Page 53 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

“I didn’t. I had physical encounters. Consensual, always. I have never delighted in hurting people, whether you believe that or not. Yes, the business that my father established is…”

“It’s criminal,” I say.

“Yes. It is. Though he has never bought or sold human beings, and neither have I. He has never contributed to the global oppression of people. But there’s no way that it can be victimless.

Can any corporation be considered victimless?

No matter how you look at it, if someone is making profits on the level that my family always has, that many of these aboveboard corporations are making, someone is being exploited at one level or another. ”

“Yes. But that is deflection. From the reality of the situation.”

He is silent for a moment. “Yes. It is. It’s such a funny thing, because I care now. It’s like my world got put back together in a different order and suddenly I can see the truth of it all.”

“I think that’s another thing I need to understand. When you were a boy you bought into your father’s view of things completely.”

“Yes.”

“When did that change?”

“I think… When he hurt that boy.”

“Can you explain that to me?”

“The entire village that my family home sits in is employed by my father’s business.

The family business. It is a generational thing.

It’s always been this way. My family has been running their operation, weapons and the like, for hundreds of years.

They own the land in the village, they collect rent and they also provide the money for the villagers to pay it. ”

“That doesn’t really sound like a charity so much as exploitation.”

He nods. “I would agree. Now. But at the time it was presented to me that the village depended on our family. It was up to us to provide. We had to continue to earn profits. The lives of everyone in the village. Everyone.”

“How did your father explain…breaking laws?”

“Our government was unjust. Authoritarian. It stifled the rights of the citizens, and it especially left poor villages like ours unable to defend themselves, care for themselves. So… We took it on.”

“Out of the goodness of your hearts?”

“That is… Not exactly how he positioned it. There was never any goodness. It was all uncompromising, hard and ruthless. If I’m honest, his focus was about being a firm leader. He talked about responsibility, but never about benevolence. There was no pretense about benevolence.”

“Well, I guess at least there’s that.”

“I suppose. Except I was never taught to care about goodness. There was responsibility, and a need to be seen as strong. To be an uncompromising leader, because you had to be. Because any crack in the armor could lead to anarchy.”

“Well, no dictator can have that.”

“Of course not. And that was my father. A dictator in the confines of his own village. But of course, the operation was actually much larger than that. It was global.”

“But then… Someone displeased him and…”

“He was going to hurt a child. And I have never cared for right or wrong, except there is fairness, and to my mind there was nothing fair about that. I was never an innocent child. So I cannot even say that I looked at the boy as an innocent bystander. I had no childhood.”

I knew that. Because I had seen it in his eyes in those pictures.

“But you stopped him.”

“Yes. For good, though it was not my intent, it is how it happened. I hit him until he didn’t get back up. But it was finished. And then that made me the leader.”

“Were you different than your father?”

“Yes. I’m not a man given to violence, though you may not believe that. I get no pleasure from it. I do not find it to be overly motivating to the people around me. It is not something that I foster.”

“When did you realize it was wrong that he killed your mother.”

“Today.”

“That can’t be right,” I say.

“It is. Because I didn’t think about it.

It happened. It was one of the many terrible things that happened that I witnessed in my childhood.

And I didn’t revisit it. I don’t revisit those things.

This is forcing me to do it. But of course it was wrong.

Of course it was… I hate him. I’m glad that he’s dead.

But it isn’t enough. Because I’m him. I’ve carried on his legacy, because I didn’t pause and take the time to change everything about myself.

There are things I do differently, I don’t exult in holding my authority over people’s heads, but didn’t I manipulate you?

I will do it when it does serve me. I just get my kicks differently than my father did. But it doesn’t make me any different.”

I have to sit there and think about that.

I have to think about whether or not it’s true.

Because I don’t know. I’ve never had to think about things like this.

My life is so easy in comparison to his.

I know that I should be looking at him and seeing someone frightening.

Someone who might even be considered a monster.

I know that I should. But I can’t. Because he is still mine.

And he just wanted to cook food with the two of us.

I want to believe that. That he wanted the fantasy as much as I did.

That he wanted us to be sacred, the same way that I did. The same way that I do.

Except we can’t afford to stay in a bubble. We have to find a way to make it real. We have to. Or we won’t survive.

“I don’t think you are a bad man for doing what you did to your father.

And I don’t hold the past against you. I don’t.

