Page 160 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

No, it’s not. I knew it the moment I saw my brother’s face. There was a light inside him when he told me that he’d met someone, and I knew immediately that he was in love. I told him that he was free of me now, that he had to go get the woman he loved. I told him that I was happy and that he needed to find his own happiness, but… I lied to him.

I’m not happy. Because Rafael has told me that love will not be a part of our marriage, and I thought I was okay with it. I thought it didn’t matter, but watching Ulysses leave to find the woman who captured his heart has made me realise that I want that too. I don’t want a marriage without love. I don’t.

That’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is that I’m starting to realise that the person I want to find love with is my husband. A man still in agony from the love he lost and who doesn’t want another.

‘Let me go,’ I say softly.

He doesn’t want to, I can see that, yet his hands fall away all the same. That muscle flicks in his jaw, the lines of his tall, powerful figure taut.

A heavy, dense silence falls between us and I can feel the distance in it. A distance that’s growing wider and wider no matter how much I don’t want it to be there.

‘I don’t think I can do this, Rafael.’ I have to force myself to say the words.

The look in his eyes flares, a fleeting agony then gone. His expression hardens like stone. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about us,’ I say. ‘You and me.’

One of his hands has curled into a fist and his mouth is hard. ‘What about you and me? You’re my wife now, Olympia. You can’t say you can’t do this, not half an hour after we got married.’

A thread of shame creeps through me, because he’s right. My wedding vows were a promise and I’m breaking them already, and it’s not fair. Not when he already told me that love couldn’t and wouldn’t be a part of our marriage. It’s not as if I wasn’t warned. And yet… Ulysses has gone off to claim a life of his own and I want to claim mine. I want love too, yet I’m afraid. Horribly afraid of asking for it, of demanding it.

Ulysses has to love me—I’m his sister—but Rafael doesn’t. I’m his in every possible way, but I want him to be mine, too. I have chosen him, but has he chosen me? That night in Singapore he seduced me for revenge, then he kidnapped me for our child. Now he’s demanding I stay because I’m his wife, but is any of that aboutme? Or am I merely a symbol for him the way I was for Ulysses?

I don’t want to be a symbol or a monument, or a doll kept in a high cupboard. I want to be a woman. I want to be loved for myself, not for what I represent, and I want to be loved in return.

I lift my chin. ‘I know. And it’s unfair of me when you told me very clearly what our marriage will be. But…my brother is in love, Rafael. And I…want that for me. I want that for us.’

His expression hardens even more, his features carved from granite. ‘I told you, I don’t want any part of that.’

I swallow, my mouth dry, my heart aching. I should stop talking and accept what we have now, not ask for more, and after all, who’s to say we might not have it one day? Given time?

But deep down inside me, I know that to accept it would be a lie, and I can’t lie to Rafael.

What are you going to do, then? Leave him? Take his child away from him? How selfish would that make you?

Is it selfish? To want love? To require it from someone? To possibly throw away what I have now just because he won’t love me? Then again, what kind of marriage would we have without that? And what kind of environment would that be like for our child? And do I really want to risk it?

‘Why not?’ I ask him straight out. ‘Would it be so very bad?’

He looks away from me a moment, that muscle in the side of his jaw flicking and leaping. ‘I loved my father,’ he says into the weighty quiet. ‘I told you that, and I thought he loved me. I thought he loved my mother too.’ Rafael glances back at me, his gaze like black ice. ‘But in the end he chose his own humiliation, his own pain, and he left us to pick up the pieces.’

My throat closes at the anger and bitterness in Rafael’s voice, and at the pain that lurks beneath them. He didn’t listen last night, did he? Not to a word I said. ‘Rafael,’ I begin.

‘I found him,’ he goes on, ignoring me. ‘He was in the study. He didn’t even have the forethought to shoot himself somewhere else where I wouldn’t have to see it. No, he did it in his study and I found him by his desk.’

There is so much fury in his voice. It makes my throat ache.

‘My mother was devastated. She loved him so much, but in the end, her love wasn’t enough to make him stay either. She had to sell herself after that, just so we could get by.’ His gaze sharpens like razor blades. ‘And not long after that, they found a tumour in her lungs. She died very quickly, which was the only mercy she found. But love didn’t save her. Love didn’t pay our debts or put food on our table. Love was only a terrible pressure, that ground us both into dust, and after she died, I decided that love would never be part of my life ever again.’

I don’t know what to say to that. All I have is my own truth. ‘Love saved me,’ I say simply. ‘Ulysses saved me.’

‘And he trapped you, too,’ Rafael says. ‘Because he loved you. Why would you willingly give yourself up to that again?’

Again, I have no answer. But even if I did, he wouldn’t listen anyway so what’s the point?

Another silence falls once more. It’s suffocating.

Then Rafael moves, stepping up to me, looking down into my face. ‘We don’t need it, dragonfly,’ he says roughly. ‘Not when we have this.’ His hands land on my hips, his fingers curling into the fabric of my dress, pulling it up.