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I quickly looked away and pretended I hadn’t been staring.
Ryan was quiet on the drive.
He sat in the back seat with me, looking out the window as we were taken to the art gallery in Florence. He always became quiet and distant when he had to see my father—like he was intimidated by him.
“Everything alright?”
Ryan snapped out of his reverie and looked at me. “Yes.” He was in a tuxedo, his jacket crisp and his shoes shiny. He forced a smile and then took my hand, his fingers soft and his grip gentle.
We pulled up to the gallery, and after the car ahead of us dropped off their guests, we were next.
The door was opened, and we got out. Ryan offered his arm to me, and we walked inside, entering a room with grand paintings that took up the enormous walls, fifty feet high. They were all from the Renaissance, paintings that had endured hundreds of years.
My father was an art collector. He used his money for homes in different parts of the Mediterranean, like Greece and Croatia, had a yacht take him to the South of France for his summer vacations, but he still had money left over and used that to collect artwork to adorn his beautiful walls.
There was a crowd of people there, so we grabbed our drinks and admired the artwork while people talked.
Ryan stood with one hand in his pocket as he admired the painting on the wall.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked, noting how cold and distant he’d been.
“I’m fine,” he said in a clipped tone.
“You don’t seem fine?—”
“Because you keep asking me.” He turned to look at me, his stare cold.
“Looks like there’s some truth to it, then…”
He glanced around us to make sure we were alone before he leaned in. “Look, I’m not a fan of this sort of thing.”
“Parties?” I asked sarcastically. “Artwork? Free drinks? People would kill to live lives like these.”
He paused before he spoke. “Your father isn’t a respectable art collector or a former prime minister or something… He’s a drug dealer. It’s a little weird to attend these events and pretend that’s not true.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked incredulously. He raised his arms slightly. “He’s a ruthless criminal, and you’re just going to normalize that? If I cheat on you, he’ll probably kill me?—”
“Do you want to cheat on me?”
“Babe, that’s not what I meant?—”
“Then speak more eloquently, Ryan. We’ve been together for six months now, and you’ve known my father’s business the entire time. Now it’s a problem all of a sudden.” My eyes shifted back and forth between his.
He was quiet, slipping his hand back into his pocket.
I continued to stare him down. “It wasn’t a problem when we were just having fun.”
I steeled myself for what was coming.
“But when I think about the future and having a family, this isn’t the way I pictured it.”
“I don’t even understand what that means.”
“You still want to run the family business?” Now it was just the two of us, everyone else at the party fading away like there was no one else in the room. His eyes burned into mine, the heaviness of the question apparent.
I refused to lie. “Yes.”
