Page 208 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

“Wasn’t it already yours?” I asked.

I could tell it was the wrong question. “That was a matter of debate,” he said.

And I could imagine how that went. This was a lovely house. It was likely worth a lot of money, too. I could see the sort of family Jovi had arguing over who got to profit from all those consequences. I could also understand—having met so many men like him—why a man like Jovi’s uncle would hold on to it. Better to use a tool as a weapon if your goal was to cause pain.

It seemed to have worked beautifully.

“Why did you sell everything?” I dared ask.

“I do not mind the ghosts,” Jovi told me darkly. “It’s the memories I can’t abide.”

I felt restless, or maybe—really—I was agitated on his behalf. I shifted myself around on his lap so I could look at him.

“What is your life here like?” I asked him. “What do you do in all your empty rooms? Wait for the garden to take you, too?”

He looked back at me, but he didn’t quite manage to get his impassive mask back into place. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who was gamely going into a marriage that would have crushed her. Into dust.”

I shook my head at him. “Notgamely,” I corrected him. “Nevergamely. I never once, in all of my dealings with my father, actually surrendered to him. I made nice. I bided my time. I accepted my unpleasant fate because there was nothing else to do. But that’s not the same thing asacquiescing. Sooner or later, one of them—my father or whatever pig he married me off to—would underestimate me. Forget about me. And then I would be free.” He was frowning back at me, so I leaned in a little closer. “I was only everbiding my time, Jovi. What have you been doing?”

He stood up then, taking me with him, and then set me on my feet. “Your situation is different from mine.”

“You live in a tomb,” I pointed out. “Very much as if you are already dead. Does that serve you in some way?”

“My uncle is my only master,” Jovi bit out, but there was something in his gaze when he said it. Something that suggested he chafed at his own words. “He gave me my life and I gave him my soul.”

I leaned in and poked a finger into his chest, which was a lot like jabbing it into granite. So I did it again, my gaze fierce on his. “Your soul wasn’t his to take.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. Most men in my uncle’s position would never have offered me a chance. Most would have killed me with the rest of my family. Instead, he gave me this gift. And what I give him in return is my undying, unquestioning loyalty, until the day I die. It is as simple as that.”

Though the way he said it sounded less like a list of unassailable facts than I suspected he knew. “You’re the one they send out to the impossible things, aren’t you?” I asked.

“They do, because I am the one who is good at them. They require finesse. Patience. Precision.” He glared at me. “In a sea of hammers, I am a very sharp knife.”

My hands had somehow found my hips. “Or you’re the one who doesn’t care if he dies, since you’ve had no reason to live since you were a poor, traumatized boy. No soul. No future. Nothing. Is that really what you’re made of, Jovi?”

He blinked. Once. Then his dark eyes blazed. “Please point me in the direction of your agency, Rux. You are a prisoner. I kidnapped you to make you a victim to your father’s idiocy, but instead, you offered yourself as a sacrifice. What does that make you?”

But I knew the answer to that. “Yours,” I said.

I watched that crash into him. It looked…catastrophic.

“I’m yours, Jovi,” I told him, to make sure he heard me. “And if you need me to die for you, I will. If you think your uncle deserves that, too. If you think that’s a worthy offering to a man who spared you simply because he could use you, then do it.”

And before my eyes, though I could barely credit what I was seeing, I watched this man who never stumbled…stagger back. I watched him put his hands on his head, then tilt back to the blue sky high above.

Then, as I watched, Giovanbattista D’Amato, an impermeable weapon forged of stone and ice,howled.

There was no other word for he how he roared. He tipped his head back and what came out was pure anguish.

It went on and on and when he was done, he tipped his head back down. Then he locked eyes with me and everything wasfire.

“Run,” he ordered me, a light in that dark gaze of his that made me breathless.

I didn’t think. I could feel that glorious fire burst to life inside me, starting deep between my legs and exploding outward, setting me alight. I turned and threw myself into the overgrown wildness of the garden.

Then I ran. I ran and I ran and it felt mythic. Epic.

I felt like Persephone, running to escape the inevitable while filled with dark excitement I wasn’t sure I could admit, even to myself.