Page 75 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘But you don’t do that now, do you?’ she persists. ‘Vulcan Energy is all above board, right?’
‘Of course. But I’m still an enforcer, Katla. And, while Olympia draws breath, I will remain one.’
‘Well, then,’ she says, clearly not understanding me. ‘You may have done some bad things in the past, but that doesn’t make you a bad man, Ulysses. You wanted to protect your sister and that was the only way you could do it.’
‘Don’t try to make it sound better,’ I say curtly, wanting her to understand. ‘There’s nothing honourable in what I did. And the way I’ve been treating her now—keeping her as a virtual prisoner to protect my own heart rather than hers, as you so eloquently pointed out—isn’t any better either.’
Katla opens her mouth as if to speak, then shuts it. Then she studies me for what feels like an aeon, before saying quietly, ‘Do you know why I’m so drawn to you? It’s because you’re full of anger and passion, and amusement and laughter. You’re full of all the emotions I have difficulty with, all the emotions that I’m too afraid to feel myself. You gave me the honesty I was searching for and the passion I didn’t know I needed, and you protected me. A bad man would have left me to John, but you didn’t. You saved me from him.’
I want to tell her she’s wrong, that she doesn’t know me as well as she thinks, but that look in her eyes makes me almost want to believe her. I’ve always burned hot, it’s true, and that heat was useful in my early career. Anger drove me and left no room for gentler emotions, and I was fine with that. Gentleness wouldn’t have saved my sister.
So I don’t know what to say to this woman who looks at me as though I’m still the boy I once was. The one who wept when the stray puppy I tried to rescue died. The one who refused to steal bread from the bakery down the street even though we needed it and had no money to buy any. The one who was beaten up by other boys because he knew it was wrong to retaliate, that it was wrong to hurt people. The boy who knew right from wrong and who hadn’t yet crossed the line.
But I’m not that boy any more. That boy died when Olympia was taken away, and he never returned. Becoming a warrior to save her involved me getting rid of my conscience, and in doing so I damaged parts of myself. Parts that will never heal.
‘Only because I wanted to fuck you,’ I growl, deliberately blunt.
But she shakes her head impatiently as if the words have no meaning. ‘No. Why are you so set on believing that you’re terrible?’
‘Why are you so set on believing I’m not?’ I counter. ‘Six months, remember? I have you for six months and that’s all. You don’t need to know my life story.’
‘But what if I want to?’ she asks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Katla
Ulysses’s expression is set,his mouth a grim line, the burning of his golden eyes steady. He’s very set on thinking the worst about himself, as if he’s some kind of monster, which he clearly isn’t.
He’s a complex equation, though, and there are many variables in his make-up that I wasn’t aware of such as his protectiveness, his honesty and his capacity for feeling. Especially his capacity for feeling.
There’s fury, desire, fear and pain in him and I want to know where all those things come from. I want to know why he thinks the way he does, because I’m starting to wonder if he’s actually the kind of equation I’ll never get tired of wanting to solve. He has so many complexities and contrasts, but it’s not only that. He’s interesting to my brain, and it’s how he makes me feel about myself too. My feelings matter to him, I think. They’re important, and the fact that they are makes my heart feel tight with an emotion I can’t name.
I don’t know why the way he thinks about himself is so upsetting to me, and itisupsetting. It hurts me that he thinks he’s a bad person. Perhaps I shouldn’t have pointed out that the reason he kept his sister so close was that he didn’t want to lose the only person who loved him. I think it’s true, but he didn’t like me saying so. Probably because, like me, he is alone in the world, or at least that’s what I suspect. Unlike me, though, he does have one person who loves him.
He takes a step back from me, as if he wants to put distance between us, so I let him. It’s important to have one’s own space, even if it feels oddly painful to me.
‘I told you the facts,’ he says coolly. ‘There’s nothing more you don’t know.’
‘You did,’ I agree and then add impulsively, ‘I’m sorry for saying that losing Olympia would mean losing the only person who loves you. That was very insensitive of me.’
He is silent a moment, then he says, ‘Is it true? I don’t know. But there are other are reasons I need her.’
‘What reasons?’ I ask, because I can’t think of any others.
‘I had to turn off my conscience when I became an enforcer,’ he says slowly. ‘I had to strip away the boy I’d once been and become someone else—someone harder, colder. And Ihadto or else I couldn’t have done what needed to be done.’
I can see how difficult that must have been for him, especially for a man such as him, with so much capacity for feeling. But all I can think is that he did what he had to do to save the person he loved. No more and no less.
‘You saved her, though,’ I say simply. ‘The end justified the means.’
‘That’s not all, ice queen,’ he murmurs. ‘You see, when I got her back, I had to become someone different again because I couldn’t continue in a life of crime with a little sister to look after. But the damage had been done, don’t you see? The damage had been doneto me. The part of me that I stripped away, the part that cared about other people, I could never put back. My conscience never switched on again. It died. But I needed something to keep me on the right path and so Olympia became my conscience. And that’s why I can’t be without her.’
He believes this, I can see. He’s wholly committed to it and right now, cut off from her, his true north, he’s a compass needle spinning round and round with nowhere to land.
And all at once I understand that I want to be his place to land. I want to be his true north.
No matter what he thinks, his conscience isn’t dead. It’s alive and well, if a little rusty with disuse, and if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I’d be having to deal with John.
