Page 105 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

His father’s voice, angry and acrid, came down the line, but before Matias could respond, he was gone.

Matias sat up. Auggie was lying in bed beside him, the sheets pushed down to her waist, her arm thrown up over her head. She looked like a marble statue in motion, her breasts on display, her beauty arresting. But he could not focus on her beauty. Not just now.

He got out of bed and pulled on his pants.

“Where are you going?” Auggie asked, her voice sleepy.

“I just have to...”

The next phone call was from his publicist. “About time you got in the game,” he snarled.

“We have a much bigger problem than we anticipated.”

“What is the problem?” He asked the other woman.

“Your father has decided to drag everything out into the open.”

Well. Not everything. Matias knew that without even checking. Because the truth would only paint him in a bad light. But what he had decided to reveal...

His phone buzzed, and he looked at his text from his publicist. At the headline there.

Matias Balcazar Accused of Corporate Espionage Against His Father, Causing his Sister’s Death!

“Bastard,” he said.

“What statement would you like me to make?”

“Isn’t my job to figure out what statement you should make. It is yours. Do it.” He hung the phone up.

He turned around and saw Auggie standing there with her sheet pulled up around her body, her hair in disarray. “What’s wrong?”

“This is... This has escalated.”

Auggie moved across the room and ran for her purse. It was obvious that she already had a raft of texts. “Oh, no,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, his voice hard. “Oh, no, indeed.”

“You’re not responsible for her death.”

“I am,” he said. “I am. I delivered the exact message that my father told me to give her. And I told her that with the shame she was bringing on the family would be better off without her.”

“Matias...”

“What was she to assume except that she would be better off dead?”

“A lot of people have issues with their family and they don’t overdose.”

“But she did. She did, because she was fragile. Because she needed me to be her ally, and I was not.”

“You can’t take responsibility for all of it.”

He turned, fury in his veins like fire. “Yes. I can. And my father is demanding that I do. This is what he’s doing. To eclipse our attempts at controlling this. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“We need to get out of the city. We need to rethink things.”

His heart was pounding harder than it should. He felt like he was perhaps about to have a heart attack.