Page 91 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Cassandra
I’M FILLED WITH HORROR. With a sick sense of betrayal. Shame. Embarrassment. Because I believed…
I believed in our beautiful fate.
All the while it had been a manipulation. He had shaped our fate with his tattooed hands. Hands that have blood on them.
I should be afraid, but I can’t bring myself to be afraid of him. I don’t understand why. He should be scarier to me now than he ever has been. He’s confessed that he killed his own father, even if he did deserve it. Even if he did it to protect a defenseless boy. A desperate act in a moment of desperation. But I genuinely believe he doesn’t think he did it because he cared.
I think he did.
But he can’t see it.
He’s… He’s not agoodman.
Not in the way society measures such things. Not in the way I should measure them.
And if I had known that the day that we met then…
I look at him, and I want to tell him I would never have gone with him. Iwantto tell him that all of this is insane. That what he’s told me is so far beyond Greek myth we’ll never be able to get past it.
Hades and Persephone look functional by comparison.
And yet…
I’m breathing hard; I’m on the verge of tears.
“We’ll never know if it’s true,” I say, because that is the truth. It’s a truth that I wish I could overcome.
I wish I knew. But he didn’t give me a chance.
He’s given you one now.
“You said that I could leave you. That if I found the truth about who you are, what you did, and I couldn’t bear it that I could leave you and you would allow it. Now that you remember who you are, Dragos, do you still stand by that?”
“Yes,” he says, the words broken, “I do. I promise you, that if you cannot abide by this, then you can leave me. I will see that you’re protected. I will… I will protect you from anyone who wishes to harm you.”
“Who will protect me from you?”
“You can hire someone. I will finance it.”
My heart is pounding. “What if you would’ve told me? All of this.”
“Oh, yes, that is fantastic. In your mind I could have gone up to you having your happy friend time in the sun, and said come with me to the underworld, and you would’ve gone?”
A shiver of fear races down my spine. “I just might have. Because I ignored every warning sign that flashed in front of me that first night. I knew that you were… Something I wasn’t going to be able to handle. And I still… I still wanted to go with you. If you would’ve given me a chance, maybe I would’ve gone.”
“Well. This is the truth. Of me. And so now what decision do we make?”
“Why don’t we start with giving me more than five minutes to decide. You’re not who I thought you were. We’re not what I thought we were.”
Panic is rising up inside of me, and I decide that I have to leave. I just have to get away from him. I have to think. It reminds me of when I ran in London. When I could no longer bear the weight of the two of us and I had to go be by myself. So that I could untangle it alone.
I push myself away from him, and I run out of the office, down the hallway and back to my bedroom. I close the door, and I lock it. I know Dragos well enough to know that a lock won’t stop him if he decides that it can’t.
I’m shaking. I sit down on the bed.
All of this is a lie. All of it. He manufactured us meeting.
