Page 122 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

With that, I get up out of our bed, and leave him there. If he wants to exist in torment, that’s up to him. I’m going to choose love.

Because I need to believe that it’s more powerful than any other force around us.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ciro

I CAN’T SLEEP. Lindsay has decimated all of the things I’ve been telling myself since I decided to keep her. Now she’s trapped with me. With a man so broken and dark, and I’ve told her that she can’t pursue her dreams. I put her in a cage. Clipped her wings. And she’s telling me she loves me. The strong, fierce creature has given herself to me, and I’ve allowed it. Because in my heart of hearts I am no different than my father. I hated my father. Hate him still for what he did to my mother, and I’m not sure, had he not done that, if things would’ve been very different. I’m not sure if I would’ve done anything benevolent at all if that hadn’t happened.

And now I have a woman, too soft and beautiful to be believed, too strong and lovely to be contained, trapped in my ring of darkness.

And I have seen a woman love a man to her bitter end, and I don’t want to be that for her.

She’s made Christmas in this place. In my life. In my house.

And I don’t know how to celebrate it. I don’t know what sort of man I am, with these twinkle lights and that Christmas tree. I’m supposed to be a father to a daughter. And suddenly I realize that she was right all along. I can’t do this.

I can’t.

I sit there on the couch until the sun rises, until the sky begins to turn gray. And when she comes out of her bedroom, dressed in her pajamas, looking sleepy and irritated, I look up at her. “This place is yours,” I say. “I will have you and our daughter live here. When you’re ready. Until then, I will buy you a place in Rome. You can go back and finish school. I will get a nanny, whatever you need to be able to do that while you have the child.

“What?”

“The idea of a family is a beautiful one, but all it is is a fantasy. I am not a father or husband. I am a jailer. I am the DNA that was used to create this child, but that does not make me… What I’ve done to you is no different than what my father did to my mother.”

“That’s not true,” she says.

“It is. I don’t know how to be soft. I don’t know how to love. I don’t know how to give what you need. What you deserve. And I am… I am begging you, let me set you free. Let me take you away from all of this. Because you deserve better. Because you deserve everything. Lindsay, you have struggled for too long. You should have a man who knows how to give you what you want.”

“I don’t want a man like that. I want you. I want you and all the penance on your skin and the darkness in your heart. I want you, because in spite of all the odds you’ve done the right thing, over and over again. I want you, because there is no other man who could ever be right for me. Who else could stand up to me? Who else would hold me in a thunderstorm? You gave me my first experience of passion, my first experience of comfort and care. You are not your father. But you are afraid. You’re afraid of this. Of everything that we can be. You’re afraid of this, because the last time you loved someone was your mother, and she was taken from you brutally.”

“Enough,” I say.

“It’s true. You’re just afraid. Because you know what this can cost.”

Truth burns through my veins. Burns in my blood, and I know that she’s right. I know that what she’s saying is true.

Because she is so dear to me. I love her. I cannot face the idea of failing her, of losing her because I am not what she wants or needs. Is that why I was keeping her from going to school? Is that why I’m sending her away now?

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I love you.”

The words shock me. I’ve never said them out loud to another human being before. They shock me, because there’s a whole revolution inside of me.

They shock me. Because I didn’t think I was capable, and now I’m bleeding with it. Hemorrhaging with it. Now it is the deepest truth inside of me. That I love Lindsay, and our little girl. And these Christmas decorations, and the life that I never dared hope for.

“Gangster,” she says, leaning in and kissing me. “I know you love me. I changed your life.”

She did. She changed my life. This maddening, obnoxious girl who made me realize how little I had, and made me want more.

This woman who made me believe that we could be a family.

This woman who is giving me a child. And a life beyond my wildest dreams.

“I still want you to finish school,” I say.

“Okay.”

“I want you to have everything your heart desires. And I will be there to support you.”