Page 188 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

I had no reason to think that marrying one of my father’s cronies would be any different. Aside from the marital expectations, that Katarzyna had made certain to tell me were far better tolerated with wine. Or anything else I could get my hands on.

Because there are always dynastic expectations, she had said in her matter-of-fact way.

I don’t know that I want to do any of those things, I had replied.I don’t like anyone who does.

She had lifted her wineglass in my direction.It is as my mother always said about giving birth, she replied coolly.Yes, of course, a womancando it naturally, as women have done since the dawn of time, but why should she?

“If I were you,” Jovi told me in that forbidding way of his, undercut—or perhaps enhanced—by that electricity I could feel crashing all around him like an incoming storm, “I would be grateful that you do not have to live out the rest of your life as some plastic representation of a rich man’s trophy. Pretending you do not know exactly how dark the shadows are all around you. All the blood and pain tied to every single moment that bores you.”

“I have already lived that life,” I reminded him. “As a rich man’s daughter instead of his wife. I’m not sure it’s any better.”

“You and I do not get to have these blameless, anodyne years you speak of. Wandering down city streets, thinking we might read a newspaper in a café or while away an afternoon over a cribbage board.” He laughed. It was a harsh, aching sort of sound. “This is not reality, Rux. Not for monsters like us, raised by demons and devils to suit their own ends. We don’t get to be silly and dream of happy things. The moment you were born, your destiny was set. I am no different. The only difference between the two of us is that I accept what I am and what that makes me.”

“But why did you accept it?” I asked, only understanding the urgency in the question when I could hear it hang between us. “What would happen if you refused to accept it?”

Jovi let go of me then, looking down at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d asked him the question. As if I’d reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. I was half convinced that if I looked up at one of my chained, dangling hands, I’d see it there. Bright and red in the middle of this otherwise colorless room.

“Tell me one thing you think you’ve missed out on,” he growled at me. “One thing that you imagine life would have given you if you’d been a happy little sheep, halfway to her own slaughter, like everyone else out there.”

And I knew the answer immediately. I could feel it in my mouth, as surely as when he had pressed his thumb there.

“There are a lot of things,” I told him. “There’s a reason they say ignorance is bliss. I think they’re right.”

“No one who says such a thing is ignorant. They only fantasize that if they were, they would like it. But if that were true, everyone would be ignorant. Eve would never have tasted that apple.” He shook his head. “One thing, Rux.”

“I always thought I’d like to be kissed before I died,” I said, because I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “It seems a shame that never happened.”

It seemed like a lot more than a shame.

But once I said it, the silence became deafening. So loud that it seemed to press in from all sides, a clamor beyond reason.

The look in his eyes was the same.

But I didn’t back down. I looked straight at him, and I didn’t let myself look away. I reminded myself that all I had in this life were the choices I made with what little time I had left.

So I tipped my head back and I didn’t look away.

And I chose.

“The least you could do,” I said quietly, “the very least, Jovi, is kiss me before you kill me. Don’t you think?”

CHAPTER SIX

FOR A MOMENT, I thought the silence between us was so loud that he didn’t actually hear me. That he was lost, too, in the ringing that was in my ears and the hammering in my chest. Maybe he could even feel the way my pulse was taking on a drumming all its own.

Maybe I’d only imagined I’d said such a thing.

And maybe, I tried to reason with myself, I should be happy if that was the case. I’d read enough to know that it wasn’t exactly a healthy thing to imprint on the first stranger who came around, especially when he’d been sent to take me out as a message to my father. I didn’t have to read anything to understand that my attraction to Jovi was bad enough, but that this dawning belief that deep down, he and I were the same—

That wasn’tmentally challenged. That was straight upunhinged.

I’d been saved from my own worst impulses, I decided.

“Jovi,” I began, “the thing about—”

But I never finished that sentence.

Because he made a sound that I’d never heard before. It was deep and low. Animal.