Page 88 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8
She knew who she was. If she did choose to take a lover, it wasn’t going to be him. Not one with so many strings attached. Not one who... Who created such powerful feelings inside of her. It was attraction, she knew that. And the worst thing was she knew that it was an incredibly basic response to him. It was simply how he made women feel. Because he was Matias Javier Hernandez Balcazar, and he was widely considered to be the most beautiful man in the world. It would be strange if she didn’t respond to him in this way.
No. If she ever did decide to take a lover, it would be an English man, perhaps. And they would have a casual arrangement, where they met at a cottage on rainy afternoons, and they would drink tea and make love.
She did not think that Matias made love.
She rather thought that there was a rougher and cruder term for what he did in bed. And she ignored the tightening in her stomach that indicated she was interested in discovering for herself.
“No,” he said. “But I don’t actually talk to anyone. In fact, you and I have exchanged more honest conversation in the last few hours than I have with anyone in years.” He didn’t sound surprised by this, but a bit grim. And she felt...
How strange. How strange to know that this man had given more to her than he had to anyone else for a long time.
His connections were physical, theirs wasn’t.
It made her feel...she couldn’t parse it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Anyone?”
“Anyone who knows me knows me on my own terms. And my terms are that I do not wish to be perceived.”
“Why is that?”
“Because who I was doesn’t serve me. At least not in any way beyond guiding me toward getting revenge on my father.”
“You should tell me why you hate him.”
“You’ve done research on me, I assume?”
“I know about you, yes. I’ve read your bio.”
“Then you know I had a sister.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I know that you had a sister.”
“What you don’t know is that I’m responsible for her death.”
He watched her process that information, her birdlike features knitted together tightly as she tried to take into consideration what he had just said. He didn’t know why he wanted to push her like this. She was helping him. But perhaps what he really wanted to see was if she was up for this. Because it wasn’t going to be easy. The truth was, Javier had set his sights on him. And that meant there would be more. So there could be no secrets between himself and Augusta, not really. He would have to make sure the same was true with her. Because things would come out. That was the truth of it.
His father would stop at nothing.
“You... You were responsible?”
“Yes. In order to explain, I will have to paint a clearer picture of how my father ran our household. My mother was meek and compliant. There was no other way to survive a life with him. He was cruel. He ruled with an iron fist. Though he never stooped to hitting us with it. He was an emotional manipulator, he would set a bar, and if we would clear it, he would tell us that we hadn’t. He changed the metrics often. I wanted to please him. I bent over backward trying to make myself into the son that he wanted me to be. Seraphina... She kicked against it. She couldn’t stand what he made of our mother. She couldn’t stand being subjected to his demands. When she began rebelling, he did everything he could to stop it. He cut her off financially, he stopped our mother from speaking to her. I still kept in touch. It wasn’t until later that I realized he allowed it for reasons of control. As long as there was a link between himself and Seraphina then he could still get to her. And as long as there was still someone she cared for in the family... There was something to exploit. I was... I was convinced that what he was doing was necessary. That Seraphina was harming herself, and... It wasn’t wrong. Some of her behavior was self-destructive. And yet, his methods were not... It was not the way. But I didn’t believe that, not at the time. At the time, I was a boy. I was his thing. His robotic soldier. I ordered the staff around the way that he did, I lived my life with ruthless precision. I denied myself all pleasures of the flesh. And when he told me that I had to go and give Seraphina the hard word that I would no longer be able to support her or be in her life unless she came home and complied with all of my father’s demands... She overdosed. That same night. Because the one person she had thought cared about her had been acting as surveillance, had betrayed her in exactly the same way.”
He had never told the story out loud before, and it sounded strange in his voice. He had said it in his own head many times. Cementing his culpability in what had happened.
He hated himself for it. He didn’t hate himself less for hearing it said aloud. If anything, he hated himself slightly more, because it made him feel closer to the twenty-year-old that had done his father’s bidding with such vigor. With such conviction.
“The most truly terrifying thing to learn about yourself is that you have the capacity to harm those you love, because you have been brainwashed. Manipulated. To realize that you are not half so clever as you think you are. That was when I decided that it all had to end. That was when... At Seraphina’s funeral, when my father stood there without a tear on his cheek, I vowed that I would end him. But not only that, that I would prove the way he saw the world meant nothing. I decided to be all the things he had ever told me not to be, to compete with him, and to win. To destroy him. While smiling. You see, I have no desire to steal secrets from my father, I don’t need them. But I do like to keep tabs on him.”
“Matias... I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Her words were like a balm, but he refused to let it soothe anything.
“Why would you know? I’ve never spoken to anyone about it. It is immaterial. What happened then can’t be changed. And that is the truly chilling thing about revenge plans, Augusta. They fixed nothing. They’re simply more destruction in an already destroyed landscape.”
“But if you feel that way, why do it?”
“Because I want scorched earth. I don’t want to fix anything, I know it’s impossible. I just want to salt the ground so that nothing can grow there ever again.”