Page 39 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER FIVE

Dragos

I KNOW HER FACE .

It’s the only thing I know.

There are great black holes in my mind, spaces where I’m sure knowledge once was. Or maybe not. It’s blank. I have nothing but instinct, driving and intense. There’s danger; I’m certain of that. I’m injured and it was no accident. I’m certain of that too.

And her.

I’m certain of her.

In the tangle of gut response and blind, feral emotion, there is one image. One memory.

I remember the first time I ever saw her.

She is dressed in yellow, and she’s laughing. She’s like the sun.

Something in me changed that day that I saw her. I know that. The before and the after, though it is an impression inside me and not a series of images. I remember her, but I don’t remember my name.

I remember her, but I remember nothing else.

Her name is a vapor, escaping me, eluding me, just like my own.

My head is pounding. I feel blood dripping down my face.

I do know that this is not the first time I’ve been injured this gravely. I can’t recall how. Only that I’m sure I have been before. Guns and violence and near-death experiences fit me like the clothes I’m wearing.

“Dragos.”

She says that word. I don’t understand it. Her eyes are wide, and she’s fluttering around frantically. She’s not helping me, but she seems to know me.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

The room tilts, and I do my best not to tilt with it. One thing I know I’m not used to is struggling. I am used to a fight, but I am used to winning that fight with ease.

“I need to sit down,” I say.

She gestures to a chair that’s in an odd spot in the room.

“That is a strange place for a chair,” I say.

I know this, even though I don’t know how I know it. There are truths that exist inside of me, even if I’m not certain where I come by them.

“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” she says. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t… You don’t know?”

“I don’t know. I woke up bleeding. I… I felt like I needed to go upstairs.”

She looks at me, those clear blue eyes grounding me, holding me to the earth. She is the only thing that is. “Dragos, do you know who you are?”

“No. I don’t.” I close my eyes. “I’m Dragos?”

“Yes.”

I open my eyes again. “That is a stupid name.”

She only stares at me. “I… Why do you think it’s stupid?”

“I don’t know. I only know that it is.”

I feel frustrated, because she’s asking me questions that are ridiculous. My head is bleeding.

“Should get something to stop my bleeding,” I say.

“I need to call the emergency line.”

Something in me knows that’s the wrong thing to do. “No. No. We cannot do that. Because if I end up in the hospital then…” I have an instinct. Danger. “If I go to the hospital they’ll try again.”

“Who?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know who has tried to do this.

But somebody did. I was…” I close my eyes.

“I was shot at.” I turn toward her and touch my shoulder.

There is a burn mark on my coat, a scorched line that cuts straight to the fabric.

“It was a bullet. I fell and hit my head on the curb. They probably think they got me. Because of the blood.”

“Except if they come back to check your body will be gone.”

“True.”

I’m trying to put thoughts together, but my brain is an abyss. My thoughts don’t make sense, the order they come in, the way that things occur to me.

“This was not an accident. I cannot tell you who has done it, but I can tell you it was intentional, and it means that we are both in danger. Because you know me.”

She does know me. I know her. I remember her.

Not her name. But I know she’s mine.

I stand up, because I need to close the distance between us. I grab her arms, and only then do I realize my hands are bloodied. She gasps, like she’s scared of me, and then I look around the room. The room is filled with paintings. Paintings of naked men.

No. A naked man. The same one. Broken into parts and pieces, a close-up examination of him in different parts.

I look at one canvas of a man’s hand curled around a woman’s throat. I stare at the tattooed fingers, and then look down at my own.

This is me.

Every painting in this room is of me.

“What is this?”

She looks around, her eyes wide. “Nothing. I…”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, letting go of her, looking down at my bloodied hands. “Someone tried to kill me. And I knew that I had to go to you, but I don’t know how I knew you were here. Do we live together?”

“No,” she says.

I knew the answer to that, honestly, because she looked so surprised when I came in, and I had the overwhelming sensation that I had been looking for her and finally found her.

But then, I am her muse.

And we…have been very intimate. That much is clear.

That much seems right.

“Dragos, sit down,” she says.

“I will not sit down. We need to leave. We need to leave this place. If they saw me coming here then you are in danger too.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“You,” I say. “I remember you. Remember the first time I saw you. I… You were wearing yellow and you were talking with your friends.”

“No,” she says. “I was wearing black. And I was working. I was not talking to friends. You’re hallucinating.”

“I’m not hallucinating,” I say.

“You don’t know your name. We need to find a doctor. If you won’t go to the hospital, then you need to…” I can see a realization dawning in her eyes. “You don’t know yourself. So you don’t know where your houses are,” she says.

“No,” I say. “I don’t.”

“How to contact your physician.”

“No.”

“And someone tried to kill you.”

“I believe so.”

She looks defeated. “I know,” she says. “I know those things.”

“How?”

“Because, Dragos Apostolis, I’m your wife.”