Page 108 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

Admittedly, his vision was growing blurry.

“It’s just... It’s just the media. We didn’t have to run from them.”

Her words scraped him raw. “I am protecting you. And myself.”

“They’re going to print whatever they want anyway. Whether they have a picture of you or not.”

But he couldn’t bear their questions. He couldn’t. He didn’t know why he felt that with such certainty, only that he did.

“Here,” he said, the edges of his vision darker now. “There’s the house.”

“Do you have staff here?”

He shook his head. “No. There will be no one here. We can... Bring people out. Get food.”

His speech was beginning to slur, his mind beginning to turn slower. He couldn’t remember quite why they had been running. Only that he had felt like a hunted animal. Only that it had reminded him so starkly of the unending, unforgiving grief that he had experienced when Seraphina had died that he felt overrun with it.

Because that had been the darkest day of his life. Because it had been when he had discovered that his father was wrong about everything. Everything.

He suddenly felt gripped with nausea.

He got out of the car, and wiped blood away from his face. He looked down at his hands, the edges of his vision growing ever darker. And then he vomited onto the grass.

“Matias,” she said, moving over to him, throwing her arms around his back. “You have a head injury.”

“I just hit my head, that’s all. Let’s go inside.”

“I have to get back to London. I can’t be out here. In the middle of nowhere. And you need to go to a hospital.”

“I am not going anywhere. Not as long as that pack of hyenas is after us.”

“I agree, it’s terrible. But surely we can get another vehicle. We can go back to my apartment. We can—”

“We will stay here.”

He went to the front door, and entered his code, the doors giving for him as he ushered her inside.

“What is this?”

“One of my places. A place where I can go for privacy. I don’t like everyone to know everything about me. I like them to think that they do.”

“Oh. Of course.”

It was austere inside. Like him. It was the truth of him, unlike the apartment she had stayed in last night.

“We have got to stop the bleeding on your face. Sit down.”

He obeyed her, mostly because he was dizzy. This was an infuriating time to discover his own mortality.

“I’m sitting,” he said.

“Yes, you are. Do you have a doctor?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I assume that rich men like you have doctors who will drop everything and come see to them, is that correct?”

He waved a hand. “Of course it is.”