Page 185 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
“Explain to me, Mother, why I should say goodbye to a woman who means nothing to me?” He looked down at his mother then and saw that she really couldn’t understand his position. “Explain to me why she should mean anything to you when she turned her back on you. When you would not accept her help when she turned back to you after Father died.”
“Your father wasmurdered. He did not die. He waskilled.”
“Yes, I was there, too, if you recall.”
She turned away from him then. As she had after that day. Always turning away from what she had left, so dedicated to that which was gone. His father. Her mother—because even if she was alive, her mind and memories had long since gone.
And Zervou had to admit that he’d come here for this. To see her turn away. To throw himself into this continued rejection. Because it was familiar. Because he wanted to prove to himself that Ari had done the same and she had deserved being cast out.
Instead, he saw his mother casting out that which she should have loved, cared for, cherished, and he felt shamed.
Ari hadn’t wanted nothing from him. After all, she had comforted him. She had dined with him, spent time in his bed. She had taken his ring and agreed to marry him.
The one thing she’d denied him had been a hand in her boxing. And while it still felt like betrayal, with some distance, with this stark difference between the two women shoved in his face, he realized that…she wasn’t wrong.
She had wanted one thing to be her own. She had needed to trust her own pride and integrity. For her work, for herself. It wasn’t about him.
It was a strange realization. Because his mother’s issues weren’t about him, either, no matter how they hurt him.
The similarity in these women was only the similarity in the fact they’d made choices for themselves.
But his mother had never thought of him—or if she had once, it had been lost with his father. Ari had accepted his help. No, not all of it. But she had not refused him wholesale. She had, as she said, made her choices. She had taken what she felt she could live with. For her pride. Her integrity.
Things he had esteemed her for. Things he had himself and understood, but only when it came to himself. He had not extended that understanding to her, because…
Refusal triggered some primal, childish anger in him. It shamed him, here in the aftermath of that same primal, childish anger. Or maybe it wasn’t so much childish as a result of being a helpless child, traumatized by the violent loss of his father. And never helped. Only told to suffer.
Ari had suffered, too. At her father’s hand. At her mother’s. But she was not married to her misery as his mother was. No, Ari was not miserable. She did not blame the world around her for everything. She did not blame those who could not measure up to her sainthood for her pain.
She had not spent her life building an empire meant only to take down her enemy. Erjon had done terrible things to her and the mother she loved, but Ari had built herself something not just to protect her mother or herself, but because she had a passion for it. Yes, most of her life had been centered on survival, on taking care of her mother, but boxing was the thing she’d carved out ashers.
Zervou came to the realization he had nothing like that. Not until Ari had come into his life and opened up some new part of him. He had lived his life with a dogged commitment to ruining Erjon. No relationships except working ones or superficial ones. Always just out of reach. Never giving. Never taking.
Just like his mother.
Until Ari.
Perhaps he could not understand why her integrity meant he could not fund her dreams, but…she had been right to call him out for lumping her in with his mother.
Mother wasn’t refusing his help. She was choosing her misery. He had always linked them, but Ari had shown him a different way. Something…more balanced, he supposed.
She had told him, outright, hadn’t she? Support and help were not the same. He wanted them to be. But he could not make that the case for anyone. Not his mother. Not Ari. And he had to admit, in this moment, that it was fair.
Perhaps Ari should have been more upfront with him about not wanting his influence in this thing that was her own, but their relationship hadn’t beenreal, had it? Even when it had been, he hadn’t told her. He’d simply told her they would marry. That he enjoyed her. Keeping that careful distance.
Like right now he was telling his mother he would handle things.
He never told her why.
So he looked at her now—standing there with her back to him. Stiff and closed off. But he did not have to be.
“If Father had not been killed, he would be here, holding onto some of these burdens for you. He would have provided for you, as I have tried to do.Thatis what I have tried to do.”
His mother turned slowly, looking at him a bit like he was a ghost. “But your father is gone.”
Zervou sighed. There was no getting through to her. That was the only pillar in her life. Her loss.
He could not fix that for her.
