Page 186 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

The typical kidnapper of my imagination, a common boogeyman for children raised with guards the way I had been, always wore dramatic stocking caps to announce their intentions from afar. They were always in head-to-toe black, might or might not sport the proverbial moustache, and could easily be confused for a cat burglar.

Or a cartoon.

Jovi was not wearing any of that. Jovi was wearing a crisp and perfectly tailored suit that had obviously been lovingly and exquisitely tailored to his precise and singular physique. He looked like he ought to have been wandering about Milan with a pack of fashion photographers in his wake. Or perhaps on a film set somewhere suitably sophisticated, all hushed wealth and abundance. There was nothing about him that suggested he was the sort of thug who abducted young women—other than the fact that he was a man, of course, and statistics suggested they were the ones out doing these things.

I doubted there were a lot of women who went about collecting girls like me for fun and profit.

The thing about Jovi was that he was beautiful here, too, in this secluded house. In this carefully empty room with only that secured window to suggest there was anything outside anyway.

But he wasn’tonlybeautiful. Not even up close like this, where I suspected I could scream all I wanted to no avail—the way I hadn’t even thought to do back home. There was that seething, brutal masculinity mixed in with all that perfection that somehow made not just his features seem less pretty and more formidable than they should have been, but made the inarguably elegant suit he wore the same.

Another man might have looked toodone. Too manicured.

On Jovi, it was simply another indication that he was as deadly as he was beautiful. It was all part and parcel of the same package.

And looking at him made all of the heat in my body sink deep between my legs, thenhum.

More than what he wore and how he behaved, it was clear that he was refined. Educated. Sophisticated in ways I could only imagine, given the confines I’d always lived in. There could not have been a greater contrast between my father and a man like this. My father, who considered himself all of those things, but was not. Boris Ardelean was nothing but a bully, thuggish and cruel. A bully with too much money and a deep and abiding disdain for the lives of others.

Jovi, on the other hand, was something far more dangerous than abully.

For one thing, I doubted very much that it was money that motivated him the way it did my father, even though it was clear to me that he had more than enough of it. He also wore his beautiful clothing too carelessly for him to have had to scrape and budget to earn them.

And now, whatever it was that was happening inside him—and maybe I was just making that up to make myself feel better, no matter what I thought I’d seen—he was staring at me so impassively that it made me stop breathing.

I blew out what air was left in my lungs to get myself started again, and I thought a little harder about what I felt. What this was. What was likely to happen.

I thought it all through and I still wanted it to be my choice. That was the main thing.

It was the only thing.

“Okay,” I told him. “I’d like to die well, Jovi.” I could see that hit him, and hard. It was like an electric bolt, and I could feel it as much in me as I could see it in him. “Maybe no one will ever know, but I think I will, somehow. And I think it matters.”

His gaze went frigid for a moment. Then itblazed.

“You’re a fool,” he belted out at me, no hint of all that ice and control andstillness. “Death is death. Good, bad, indifferent. Nobody cares, nobody will remember you, and all of us will turn to worm food in the end.”

“Thank you,” I managed to say. “That’s a lovely rendition of the last rites. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. One big circle, leading us ceaselessly back into the past—though I don’t think that’s quite the right quote—”

“Death is death, Rux.” His voice was dark. Grim. His eyes were on fire. “You might want to think about taking yours seriously.”

He was right. I should. Then again, maybe I was.

My throat was dry again, and not because of ripped shreds from my pillowcases. I could still feel that thumb of his in my mouth, pressing into me, somehow beautiful when I knew it shouldn’t have been.

But the real truth was that it had been one of most exciting things that had ever happened to me, and all of the other ones had happened tonight, too.

One after the next.

And no, I wasn’tmentally challengedas previously accused. This was simply the reality of it all. He was the most excitement I’d ever encountered and that would have been true even if he wasn’t gorgeous beyond measure.

But he was.

He really was.

“I’m taking this all very seriously,” I assured him, and I tried my best to sound as calm and collected as possible, given the circumstances. “It’s just that I think it would all be a little bit sadder and more heavy hitting if I had any kind of a life leading up to this moment, but I really didn’t.” Some inkling came to me at that, and I studied him. His stern expression. His stiff posture. Those unfathomable eyes. “Did you?Doyou?”

He blinked, and on another person, that wouldn’t even have been noticeable. But this was Jovi. This was a man who was so still he could teach stone how to settle.