Fated Blades

He shook his head. In retrospect, the whole thing seemed idiotic.

“Drewery proved a massive liability,” he continued. “Everything he touched was tainted.”

“And Cassida?” Ramona asked.

He looked at the stars above his head, feeling the familiar unpleasant tension flood his muscles. “I’m a disappointment to her.”

“How could you possibly be a disappointment?” She seemed insulted on his behalf.

“I thought we’d covered expectations before the wedding. Turns out that I wasn’t taken seriously. Cassida and her mother viewed me as a fixer-upper. A man who with proper guidance and direction would become everything they wanted.”

Her eyebrows came together. “And what did they want?”

“Something completely different.”

She waited for him to elaborate.

He took a moment to find the right words. He never discussed it with anyone. He never planned to discuss it, either, and putting the tangled mess of thoughts and emotions into complete sentences took effort. It hurt.

“I didn’t understand what the problem was at first, so when Cassida began complaining, I tried to make her happy. She said she wanted to do something worthwhile. I offered her a position with the company, but she refused it. She decided to do charitable work, so I gave her a budget. She spent some of it, but she was growing more and more unhappy. Looking back at it, there were clues, small things that at the time seemed insignificant. She complained that someone else got a seat on some charity’s board instead of her. I commiserated.”

He realized his voice was rising. He’d bottled the frustration for so long it was breaking through. He forced his voice into an even tone.

“She wanted me to attend a dinner with a provincial senator, but I was too busy. I told her to go by herself. She threw a fit, the first of many. She couldn’t go by herself, I had to be there. Why couldn’t I understand such a simple thing?”

Ramona shook her head. “She did comprehend the concept of running a family enterprise?”

“Only when it came to her family business.” His words dripped with bitterness. His attempts to achieve detachment were clearly failing.

“Politics?”

“Yes. She decided to sleep separately.” He paused. It still stung after all this time. He’d thought he was over it. “I gave her space. The longer this went on, the more I felt that there was something I was missing. Finally, she lost her patience and explained it to me.”

“Oh, I can’t wait,” Ramona said.

“Being the wife of a kinsman, even a prosperous one, wasn’t prestigious enough. Cassida wanted to be married to a man with ‘power.’”

Ramona burst out laughing.

Suddenly he felt lighter, as if her laugh had somehow crystallized the absurdity of that declaration and now it was all he could see.

Matias grinned back. “Her perception of power was shaped by her upbringing. For all of her outward sophistication, Cassida is rather sheltered. Her charity efforts were a way for her to enter the upper echelons of society, but she didn’t get the kind of reception her mother enjoyed. The best spots went to the spouses of politicians. To be valued, to be important, she had to offer useful access, and nobody who mattered to her wanted access to me. I had to become somebody, a man who could grant favors and pull strings. She wanted to make an entrance and have every head turn toward her.”

“Did she ever ask you what you wanted? Did you communicate to her that doing what she demanded would make you miserable?”

“Yes. I’m getting to that. About six months ago Drewery invited us for a family dinner, during which it was explained to me that a junior senator position was about to come open and I was guaranteed to take it. I told them I wasn’t interested. Cassida’s mother demanded to know when I was going to grow up and start doing what was best for everyone. I told her that if she spoke like that to me again, it would be the last time we would ever meet face to face. And then I walked out. Cassida caught up with me at our house. You know that saying, ‘flew into a rage’? Well, that night I got a visual demonstration of what it actually meant. She screamed, she threw things, she cried. I had embarrassed her in front of her parents. I was useless and stupid. And ungrateful for all the strings her father had pulled. She hated every moment she had to stay in the room with me because I was so unbearably dense that she wanted to hit me until I started bleeding.”

“She’s psychotic.” Ramona shook her head. “If she had done it to Gabriel, he would have given her anything she wanted. He isn’t built for that kind of relentless pressure. He would have just folded and gone along.”

He gave her a look.

“Oh.”

They shared a few minutes of silence.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“After she was done screaming, I told her that I’d chosen my path. I had responsibilities and goals. I worked hard at making my family safe and prosperous. I wasn’t a child. I didn’t need to be led or fixed. I wasn’t about to sacrifice the future of my family and my own peace of mind to please her or her family. If she wanted the trappings of power she so badly craved, it was up to her to achieve it on her own. I would support her in that pursuit. She told me that wasn’t what she wanted and that I was a horrible human being. I told her to expect divorce papers in the morning.”