Page 52 of Charmingly Obsessed

I t’s damn hard to enjoy an evening of overpriced champagne and mediocre art when three of the most coveted pieces in the auction slip right through your fucking fingers, and half the room is gawking at your wife like she’s the main exhibit.

Fine.

I’ll spin a pitiful tale for Royce about the lost paintings, the ones that got away.

Play the part of the disappointed but magnanimous collector.

Everyone loves a story of someone else’s failure, especially when that someone is me .

And that crusty old bastard Royce, I know, particularly enjoys them.

But I fucking hate playing the underdog when I’m drowning in a sea of obscene, unearned privilege. It feels… dishonest.

No, I should have just bought those three abstract monstrosities outright, overpaid for them, and then “accidentally” loaned them to the Texan’s private museum for a decade. A classic Frez move.

I’ll figure out how to buy them back from the smug asshole who outbid me by my second glass of wine. Probably before.

But the relentless, predatory attention on Diana… that’s not so easy to fix. The natural curiosity from the elite, the whispers, the not-so-subtle glances… I usually don’t mind it. I thrive on it. But tonight… tonight, could they maybe just stare a little fucking less?

Diana, to her credit, carries a hint of tension, but she seems largely, blessedly unaware of the sheer scale of the interest she’s generating. Or she’s just that good at pretending. My money’s on the latter.

I murmur absolute, utter nonsense into her ear as the cocktail hour slides into full, schmoozing swing. Stupid, private jokes. Obscene, whispered promises of what I’m going to do to her later, back in our suite.

I have to bite back a grin, not even bothering to hide behind my champagne flute, when her carefully constructed mask of cool composure slips, just for a fraction of a second, against her perfect, flawless skin. A tiny, almost imperceptible blush. A slight widening of her incredible blue-gray eyes.

I’ve finally figured out how to handle her. Hallelujah!

I never should have tried to calculate, to strategize, to plan everything with her. I only confused myself and, more importantly, I let her down. Badly.

Now, this… this new freedom of action, of pure impulse… it’s intoxicating.

My blood is fizzing like a goddamn Molotov cocktail, ready to explode.

I’ve never aspired to be the overbearing, chest-thumping alpha type.

It’s so… cliché. But yeah, with Diana, I’m rapidly discovering, you just have to charge forward.

Full speed ahead. Eyes on the prize. No bra in sight. Preferably.

Diana, my brilliant, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying wife, navigates the treacherous waters of high society conversations flawlessly. She turns every inane, superficial interaction into a strategic, information-gathering maneuver.

Everyone who approaches us, everyone we approach – she effortlessly, almost imperceptibly, takes control of the conversation after my initial, charmingly vapid introductory jokes and small talk. It almost seems like she’s the one who needs Royce’s groundbreaking technology, not me.

And me? I’m just here. The arm candy. The ridiculously handsome, ridiculously wealthy, ridiculously besotted husband.

The old man, Royce, will hand over his life’s work to me eventually.

I’m certain of it. The only catch? My new, brilliant, and utterly indispensable wife and I are about to disappear on a year-long, maybe even two-year-long, global honeymoon…

I don’t even bother trying to justify the thought. My hyperfixations, my obsessions, need constant fuel. And without it, this fire, this all-consuming need for her, will burn me from the inside out.

And I’m ready—every single day, for the rest of my goddamn life—to lose myself against Diana’s soft skin. She’s my runway to a high purer than anything uncut, a substance infinitely more potent and dangerous than cocaine.

This, this is what we call a “waterfall” in finance: billions overnight, a sudden, explosive, game-changing event. And all at once, you’re getting breathless, fawning calls from the senior partners at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase.

I idly, possessively, toy with the simple gold band on her ring finger. It’s still too loose. I need to get that fixed. Occasionally, she strokes the back of my hand with her cool, smooth palm in response. A silent, secret acknowledgment in this crowded, public space.

“I’m begging you,” I murmur, my lips brushing against her ear, “let’s just buy something. Anything. Otherwise, people will start to think you’ve already bankrupted me, and we’re staying at a goddamn Hilton Garden Inn on the outskirts of the city.”

A smirk touches her lips. I watch as she immediately, almost reflexively, dives back into a serious, intense contemplation of our future, hypothetical art purchase.

I try not to get irritated that she treats everything, even our playful banter, like a goddamn job. Like an assignment to be executed with ruthless efficiency. But my fingers tighten around her ring, around her finger, anyway.

I stretch out my single, solitary glass of wine, sticking to my new, self-imposed, and frankly, heroic, limit of two drinks per evening.

Though honestly, one is probably better.

We’ll see how long the genius, reformed version of Mykola Frez lasts in this particular mode.

These canapés, at least, are always good.

Bite-sized, easy to eat, and an excellent distraction.

No one, not even the most stoic, serious-minded individual, has ever managed to remain a statue of grim seriousness beside me for long.

Hell, I trade on the international stock market precisely because it’s a fucking joke .

It’s the ultimate form of anti-work at its core.

It’s a game. A high-stakes, adrenaline-fueled, glorious game.

“Let’s get some of the Japanese pieces,” Diana says, her voice a low, decisive murmur as she flips through the digital auction catalog on her phone, her gaze flicking from the screen to the art-adorned walls around us.

“The medium-sized ones. So we don’t stand out too much.

And I thought,” she adds, a note of genuine, art-lover’s indignation in her voice, “that at least the museum had the ability to properly display everything they buy, not keep a quarter of their priceless collection locked away in some dusty, climate-controlled storage unit! It’s an outrage!

All that purchased art, just… sitting in the dark! ”

“And these storage rooms,” I ask, my voice laced with an innocent, almost childlike curiosity, “are they usually located in some… dark, rarely visited, and perhaps… easily accessible place?”

I nod to a passing waiter, a handsome, impeccably uniformed young man in a crisp black-and-white uniform, finally, reluctantly, parting ways with my now-empty wine glass.

Diana actually pauses her indignant tirade to consider my words, her brow knitting together slightly in that adorable, serious way.

I’m about to lean in and smooth out that little philosophical wrinkle with my lips.

Diana makes a tiny, breathy, almost inaudible sound as the realization of what I’m implying dawns on her. I revel in my own smug, self-satisfied smirk.

She shoots me a mildly reproachful, but definitely intrigued, look.

“At the very least,” Diana straightens, her professional mask firmly back in place, “we’ll get to see them in person before we buy. I had already imagined seeing everything, up close, tonight.”

“That, my dear Diana,” a conspiratorial, heavily accented voice purrs from our right, “is the fundamental, and often tragic, difference between an exhibition and a party.”

The formidable Undine Mollier turns towards us, her monstrous brooch glittering under the gallery lights—a drunken, leering parrot encrusted with an obscene number of large violet stones.

She basks in the effect of her sudden, dramatic presence.

Just as the Frenchwoman begins gossiping about the gallery where we plan to metaphorically step on Royce’s toes, Vesuvius Rodin appears—emerging from between two elegantly carved stone nymphs across the crowded room.