Page 105 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

I swallow hard. “Thank you,” I whisper.

I slide off his body, and then he pulls me up against him. His arms wrap around me. I want to cry, but I don’t let myself, because crying is for women who have that luxury. I never have.

But then so is this. Being comforted. Resting with another person.

Thunder and lightning doesn’t feel like fear anymore. It doesn’t feel like being alone.

But I’m afraid it feels like something else altogether.

Something I don’t think I’ll ever be allowed to have.

And that’s almost scarier than the storm itself.

CHAPTER TEN

Lindsay

THE NEXT MORNING, he brings me breakfast in bed. He spends the night with me after we make love again. I don’t quite know what to think about him. I don’t know what to think about this.

Everything was so fraught that night by the fire, and then it was like something shifted between us during the storm.

It feels less like a prison now, being here. More like a vacation. I don’t know if he agrees. I don’t want to ask him. But when he smiles at me, when we are out on the beach in the sun, when he takes my hand as we walk through the trees and when he sits next to me at dinner, I feel like it might be true.

I should be dying to get back to my life. To get back to my career. But it’s like being here is some kind of strange fantasy that I’ve fallen into, and now I’m not sure that I want to leave.

I’ve never had anybody pay so much attention to me. I can’t say that it’s some kind of sweet, selfless caring. No. We both get something out of the heat between us. He’s insatiable, and I am too.

But there’s more than just sex. He talks to me. Listens to me. He’s figured out my favorite foods, and serves them to me almost every night. It’s like a friendship, oddly. Even though it’s primarily spent naked, and technically, I’m still his captive. It’s complicated.

But then, my life has always been complicated. Nothing has ever been simple. Certainly nothing has ever been anything like easy. It’s been lonely. And I thought that loneliness was going to keep me safe. But until now, I hadn’t realized how much the loneliness could grind on you.

I had made friends with Vittoria, and it had been…wonderful. Something that I hadn’t really known I needed. But even that had been marked by all my strangeness, in that I don’t really know how to confide in people. Even with her, I struggled. Or maybe we struggled because she was lying to me; there was that. I’ve forgiven her, mostly. Because given what I know about her situation, complicated doesn’t even begin to cover it. And it seems like her relationship with Ciro’s right-hand man is more than complicated. Given that I’m in the middle of my own kind of complicated, I can see how maybe she was…crashing out. Why she made a lot of selfish, strange decisions when it came to the two of us. Some of it to save her life, maybe some of it to save his. And maybe she was desperate for him.

I’m starting to understand that kind of desperation.

The worst thing is that there’s nothing normal about this. I know that. For the first time, I’m starting to crave a normal life. The house, the children. Marriage.

That’s insane. Certifiable, even. It shouldn’t be a mafioso that brings that kind of feeling out in a person, I’m pretty sure. I might not be an expert on healthy relationships, but that seems to be kind of a given.

After dinner, almost every night, he and I go sit in the library together. There are so many books about fashion, all thanks to his grandmother, and I’ve been devouring them. Meanwhile, he reads history books, mainly the history of war and things like that. Which feels very masculine to me, bordering on cliché. I don’t say anything about it, though, because I like sharing the space and time with him. And tonight, we have chocolate cake while we read, and this strange sort of companionship is the closest thing to real happiness I’ve ever felt.

I’ve felt triumph. I’ve felt passion. I’ve felt drive. But this is a strange sort of contentedness. Like we’re in a bubble, and no one can reach us.

It feels so good, I don’t want it to end.

“Do some people just feel happy when they’re children?” I ask this because I’m so caught off guard by this feeling of happiness that I’ve never felt before, and it makes me wonder if this is something like that childlike joy people talk about. Christmas and Santa, sugar plums and ice-skating, and all kinds of things that I just don’t relate to.

“I don’t know.”

“They must. So many people talk about childhood like it’s this wonderful thing. You know, like the way people talk about Christmas.”

“I wouldn’t know about that either.”

“That doesn’t really surprise me. I bet Mafia families don’t really have a lot of holiday traditions.”

“That isn’t true necessarily. If they can get together and have dinners and pontificate about power and family, then they seem to like it.”

“That doesn’t really sound like childlike wonder.”