Strictly Business

Chapter 4

I nodded in confirmation. "As soon as dad is feeling better, they're planning on going back to Italy for a while. Something about feeling much better once he's back in the motherland."

"It's probably best if they hold off on that for a while. Or at least until your dad is feeling up to it. Just to be on the safe side." Rashmi hummed aloud as she moved to reach for the wine and top up everyone's glasses.

Rashmi, I had met shortly after getting engaged to Sung and we both decided that we needed to upgrade from our penthouse apartment to an actual house, fitting for the family that we had planned to have in the distant future. She had been the only real estate to truly get my vision and sell to me the perfect house; the very same one that we still lived in today. Since then, we've become close friends as well as occasional colleagues as I dabbled in interior design as a hobby. We had clicked so well that she had even played the role of one of the bridesmaids at my wedding.

A lot of things had changed since then. For one, Rashmi was no longer with her husband for reasons she chose not to disclose to even her closest friends, and two, she had toughened up a fair bit – no doubt due to the messy divorce she struggled to put behind her – but she was still the same Rashmi that we had all come to know and love.

"I couldn't agree more but you know what parents are like." I couldn't help but chuckle, pausing to thank her as she poured me a glass. "They never listen to us."

"You can say that again." Rashmi snorted without a care in the world, tipping her glass back and downing its contents, ignoring the looks that some of the rich and snooty patrons sent our table, not that any of us cared in the slightest.

Just because we all had money – I with my trust fund and money from both the company and family business, Zara with Frank having become a successful businessman, Rashmi with her highly-esteemed real estate business, Sophia with a trust fund of her own, and Honey with her husband being a successful, big-shot partner at one of the biggest law firms in the city – didn't mean that we were better than anyone else or held on a higher pedestal, something which separated us from the rest of the upper-classy and snobby wives of New York.

That was probably why we all got along so well.

"Valentina?" A voice sounded aloud and when I glanced up, I was met with a pair of light brown eyes that belonged to none other than my best friend.

Last but not least, was my best friend Honey Goulding whom I had only met a few years ago through mutual friends. While we hadn't known each other for long, fast forward four years and I've never been as close to a person as I was to Honey, trusting her with each and every secret of mine, even those that I was scared to admit to myself.

If there was any question about the friendship being mutual, they were quickly squashed when she named me as Godmother of her second and youngest child, Yvonne.

As the waiter dropped by then to serve our orders, I forced a polite smile and was granted a few more moments of solace until I knew that it was time to come clean. Even though I wanted nothing more than to tell them what had happened these past twenty-four hours, I still struggled to wrap my head around it all.

The moment the waiter retreated; Honey was quick to pounce on me again.

"What's wrong, Val? You haven't seemed quite yourself since you arrived." She frowned, placing her glass down on the table to give me her utmost attention, evident concern swimming in her eyes. "Is it about your father? Is there more you're not telling us?"

"It's not my father." I sighed and shook my head, very aware that it was probably better if I came out with the truth instead of keeping it bottled up inside me until I felt sick to my stomach.