Page 50 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dragos

I’ M DRIVEN IN that moment to go and search the closet.

That room filled with so many files. Because it holds a key, though I’m not certain what it’s a key to.

If it’s a key back to a life I even want.

All of my childhood has come back to me.

It feels like knives have lodged themselves in my gut, and every breath drives the blades in deep.

I’m having a difficult time even explaining everything to Cassandra.

And it’s funny that she mentioned English and Romanian.

Because my memories are in Romanian, and there is a disconnect, a difficulty in taking that native language and simplifying it into English.

Trying to explain these meanings. Or maybe that’s just trying to explain the crooked foundation of my life.

Because that is certainly part of it.

She’s not wrong.

I was raised believing that up was down, and black was white. As simplistic of an example as that is.

I was raised to believe that ruthlessness was the only true virtue. That a heavy hand was the only hand that could ever be respected.

As I said to her, my father made the rules, made the mold, and told me that fitting it was the only option. I did.

I don’t know what that means, not in its entirety. But I feel a darkness in me, and heaviness. And I’m not sure if I’m racing to that darkness or away from it as I stand up from the bed and head back to my office.

Cassandra follows me, and I almost want to tell her to go back. But I promised her this. I promised her the opportunity for us to do this together. For us to learn who I am at the same time.

Of course, that was before.

Before the starkness was little more than a creeping suspicion.

But the visceral rage I feel in my memory for my dead mother has told me something about myself that I wish I didn’t know.

It never occurred to me what a blessing the loss of memory might be.

To never know that at one time I felt a sort of acrid hatred for a helpless woman.

He made you feel that way.

I know this. I know that it was my father who poisoned my mind, poisoned my soul, but I wish I had no memory of it. For just over twenty-four hours I’ve lived free. Unencumbered by anything except my love for Cassandra.

A gift I never knew I wanted.

A gift I need more than air, I realize now.

I cling to that as we walk into the office, and I go into the file room.

I’m looking for something. Something specific. I feel driven. My heart is pounding heavily. And then, I know exactly where I’m going. But it’s not to one of the files. I walk toward the back of the space and open up the cupboard. Inside is a large canvas. A new self-portrait, painted by Cassandra.

I know exactly what it is. And I have a memory of procuring it. It is sharp, and it is clear. It is also linked with that first time I ever saw her.

The memory returns to me in a rush, and I am more confident in the truth of this memory than I’ve ever been.

The deal I’ve just inked with a group of guerilla arms dealers is going to make me very rich.

I don’t mind funding a revolution. The authoritarian government has it coming.

I wouldn’t consider myself benevolent, not in any capacity, but I also like to believe I am somewhat principled in the lucrative world of crime.

I would never traffic people, and when it comes to weapons…

There are plenty of men who have sealed their own fates with violent deeds.

If one will live by the sword, they will die by it.

My father exemplified that. I am, in many ways, certain I will too.

I feel no guilt.

I never have.

Not once in my entire life. Because my father told me that as long as I’m winning I can’t possibly be doing anything wrong.

At least, that’s the sort of thing he said when he was alive.

I pity for him that he could not win our game.

He was darkness. An all-encompassing cloud over everything he touched.

Now, I am that darkness.

My steps are decisive, and I head to my next destination. To the next deal. Whatever it might be, I don’t concern myself with it. It is nothing. Nothing makes me feel a thing. I am hollow.

I look over toward the fountain and suddenly everything stops. My footsteps, the world around me, my heart. Everything.

Then I stop. And so does the whole world.

It’s like the sun has come out from behind the clouds for the first time. I knew I was darkness before, and it never bothered me. But now it’s like the light burns, but losing it will destroy me.

I am overcome by the sudden realization that if I have to go back to the man I was a heartbeat earlier I may die.

Because of her.

There she is.

A goddess. A vision. The most glorious creature I have ever seen.

She’s smiling. Sitting on the edge of that fountain, her dress bright yellow, the sun a halo around her head. She’s laughing. The hem of her skirt rides up, and I see the glory of her thigh. But I’ve seen any number of female thighs, and more. This moment is not only about sex.