I won’t. But the future… You can’t keep living this way.

I don’t mind going back to Idaho and living in a small house.

I’ll do that. I don’t need you to have money.

I can forgive you for everything that you’ve ever done.

None of it’s important. You were raised by a psychopath.

He twisted your view of things. He twisted your whole life.

You deserve to live differently if that’s what you want.

And if you want that, then I’ll help you.

” I take a breath. “I’ll be brave enough to ask for what I want, even if it’s hard.

I’ll ask how you feel, even if it might hurt. ”

A sob rises inside me, and I try to push it down, but I can’t.

It wrenches its way through me, and comes out on a painful gasp.

“If you want to learn how to do this, how to be a different man, then I want to be there for you.” A tear falls down my cheek.

“It’s not even as simple as you being a different man.

If I wanted a different man, I would go find him.

I’m sorry that I said it that way. I don’t want you to be different.

I want you to…be the man that you are, but have a chance to be one that walks in the light instead of the darkness.

You want that. Whether you realized it or not, you must have always wanted it, because when you saw the sun, you wanted to stay in it. Didn’t you?”

I can see a well of emotion in his eyes. I also understand that he doesn’t know how to express it. I keep holding onto him. I keep that connection.

“I think I was trying,” he says. He’s quiet for a moment, and I don’t want to say anything, because I don’t want to break the spell. I don’t want to stop him from remembering whatever is about to come forward. “I was. That’s why… That’s why they came for me.”

“Who?”

“The men who tried to kill me. I know who they are. I know who they are, so we don’t need to hide anymore. We can leave here.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I’m stunned. “Go backward. What do you mean?”

“I was dismantling the organization. For the last six months. That’s why I was distant. It’s why I was gone all the time. I was preparing to take it down from the inside out. And I had done. I’d been liaising with Interpol, and the CIA. Making sure that every branch of the organization was undone.”

“You were in charge of it.”

He shakes his head. “Only this branch. Organized crime is vast. And I have no interest in continuing on. I… I was afraid for you. I knew that the longer I stayed in, the more impossible it would be for me to ever have a life with you. I would always have to keep you locked away, as I had been doing. I received a threat. Against you.”

“And that’s why you wouldn’t let me leave the house.”

“Yes. I was afraid for your safety. But I also knew that I had to end it, and I had to do it decisively.”

“You’re really… Ending it all. For me?”

“Yes.”

“Were you going to go to prison?”

He shakes his head. “No. And it’s probably unfair that I won’t.”

“You did your time. You had your father.”

“That is possibly true enough. Either way, I’m finishing it. It ends with me,” he says.

“Then… Then I’ll stay. Then we can try to… To be married. To give this a chance.”

“Only a chance?”

The way he says that makes my heart feel broken.

“Dragos, I was married to you for four years. You couldn’t give me what I wanted, and I was dying a slow painful death.

I know you want to fix it now. But who knows if we can do this.

As… Functional human beings. And I want more for us.

Neither thing that I did with you was right.

When I didn’t get exactly what I wanted I left.

I ran from you. And before that I just let myself get swept along in the current.

I don’t want either of those things now.

I want for the two of us to be able to talk. And I’m just getting to know you.”

“You want me to date you?”

“Yes.”

It seems an absurd thing. To ask my husband, the criminal, if you would like to date me. To try and start all of this over again. To try and find a way forward.

“We can’t just do the same things. We can’t just go right back to doing the same dance, because we know it doesn’t end well.”

“All right,” he says. “I will give you whatever you need. And I’m going to call my contact at Interpol tonight, and as soon as there isn’t any danger, we can go back home.”

I don’t know what home is going to look like for us. There are so many truths laid bare, and everything feels different, and yet somehow the same. I feel like I’m floating in a surreal environment. I feel like I actually know what has just happened to me. To him. To us.

And I feel like until we have time, none of it will make any sense. We have so much to comb through. But the one thing that I’m certain of is my feelings for him. I know that they’re real. The question is are they compatible with life?

That’s the one thing I think neither of us really know at this point.

“I have some work to do,” he says, standing up. But this time it doesn’t feel like abandonment. This time I know exactly why he’s leaving.

He’s doing this for us. He has been acting for us all this time. And that revelation is something that’s also going to take me a long time to fully understand.

I sleep for a while, and when I wake up it’s to Dragos’s hand on my back. “Cassandra, my love, we can go now.”