Page 50 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ulysses

I had no idea it was even possible to stop thinking about what was happening with my sister but somehow Katla has managed to make me forget the impossible situation I’m in.

After hours of me showing her exactly what kind of distraction I needed, we both fell asleep.

Only to be woken by one of my staff members calling me with information about Rafael Santangelo.

He’s Sicilian, the CEO of a massive construction company and, much like myself, he has houses scattered around the globe.

However, his main residence is his Sicilian villa and that’s where I bet he’s taken her.

I wanted to leave immediately, beard the monster in his den and take my sister back, but an operation of that magnitude involved preparation. So I put everything in motion, only for Katla to come downstairs and find me just as I was confirming my orders.

I’d turned around and seen her standing there, white-blonde hair falling in a waterfall down her back, dressed only in one of my shirts, and the most intense feeling of possessiveness had gripped me.

Mine , something inside me roared. This woman was mine.

I was all set to prove it to her too, when the bad news came through that my operation would have to be delayed due to weather in Sicily.

I do not do denial well, or at all, in fact, so naturally this made me furious.

Katla only fixed me with her blue stare and told me that my sister wasn’t in any danger, and why, and her careful, cool logic calmed the beast in me.

Unfortunately, though, I was still left with the same terrible sense of failure I’ve been carrying around with me for years, ever since she’d been taken away from me that first time.

Except now I kept having fleeting thoughts that maybe I was to blame for all of this. Maybe I was the one who’d made her run.

The thoughts ate at me, as I turned on Katla, which was unfair of me, yet she didn’t leave.

She stayed despite me growling like a bad-tempered dog, even when I turned my back on her.

Then I felt the lightness of her touch tracing my spine and everything in me coiled tight.

The caress of her fingers felt like a valve releasing all this pressure inside me, and so I turned, for some reason wanting her to understand.

And then I saw the shadows in her eyes. And I heard the hesitancy in her voice when she talked about her mother, her bastard of a husband and how the people who should have protected and loved her made her feel not good enough, unworthy.

I knew that was what she felt, because I could see the pain in her lovely blue eyes.

My rage had awoken once again at that, but this time on her behalf, and I didn’t ask myself why I was so furious for her or why it mattered to me so very much.

I only wanted her to know that she wasn’t unworthy, strange or not good enough.

That her differences were what made her so rare and special. What made her the woman she was.

She’s staring at me now and I can see the fear and the wary hope mixed in her gaze. She wants to know that I mean it, and she’s afraid that I don’t, but I’ve never lied to her, not once, and I don’t intend to start now.

‘You really think that’s true?’ she asks, searching my face as if she’s half-afraid of what she’ll find. ‘No one has ever thought that I was any of those things before.’

‘That’s because you haven’t met the right people.

’ I open my hand where it grips her chin, sliding my fingers down her neck to grip her throat lightly in a possessive hold I can’t stop.

I can feel her pulse beating against my palm; it’s fast and getting faster.

‘I think you’re every one of those things, ice queen, and I told you that right from the very beginning. ’

Her cheeks have flushed and that delicate rose colour is spreading down her neck and under the neckline of the white shirt she’s wearing.

My shirt. And, by God, all I want now is to rip the halves of it apart, baring her.

But I also want it to stay on as I press her to the wall and fuck her right up against it.

I want her wearing it when she comes, when she screams my name, so she knows I’m all around her. That she’s mine.

I stroke the side of her neck with my thumb and I love how she shivers at the caress.

‘People lie,’ she says softly. ‘I used to ask Mum if I was too different, if she was sad she had me, but she said no. I knew that wasn’t true, though.

And John…’ She trails off, but she doesn’t need to finish that sentence. I know her husband didn’t love her.

‘I don’t lie,’ I murmur, holding her gaze. ‘I have never lied to you and I don’t intend to start. You can believe what I say, ice queen. If I say you are rare and special, then that’s exactly what you are.’

Her eyes have gone luminous and she’s looking at me now as if I’ve hung the moon.

‘Why?’ she asks, her voice husky. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘While it’s true I haven’t known you long, what I’ve seen is that you’re loyal.

You’re caring. You’re very stubborn and forthright, but I like those things about you.

You’re incredibly intelligent, too, and that fascinates me.

You’re also the most passionate woman I’ve ever met, and right now I’d love to give you another lesson in just how much. ’

She should be melting right now, yet she’s not. Despite the colour in her cheeks and the starshine in her eyes, there’s a crease between her brows. ‘I want to help you, though,’ she says softly. ‘I want to make you feel good, the way you made me feel good just now.’

I give her a half-smile. ‘I could give you some further instruction…’

But she shakes her head, impatient almost. ‘No, not sex, Ulysses. Not this time. I want to know why you feel you have failed your sister so acutely.’

‘Because she was hurt,’ I explain, still caressing the side of her neck. ‘And I couldn’t stop it. Because when I was young I was sure that nothing bad would happen to us, and I was wrong.’

‘You were so young, though. You were only sixteen, weren’t you?’

‘I was, yes. But I told her it would be okay. I told her not to worry.’

I remember the fear in her eyes as she clung to me in the car as the social workers took us away. She needed hope, so I gave it to her, sure that I was right.

‘But I was wrong. And now…’ I pause a moment, not wanting to admit this out loud, yet not being able to help myself. ‘I wonder if it’s my fault that she’s been taken.’

The crease between Katla’s brows deepens. ‘Your fault? How?’

‘I…held her too tightly, I think. I imposed too many rules on her. It was supposed to keep her safe, but she…found it claustrophobic.’ I remember the arguments we had, that I dismissed at the time but that now seem prophetic. ‘She wanted more freedom. She told me that I kept her prisoner.’

‘And did you?’

