Page 57 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Perhaps we are altogether too combustible to exist in any sort of peaceful capacity.

When the auction is finished, the event is a triumph.

And there are several gallery coordinators in attendance who can’t wait to speak to Cassandra about her doing an installation.

It has nothing to do with me. I’ve manipulated nothing.

It’s just about her work. I step away and let her talk to them.

I don’t loom, to the best of my ability.

Because I’m trying to exhibit the differences in our marriage that I know she needs.

I want her to have freedom. A life of her own, separate from me.

Well, I can’t say that I want that. But she does. And so, I need to give her space.

What I don’t expect, is for my mother-in-law to approach me.

“This is a spectacular event, Dragos,” she says.

She’s a small woman with a weathered look around her eyes. Her hair is gray and short. She’s wearing a practical black dress, and sensible flat shoes. I’ve never seen her in a dress before, and I can’t imagine she would wear one for anything other than her daughter.

“It is really all Cassandra’s work. All of the artists are her friends. And they produced amazing pieces for tonight. And of course the women, who have told their stories. They are powerful.”

“But you arranged it.”

“Yes,” I say.

She regards me for a long moment. “I’ve had trouble figuring out what Cassandra sees in you.”

I nearly laugh. Because very few people would ever say such a thing to me. And I’m a billionaire. I’m also not vain, but not blind to the fact that I have physical charms.

I do know that Cassandra’s mother has never been overly impressed with me.

“All I ever wanted for myself was a normal life,” she says.

“Stability. That’s the key to happiness, at least for me.

But she’s a dreamer. And you seem to be her dream.

But then, so is all this. When she gave it up to be with you, that was what upset me.

But seeing her here with you tonight, and seeing her living her dream with you by her side, for the first time I say I feel good about the two of you together. ”

“My hope is that I’m on the right path,” I say.

“You don’t know?” She fixes me with hard, gray eyes.

“I’m trying .”

This is a painful, alarming admission.

I’ve never tried in my life. I’ve only wanted and succeeded.

It is only in this vast forest of emotion that I feel like I might fail.

“Life is much more difficult when you have to consider the feelings of others,” I say.

She laughs at me. As if this revelation I’ve only had recently is something obvious. “Well, yes. That is what makes life difficult. You live in a society, and you have to consider others. I guess maybe when you’re as rich as you are, you don’t often have to consider that.”

“No,” I say.

“I know she left you for a while. It must be very interesting for you. To find something that you can’t buy.”

She’s not wrong. There’s never been anything I couldn’t buy. There’s never been anything I couldn’t manipulate my way into. I thought Cassandra would be the same. In fact, she started that way.

But that couldn’t last.

Which is why I have to give her honesty now. Real and unvarnished. And I find that to be a truly difficult thing. Because I’m not even that honest with myself.

“It has been. And you’re right. I can’t buy her. Least of all her love.”

“My advice would be that you just love her back. Because she loves you more than anything. I know she does, because Cassandra has always wanted to please us. But anytime I’ve ever told her I think she might be making a mistake with you, she hasn’t listened.

She knows her own mind. She knows her own heart. And I think that’s you.”

It’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy conversation. Not exactly one filled with reassurance. And yet.

When we get in the car to go home, Cassandra moves into the vehicle beside me. “What did my mother say to you?”

“She told me not to mess this up. Because you love me very much.”

“Did she?” she asks, sounding shocked.

“Yes. That was the gist of it.”

“And are you? Going to mess it up?”

“No,” I say. “I won’t.” I pause for a moment. “I love you.”

I say nothing after that, and she says nothing. We just let it sit there between us. On the short car ride back to our house. And when we get inside, I say it again.

“I love you.”

I feel it begin to cover all the other things that have ever stood between us. All the terrible things that have ever happened to me.

“That’s why I pushed you away. Because I loved you, and I didn’t want to.

It terrified me. I don’t know how to love another person.

God, it’s awful. It is the worst thing that I have ever felt.

This desperation. This knowledge that another person is now inextricably linked to my happiness.

If I don’t have you, I might as well not be here.

I also want to live because of you. That was the feeling that I had right from the first. I went from never knowing love at all to feeling all of it in a single moment when I saw you there. ”

I am on the verge of laughing hysterically. Because of course that’s what it was. All this time. It wasn’t sex. It never was. It was always love.

“From the very beginning,” I say to her.

“It was love. I didn’t know how to express it properly.

I didn’t know how to show you. Because I didn’t even know what to call it inside of myself.

I didn’t even know how to feel it. I turned it into manipulation because that was what I understood.

I’ve never loved anyone. And no one has ever loved me.

But you said that you did. That night in Paris, and I have never wanted more of something as badly as I wanted more of that. ”

“I was afraid that I would chase you away,” she says, her voice trembling.

