Page 88 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Now it’s all I want.
I know in that moment I will remake myself and everything around me to have her.
I take my phone out. I snap a picture of her. I send it to my head of security. I demand that he find her. I need to know her.
I melt into the crowd, and by the time I get home that night, I have a dossier on her. Cassandra Martin. Twenty years old, from Twin Falls, Idaho. Majoring in art. I know the names of everyone she was sitting with at the fountain as well, but I don’t care.
I also find out that she works for a catering company. I arrange an event to hire them at a speed that would be impossible for anyone with less money. A charity event. Which I’ve never concerned myself with before. But this isn’t about charity. It’s about making sure I have access to Cassandra.
I got to the university and linger at the edges of the art studio. I see the back of her as she walks out the door. A black bag slung over her shoulder, her dark hair in a neat, low bun. The art professor is a man, the sort that resembles a ferret, and I instantly dislike him, because I peg him as the sort of man who uses his influence over the women in the classroom to talk them into compromising positions.
Nothing about the interaction I have with him following dissuades me of that. I ask him which art belongs to Cassandra.
And not only does he show me, but he agrees to sell me the stunning nude, which I buy because I cannot stand to have it hanging there for all the world to see. For this ferret of a man to see.
I buy it. For an exorbitant sum.
And then… Then finally it’s time for the event. We meet and she thinks it’s spontaneous. She thinks it’s romantic.
I know that she’ll be leaving with me because I know that there’s no way I can let her out of my sight.
I don’t need to kidnap her, but I’m prepared to.
I was prepared to.
But I didn’t have to. She came with me.
I hid the painting, so she wouldn’t know I’d orchestrated it all. So that when I took her to my room and made love to her there for the first time she wouldn’t know I’d been looking at her body, rendered beautifully on canvas long before she ever knew I existed.
I flash back to the moment, and Cassandra is standing behind me staring.
“I painted this at school. It was still… Well, I never knew what happened to it, I didn’t get it returned to me when I left.”
“No. Because I bought it.”
“When?”
“In March. Of the year we met.”
“But we didn’t meet until April.”
“I am very well aware when we met, Cassandra. But I wasn’t lying to you. And I wasn’t remembering wrong. I saw you for the first time in Trafalgar Square. You were with your friends. You were talking to them and laughing.” I stop because suddenly that resonates more. Harder. It’s like a bullet has gone through me. “I saw you. I felt something.”
“Slow down,” she says. “You… What?”
“That’s all I remember. I don’t remember any more about that. Except I… I saw you. I saw you sitting at the fountain, and I knew that I had to have you. Because… It was like my life was dark. Always dark. From the moment I was born. You’re right. I was born into something entirely different than most anyone. And I… I didn’t know how to meet you. I had my head of security track you down.”
“Instead of coming over and saying hi to me?” she asks, her eyes going round.
“Yes. I didn’t… I could not risk losing you. I had to know who you were. I went to the university, and I saw you there. I bought that painting.”
“You bought a painting of me. One that I did of my own naked body.”
“It was hanging publicly. And your professor… He is… I didn’t like him seeing it.”
“My professor was very nice,” she says, looking at me like the monster we both know I am. “And not at all creepy.”
“He sold me the painting,” I point out. “And pocketed an exorbitant amount of money. Do you still believe that he isn’t creepy? Because he willingly sold that artifact of your body.”