‘My enemies, they’re—’

‘You need her, don’t you?’ Katla interrupts, her gaze disturbingly sharp. ‘Because you’re afraid.’

There’s a lump of ice in my gut, and it feels as if this woman has somehow seen it, mapped its shape and knows just how far its tendrils have reached into my soul. I don’t like the feeling.

‘Of course I’m afraid,’ I say, unable to mask my impatience. ‘I’m afraid for her, that something will happen to her, and—’

‘And you’ll lose the last person who loves you,’ Katla says in her usual forthright, open way.

My heart stills in my chest. I want to deny it. I want to tell her she’s wrong, that it’s my sister I’m afraid for, for myself. And yet…

Isn’t there some part of you that knows it’s the truth?

There’s something cold in me, a sharp, horrific kind of void that sucks everything I am into it: emptiness; nothingness.

The same void that swallowed me when they took Olympia away.

Where I had nothing and no one, and I was alone.

Where all the people who loved me, who thought I mattered, had gone.

And I felt, in some deep-down place inside me, as if I deserved it.

I go to turn away, but Katla reaches for my hand and takes hold of it. She grips it tight, the warmth of her fingers and the pressure of her touch somehow grounding me in the way I used to ground Olympia.

I pause, staring at her, hypnotised.

Her gaze is dark and cool, like the sea on a hot summer day. ‘It’s not wrong to be afraid, Ulysses. It’s not wrong to want to be loved, either. Because if it is then I’m wrong too.’

This woman… The way she looks at me, as if she knows the contents of my soul, is discomforting and I don’t like it.

And I especially don’t like how clear-eyed she is, as if what she sees in me doesn’t frighten her when it should.

She knows nothing of what I became all those years ago, nothing of my early life as an enforcer.

Nothing about the man I was who hurt people and got paid for it.

‘Don’t look at me like that, ice queen,’ I murmur. ‘You don’t know what kind of man I am, what terrible things I’ve done—and, believe me, I’ve done terrible things.’

Katla only looks at me perplexed. ‘What things?’

I can’t tell her all the gory details about myself. She’s quite innocent in some respects and I can’t put that on her.

Bullshit. You don’t want to change the way she looks at you.

That’s true, I can’t deny it. Once she knows what I really am, she’ll see me differently, I’m sure, and I’ve got used to her looking at me with such wonder and interest.

Except, once again, her honesty compels mine, so I say, ‘I was an enforcer for a crime family. I made sure the rules were followed and doled out punishment to those who broke them. I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of things that involved.’

I wait for her expression to change, for disgust or condemnation to appear, but she only frowns. ‘That was your job?’

‘Yes,’ I say steadily, and I don’t look away. ‘And I was good at it.’

She nods slowly, as if she expected nothing less. ‘Of course. I can’t imagine you being bad at anything, Ulysses.’

I want to laugh at that. ‘That is not a good thing. I hurt a lot of people.’

‘You needed to get your sister back,’ she points out. ‘And I can imagine that job prospects for a sixteen-year-old weren’t great.’

‘There were plenty of legal jobs I could have taken.’

‘But you had to get her away from that family and fast, yes?’

I nod.

‘And illegal jobs pay more, I would think,’ she goes on, following her usual searing logic. ‘So you didn’t really have a lot of choice, did you?’

‘I didn’t think so at the time,’ I say. ‘I don’t regret my choices.’

‘But you don’t do that now, do you?’ she persists. ‘Vulcan Energy is all above board, right?’

‘Of course. But I’m still an enforcer, Katla. And, while Olympia draws breath, I will remain one.’

‘Well, then,’ she says, clearly not understanding me. ‘You may have done some bad things in the past, but that doesn’t make you a bad man, Ulysses. You wanted to protect your sister and that was the only way you could do it.’

‘Don’t try to make it sound better,’ I say curtly, wanting her to understand. ‘There’s nothing honourable in what I did. And the way I’ve been treating her now—keeping her as a virtual prisoner to protect my own heart rather than hers, as you so eloquently pointed out—isn’t any better either.’

Katla opens her mouth as if to speak, then shuts it.

Then she studies me for what feels like an aeon, before saying quietly, ‘Do you know why I’m so drawn to you?

It’s because you’re full of anger and passion, and amusement and laughter.

You’re full of all the emotions I have difficulty with, all the emotions that I’m too afraid to feel myself.

You gave me the honesty I was searching for and the passion I didn’t know I needed, and you protected me.

A bad man would have left me to John, but you didn’t. You saved me from him.’

I want to tell her she’s wrong, that she doesn’t know me as well as she thinks, but that look in her eyes makes me almost want to believe her.

I’ve always burned hot, it’s true, and that heat was useful in my early career.

Anger drove me and left no room for gentler emotions, and I was fine with that.

Gentleness wouldn’t have saved my sister.

So I don’t know what to say to this woman who looks at me as though I’m still the boy I once was.

The one who wept when the stray puppy I tried to rescue died.

The one who refused to steal bread from the bakery down the street even though we needed it and had no money to buy any.

The one who was beaten up by other boys because he knew it was wrong to retaliate, that it was wrong to hurt people.

The boy who knew right from wrong and who hadn’t yet crossed the line.

But I’m not that boy any more. That boy died when Olympia was taken away, and he never returned. Becoming a warrior to save her involved me getting rid of my conscience, and in doing so I damaged parts of myself. Parts that will never heal.

‘Only because I wanted to fuck you,’ I growl, deliberately blunt.

But she shakes her head impatiently as if the words have no meaning. ‘No. Why are you so set on believing that you’re terrible?’

‘Why are you so set on believing I’m not?’ I counter. ‘Six months, remember? I have you for six months and that’s all. You don’t need to know my life story.’

‘But what if I want to?’ she asks.