There’s something different. Something hungry. Something so intense I cannot move past it.

I don’t want to.

I didn’t know I was falling. I didn’t know I was drowning. And suddenly, there’s a lifeline. Right in front of me. Suddenly, there’s something for me to grab hold of.

Now it’s all I want.

I know in that moment I will remake myself and everything around me to have her.

I take my phone out. I snap a picture of her. I send it to my head of security. I demand that he find her. I need to know her.

I melt into the crowd, and by the time I get home that night, I have a dossier on her. Cassandra Martin. Twenty years old, from Twin Falls, Idaho. Majoring in art. I know the names of everyone she was sitting with at the fountain as well, but I don’t care.

I also find out that she works for a catering company. I arrange an event to hire them at a speed that would be impossible for anyone with less money. A charity event. Which I’ve never concerned myself with before. But this isn’t about charity. It’s about making sure I have access to Cassandra.

I got to the university and linger at the edges of the art studio.

I see the back of her as she walks out the door.

A black bag slung over her shoulder, her dark hair in a neat, low bun.

The art professor is a man, the sort that resembles a ferret, and I instantly dislike him, because I peg him as the sort of man who uses his influence over the women in the classroom to talk them into compromising positions.

Nothing about the interaction I have with him following dissuades me of that. I ask him which art belongs to Cassandra.

And not only does he show me, but he agrees to sell me the stunning nude, which I buy because I cannot stand to have it hanging there for all the world to see. For this ferret of a man to see.

I buy it. For an exorbitant sum.

And then… Then finally it’s time for the event. We meet and she thinks it’s spontaneous. She thinks it’s romantic.

I know that she’ll be leaving with me because I know that there’s no way I can let her out of my sight.

I don’t need to kidnap her, but I’m prepared to.

I was prepared to.

But I didn’t have to. She came with me.

I hid the painting, so she wouldn’t know I’d orchestrated it all. So that when I took her to my room and made love to her there for the first time she wouldn’t know I’d been looking at her body, rendered beautifully on canvas long before she ever knew I existed.

I flash back to the moment, and Cassandra is standing behind me staring.

“I painted this at school. It was still… Well, I never knew what happened to it, I didn’t get it returned to me when I left.”

“No. Because I bought it.”

“When?”

“In March. Of the year we met.”

“But we didn’t meet until April.”

“I am very well aware when we met, Cassandra. But I wasn’t lying to you.

And I wasn’t remembering wrong. I saw you for the first time in Trafalgar Square.

You were with your friends. You were talking to them and laughing.

” I stop because suddenly that resonates more.

Harder. It’s like a bullet has gone through me. “I saw you. I felt something.”

“Slow down,” she says. “You… What?”

“That’s all I remember. I don’t remember any more about that.

Except I… I saw you. I saw you sitting at the fountain, and I knew that I had to have you.

Because… It was like my life was dark. Always dark.

From the moment I was born. You’re right.

I was born into something entirely different than most anyone.

And I… I didn’t know how to meet you. I had my head of security track you down. ”

“Instead of coming over and saying hi to me?” she asks, her eyes going round.

“Yes. I didn’t… I could not risk losing you. I had to know who you were. I went to the university, and I saw you there. I bought that painting.”

“You bought a painting of me. One that I did of my own naked body.”

“It was hanging publicly. And your professor… He is… I didn’t like him seeing it.”

“My professor was very nice,” she says, looking at me like the monster we both know I am. “And not at all creepy.”

“He sold me the painting,” I point out. “And pocketed an exorbitant amount of money. Do you still believe that he isn’t creepy? Because he willingly sold that artifact of your body.”

“And you bought it.”

“I’m your husband.”

“But you weren’t. You weren’t… How did we meet, Dragos?”

“I hired your catering company to work at a charity event. An event which I planned for the sole purpose of hiring your company. I insisted that they send you that night.”

“You insisted that they… And they agreed to that?”

“If you pay enough money you can have anything you want.”

“No. You can’t. That just isn’t… It isn’t true, not in any regard. You cannot buy people. You cannot buy their affections.”