've been told, were the simple one nighters. They'd accompany him to a dinner or be nothing more than his personal date.

I was among one of his purchases, but unlike the others, I was not hired, and I use that word lightly, as a date. He made me his bride. Originally, I was nothing more than an investment, an expensive one at that.

A nice piece of arm candy is how he put it, and my sole purpose was to make all of his older, more experienced competitors envious.

They looked down on him because of his age. Inferior was the word they used to describe him. Inferior because at the age of seventeen his father was killed by a competitor, an enemy of the family. Enzo, being the only capable man left of the Granucci family, became heir to the empire that his great-grandfather had built.

In an effort to prove himself, something he did his entire life, he formed powerful alliances, added to the family fortune, and then made me his bride.

Me, a nobody.

A nobody who would have preferred to remain a nobody instead of holding the position I held.

A trophy wife... it was sickening.

I was his most expensive purchase that year. Never mind the cost of the wedding, reception, and honeymoon. From day one I was incredibly pricey.

Of course, my intentions weren't to dig holes in the pockets of his fancy Armani suits, but I did, and I kept digging until there was nothing left he could give me, until the hole was no longer just in his pockets, but in his head.

A big, ugly, gaping hole... thanks to me.

As I've said before, those were never my intentions. I didn't particularly care about the money, I didn't want to hold a special place in his cold heart. I certainly didn't mean to leave him broken in every sense of the word, but I did.