54 pages • 1 hour read
My Dark Romeo
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Chapters 15-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Dallas”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, physical abuse, sexual violence, gender discrimination, and emotional abuse.
Dallas wakes up to Romeo, his lawyer, Jasper, and her lawyer, Travis, standing over her bed and talking about her. Romeo demands she get up and sign their prenuptial agreement. After the lawyers leave, Dallas feels small next to Romeo but starts talking about wedding plans. He pours some of his drink down her shirt and insists she get ready to meet with her parents after they finish the agreement. He tasks his secretary, Cara, with buying Dallas designer clothes so she looks presentable, correctly guessing most of her sizes. Dallas tries to hide what she’s really feeling.
Chapter 16 Summary
Romeo, Oliver, and Zach text about Dallas. Romeo’s friends are convinced Dallas will break Romeo’s longtime celibacy pact, but he insists otherwise.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Romeo”
Romeo watches as Dallas tries on the clothes Cara brings to the house. He gets upset when Cara mentions his ex-fiancé, Morgan Lacoste, but she drops the subject. Later, Romeo’s mood changes when he sees Dallas come downstairs looking beautiful in a new outfit.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Romeo”
Romeo and Dallas drive to Romeo’s parents’ house. On the way, Romeo feels irritated watching Dallas eat cookies in her fancy dress. Dallas nags him about his relationship with his parents and why he isn’t COO. He admits that Senior gave the position to Bruce before his mom, Monica, got pregnant with him; Bruce has had the position ever since. Dallas surprises Romeo by waxing eloquently about being byproducts of their “parents’ ambitions, principles, and desires” (85).
Chapter 19 Summary: “Romeo”
The couple arrives at the Costas’s house and has dinner with Senior, Monica, and Bruce. Partway through the tense meal, Dallas excuses herself from the table. Romeo argues with Senior and Bruce about his relationship and the company before going to find Dallas. He finds her in his room looking through a photo album filled with pictures of him and Morgan. Dallas wants to know why they didn’t get married and remarks that he’s still in love with Morgan. Romeo pretends that she’s right, even though he doesn’t care about Morgan at all. They move close to each other, and Romeo insists that Dallas perform oral sex on him when they return home for misbehaving in front of his parents.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Dallas”
Dallas stews on the way home, deciding to accept Romeo’s demands so she can get some sexual experience. In Dallas’s room, the two engage in oral sex. Dallas is surprised when Romeo compliments her appearance and begs her to take their encounter further. Dallas plays along, ultimately tying Romeo to the bed and squirting his genitals with whipped cream before leaving him in the room alone.
Chapter 21 Summary
Romeo texts his friends about what Dallas did to him.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Romeo”
Hettie finds Romeo tied up in Dallas’s room. After she cuts him free, Romeo vows to cut off the internet and his streaming services to punish Dallas.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Dallas”
Over the following week, Dallas, her friends, and family prepare for the wedding. On Dallas’s wedding day, Frankie takes Dallas aside, gives Dallas her old engagement ring, and suggests she flee. Dallas is tempted but puts on a happy face for her parents.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Dallas”
The wedding is beautiful, and Romeo and Dallas’s passionate kiss at the altar enamors everyone. Afterward, Madison finds Dallas and suggests helping her escape. Dallas admits she doesn’t “want to stay married to [Romeo]” (113). Romeo appears and threatens Madison for talking to Dallas. After Madison leaves, Romeo grabs Dallas’s throat and insists that she belongs to him. He then reveals that they’re leaving on their Parisian honeymoon immediately. Dallas gets upset but feels aroused by Romeo’s closeness.
Chapter 25 Summary
Romeo texts with Oliver and Zach about the wedding, making lewd jokes about Dallas and Frankie’s appearances.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Romeo”
Dallas gets sick on the flight to Paris. After she throws up, she and Romeo engage in sexual foreplay. Then, Romeo lets her fall asleep on him, vowing to tame her.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Romeo”
Dallas wakes up upset. She regrets engaging in sexual foreplay with Romeo and accuses him of not being sexually clean. Romeo assures her he hasn’t had sex with anyone in a long time, which surprises Dallas considering his relationship with Morgan. They bicker until Dallas quiets Romeo with a kiss. For the rest of the flight, they continue kissing and engaging in sexual foreplay.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Dallas”
Dallas spends most of the honeymoon venturing around Paris alone. She spends an exorbitant amount of money on food and clothes. When Romeo returns to the hotel one night, he scolds her for racking up such a high credit card bill. The two taunt and tease each other sexually before Romeo undresses Dallas, performs oral sex, and breaks her hymen with his tongue. Afterward, he demands she get dressed. Dallas lashes out at Romeo for treating her poorly. Romeo agrees to a truce.