“No. Of course not. Because I needed it. But I didn’t yet know how to do anything but take. That was all I wanted to do. Take it and use it to heal the broken places inside of me. But… When I fell, and I lost everything, the only thing that was left was you.”

It’s like a revelation. A slow-turning epiphany.

“My foundation was always that pain. My foundation was always the way that my father shaped me. The way that my mother hurt me. The way that their violence played out in front of me. It is what made me into the man that I am. But when I lost all of that the only thing that remained was you. It was the first thing. And now… That’s why I’m different, Cassandra.

My Cassandra. Because I am built now upon a foundation of loving you.

Of you loving me. And it’s changed everything.

Everything that was ever possible, everything that I’ve ever known about myself. You’ve changed it.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and then they overflow. “Dragos,” she whispers. And she flings her arms around me, kissing me deep and hard.

We’ve made love countless times. We’ve been rough, and we’ve been soft.

Fast and slow. But it has never been like this. It has never been filled with an overflow of the love between us, which is now spoken, which is now acknowledged, out in the open between us.

And as she kisses me, I know that I will never be the same again.

“I’m the virgin,” I say as she begins to undress me, her hands on my body.

“You can’t use that on me twice,” she says, shaky.

“But it’s true. Because I never understood what this was.

I didn’t understand what it was for. All this passion.

I don’t know what I thought I had found when I found you.

Some new sort of pleasure, a new kind of sensual torment, but it isn’t that.

Of course it’s not. It was always love. And I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

I’ve never experienced anything like this. My Cassandra.”

I pick her up, and I carry her up the stairs. I take her into my bedroom, and as I lay her down on the bed I whisper against her mouth. “This is going to be our house now. This will be our room. You will not be banished to an attic. You can paint anywhere you like.”

She laughs against my lips. “I thought that this was a form of madness. I thought that I was going to be in the attic forever if I didn’t leave.”

“And you might’ve been. You might’ve been, because it took all of that to reach me. To change me.”

I strip that beautiful pink dress off of her, and I worship her body.

Every action is one of love. But when I make my way back to her neck I bite her, because for us it will always have an edge.

She growls at me, and bites my lower lip as she moves in for a kiss.

We are a passionate fire. But now I know what to call it.

It really is like my first time.

Like every time before it was training for when I finally, finally knew what it meant to make love to my wife.

I lavish attention on her breasts, kiss my way down her stomach and bury my face between her thighs.

I will never tire of the taste of her.

I will never want anything but her.

And I make that promise to her as I bring her to climax, over and over again, teasing her with my tongue, my fingers.

By the time I finally bury myself inside of her tight, wet heat, it’s like my fear goes away entirely.

I’m not afraid of the work. I’m not afraid of all that I don’t understand.

In many ways, I was a wiser man when I knew nothing. I was more able to find my way to the truth.

Letting her love be my foundation. And it is now. It is. So I don’t have to fear the darkness. I don’t have to fear becoming a creature made by my father.

Because I am a man wholly and completely created by Cassandra.

My wife.

The love of my life.

She arches against me, my name on her lips. And then she looks at me, her hand on my face. “Dragostea mea,” she whispers.

And I am lost.

I spill myself inside of her, and cling to her after, the shock of my orgasm leaving me breathless. She leaves me breathless.

“I’ve never thought about why I do anything,” I say.

“Everything I’ve ever done has simply been another move on the chessboard.

A bid for survival. But I’m not that man anymore.

The choices that I make are not just about power, or survival.

They are about loving you, and loving you well.

They are about… Finding a way to do as much good in the world as my family ever did bad. ”

Because I want to be a man worthy of her love. And I know that there is penance to pay so that I become him.

She puts her hand on my face. “I need you to know that I loved you exactly as you were. But it was just so hard. Because I felt like I was losing myself. But I want you to know that I’ve loved every version of you.

And I’m so grateful that this is the journey you’ve gone on.

That this is the way you want to love me. ”

Because she would’ve taken me either way. Eventually. I do not take that unspoken truth lightly.

“I loved you the whole time,” I say. “Perhaps that’s why you couldn’t leave me.”

She nods. “I think so. But I’m glad that it happened this way. Because now…”

“Now we have found a way to live this love in a way that will not drive you mad?”

She lets her head fall back and she laughs.

“Yes. Yes. But best of all, I get to know you. All of you. Not the fantasy of you that I created in my head. Because Dragos, the man that you are is a man so very worthy of love. You have taken the darkest things, and you put them in the light. You chose the light. Even when you didn’t know why it was important. ”

“You make it sound as if choosing to love in a broken world, especially when you’ve seen just how broken it can be, is an act of astonishing bravery. I don’t need to be brave. I only need to be yours.”

She smiles at me. “How beautiful to know that we can have all this passion forever.”

“I promise.”