Page 220 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

“To complete your revenge plan,” she shot back. “I cannot watch you suffer under this drive for revenge. Because that can never be satisfied. You will never make up for all that you have lost over the years, for the ways that your father made you feel like you were second best. You can never change how he allowed the world to characterize you as the Bastard Spare. Nothing will take that away.”

Her words rattled inside him, and it felt as if he she was exposing his deepest wound, the one that never quite healed.

“You and I could find a different life,” she pleaded. “I don’t even know what it would look like, but it could be far away from our parents. You have all of this.”

Livia gestured around at the boat, at the water, at the shore of the country that he loved and had still torn at his heart. “You can make your future whatever you wish to make it. But I won’t sit by and watch you destroy yourself over a past that can never be changed.”

“Then you have made up your mind,” he said, his anger seething inside him. “You’ve chosen not to stand by my side.” Then he let out a humorless laugh. “And how do you plan to leave?”

Livia’s face was red with anger. “Isn’t it always this way? That I am at the mercy of the people in my life who want to use me as a pawn?”

It was as if the anger inside him exploded.

“You are not a pawn,” he ground out. “You are my wife. You belong by my side.”

“Don’t tell me where I belong. If you want me by your side, then it has to be my choice, doesn’t it?”

He closed his eyes as her words shuddered through him, a truth he didn’t want to face.

When she spoke again, her voice was full of sadness. “You have to act like you want me to choose you.”

He opened his eyes again, and she stood in front of him. He couldn’t force her to stay. He had strong-armed her into marriage and seduced her, and though she had come willingly into his bed, he had never given her the opening to come to him willingly. He found that could not numb the pain inside him. It felt as if something was breaking apart, and he refused to call it love. It could not be.

“You have made your choice,” he said, finding the hardness he needed in his voice.

Her expression fell, and he felt another stab of pain. If only he didn’t care that she hurt, this would all be so much easier.

“Go. Take my plane. Whatever you need. But don’t bother coming back. I will carry this out on my own.”

She sat down on the bench, and he could see tears in her eyes. Somehow this made it worse, so he looked away. He could not let this agony steer him.

“You can make a different choice,” she whispered. “You are better than vengeance.”

“I am the Bastard Spare. Weren’t you the one who decided I couldn’t escape who I am?” he shot back, his voice hard.

And he could see her face twist in pain, and though every inch of him wanted to comfort her, he knew that the last thing she wanted right now was his comfort. Because, in the end, she knew what he said was true.

Chapter Thirteen

It all happened quickly, so quickly that Livia barely had time to process it. She had woken up sated, her body pressed against a man she was contemplating a life with, a man who was beautiful and flawed. A man she could love. Now the yacht’s tender was carrying her to shore, where a car would drive her to a remote airfield. Gustav’s private jet was waiting for her. As the plane took off over the Baltic Sea, the lush green patchwork of farms and forestland of Isrikesland behind them, all she could think about was the accusation that Gustav had left her with.

I am the Bastard Spare. Weren’t you the one who decided I couldn’t escape who I am?

She had been seventeen when she had thrown his title—his existence—in his face, even if she would never even contemplate using the term Bastard Spare. But had she left him because of who he was? Maybe it had been true eight years ago, but this time it was his actions. She had left because of who he decided to be.

Someday the vengeance would consume him, maybe so gradually that she would not see it until it was too late. And yet she was falling in love with this man. It was only after she had left him that she could fully let the weight of this revelation sink in. Vengeance and love. These two irreconcilable truths settled inside her, heavy and immovable.

The flat shoreline of Europe turned to rolling hills and forested valleys, and then she caught a glimpse of the familiar peaks of the Alps jutting toward the sky. The jet landed at an airfield not far from the Institut Monte Vue’s grounds, the school Adele now attended, where another car waited. She gave the driver instructions to enter the back way, through the groundskeeper’s entrance, with a code that Adele managed to figure out.

The one-lane road wound through the mountain, lined on both sides with trees, their long branches hanging over them.

“You can drop me off here,” she said to the driver as the road curved around a boulder so much like the one she remembered from illicit visits to another forest, and he brought the car to a stop. “I’ll be back with my sister in an hour or so.”

He gave her a dubious glance, then nodded.

Livia climbed out of the car, and the musty scent of damp earth and sweet, rotting leaves surrounded her. And suddenly memories of Gustav surrounded her, too. This was why she had avoided the forest after he disappeared. Her body was heavy with the weight of the way he had coldly shut her out this morning, piled on top of the burden of the long-ago loss she somehow still shouldered.

But she wasn’t here to mourn Gustav. She was here for her sister.