The couple goes out to dinner. At the restaurant, they chat about the future. Dallas admits that her greatest dream is to be a mother, but Romeo insists they’re not having children. He refuses to give his father an heir. He plans to inherit the company and destroy it to punish Senior. Dallas feels devastated but silently vows to make Romeo have penetrative sex with her and get pregnant.
Chapters 15-28 Analysis
The more time that Dallas and Romeo spend together, the more complicated their relationship becomes. In the days before their wedding, Romeo attempts to control Dallas by denying her attention and intimacy. His emotionally and physically abusive behaviors only intensify in the wake of their wedding, further underscoring Complex Power Dynamics in Intimate Relationships. Dallas and Romeo’s arranged marriage has been orchestrated to benefit Romeo. Marrying Dallas allows him to punish his rival, Madison Licht, and to satisfy his father’s demands to assume control of Costa Industries. However, the relationship disadvantages Dallas. Because Romeo “lack[s] compassion, sympathy and empathy” (84), Dallas is trapped in a physically and emotionally abusive dynamic. She’s not only had to marry Romeo against her will but also finds herself entirely beholden to her new aggressive, manipulative husband. Despite the violence she experiences, Dallas continues fighting for autonomy within this relationship, which shows her strength of character and foreshadows her ability to regain control.
Repeated allusions to Romeo’s anger toward Senior and bitterness toward his ex, Morgan, act as clues to why Romeo acts in emotionally cruel ways. Because Dallas wants to claim autonomy over her life and within her relationship, she begins to probe Romeo about himself. She not only discovers his “no-sex rule” but also learns that he and Morgan had a loving relationship. The scene where Dallas finds Romeo’s photo album captures Romeo’s fraught relationship with the past, introducing the theme of The Challenges of Overcoming Past Trauma. The album is filled with images of Romeo and Morgan: “Morgan and [Romeo] vacationing in Aspen. Morgan and [Romeo] in New York. Morgan and [Romeo] kissing. Hugging. Existing in [their] own little universe” (91). These sentimental images counter the surrounding depictions of Romeo as an aggressive, controlling, and heartless character. Dallas is discovering that his steely exterior is a front for his wounded heart. Instead of processing his past heartbreak, Romeo uses this to further fuel his aggression and manipulation toward others. However, because Dallas is an empathetic and determined character, she endeavors to break through Romeo’s cold facade and abuse to reach his heart. These relational dynamics further develop the literary allusion to Beauty and the Beast. Romeo has a beast-like exterior in that he behaves in unpredictable, violent ways. The photo album, however, shows that he has a softer heart, which he can expose once again if he processes past heartbreak and shirks his abusive, aggressive behavior.
Dallas’s attempts to connect with Romeo further develop the difficulties in overcoming past trauma. While Dallas indeed wants to be free in her marriage, she also wants to emotionally reach Romeo. She plays games with him—à la the whipped-cream prank in Chapter 20—to prove her power; she also appeals to Romeo’s heart by asking him genuine questions about his familial and romantic pasts—for example, their Parisian dinner date in Chapter 28. Dallas feels for Romeo when he admits that he plans to destroy his father’s company to punish Senior because she understands that some deeper wound is motivating Romeo. At the same time, she vows not “to abandon [her] dream of becoming a mother” just to appease Romeo (144)—a personal promise inspired by her complex past. Both Dallas and Romeo have lived through difficult experiences that inform their behavior in the present. While Romeo lets his trauma control his life and manifest through aggression, Dallas focuses on the future to transcend her trauma. She wants to get pregnant no matter the cost because having a baby is a way for her to claim autonomy over her life and to exact her desires.
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