Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Reid
Episode Ten
I watch alone in my apartment with a glass of wine that’s forgotten between my fingers.
The documentary plays. I’ve seen most of this before. What I didn’t see in the information production showed me that morning before the finale, I’ve googled. Late-night searches that made me feel sick. Articles about gladiator training and academic papers on Roman brutality.
But watching it now, seeing it edited and polished and narrated like a true crime episode, makes it feel more real.
More immediate. The information was abstract before—terrible but distant.
This is visceral. These are real men with real faces describing real damage.
This is Sulla’s handiwork presented in HD with dramatic music and professional cinematography.
My hands are shaking. I set down the wineglass before I drop it.
Cassius's face fills my screen. That gentle man who spent years not knowing who he was. "I woke up with nothing. No name, no family, no past. Just the ice and strangers and a world two thousand years from everything I knew. I had to build myself from scratch. That's Sulla's legacy."
The wine turns sour in my stomach. My vision blurs and I realize I'm crying—not quiet tears, but the kind that comes with hitching breaths and a burning throat.
I press my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound even though I'm alone, as if making noise would make this more real.
Cassius's voice continues but I can barely hear it over the rushing in my ears.
That kind man. That sweet-faced, patient man who spent years not knowing who his parents were, who he loved before the ice, what made him laugh as a child.
Years of walking around empty, trying to piece together a self from nothing.
Because Sulla smashed a jar against his head for questioning an order.
The interview ends but I’m still crying, doubled over on my couch with my arms wrapped around my stomach like I can physically hold myself together.
The documentary shows Thrax, Varro, and others. All describing the same man—cruel, efficient, wielding power through fear. Then the footage of Sulla at the sanctuary, isolated and alone. Eating by himself while others laugh together. Walking the grounds like a ghost.
Then they cut to me. My own voice, bright and naive, “I’m starting to think there’s more to him than he shows.”
I want to reach through the screen and shake that version of myself. Tell her to ask questions, demand truth, and protect her heart before it’s too late.
The show cuts between my growing feelings and his terrible past. The body heat scene where we’re falling for each other, juxtaposed with interviews about brutality. The rope bridge where he saves my life, contrasted with descriptions of the lives he destroyed.
Both things are real. Both things are true.
And I still don’t know what to do with that.
My phone rings as the credits roll. Mom.
I almost don’t answer. I’m not ready to talk to anyone, and my mother has always been able to read me in ways I find inconvenient. But she’s been watching too. She knows what tonight’s episode contained, and not answering feels worse than whatever this conversation is going to cost me.
“Honey. We just finished watching.”
I wipe my face with shaking hands. “Mom, I can’t—”
“I know. I’m not calling to tell you what to think.” A pause. “I just didn’t want you to be alone with it.”
That undoes me a little. I pull my knees to my chest and don’t say anything.
“That man loves you,” she says quietly. “You can see it in every frame. The way he looks at you. The way he ran across that bridge.”
“Love doesn’t erase what he did.”
“No. It doesn’t.” She doesn’t argue the point, which surprises me. “But Reid, your father did something unforgivable once. Before you were born. Lied to me about something that mattered. Let me believe a story that wasn’t true for almost two years.”
I sit up. “What?”
“I found out the way you found out. Not from him, from someone else. I was furious. Heartbroken. Certain I was done.” Her voice is careful. Even now, decades later, she’s choosing her words. “I want you to know I understand what you’re feeling. Not just as your mother. As someone who’s been there.”
“What did you do?”
“I left for three weeks. Stayed with Aunt Carol. Decided it was over.” A long pause. “Then I watched him try. Not apologize; he apologized immediately and I didn’t want to hear it. But try. Actually change the behavior that had made the lie possible in the first place. That took a year. Maybe two.”
“And that was enough?”
“I’m not saying it should be enough for you. That’s your decision, and I’ll support whatever you choose.” Her voice firms slightly. “But I am saying that who a person is becoming can matter as much as who they were. And from what I’ve seen on that show, he’s trying.”
I want to say he had decades to practice being cruel. Trying for two years doesn’t balance that. I want to say you don’t know what it felt like to find out in front of cameras, in the middle of a challenge, with no time to process and no privacy to fall apart in. I want to say a lot of things.
What comes out is, “I know.”
Which isn’t agreement. But it isn’t dismissal either.
After we hang up, I sit in the dark for a long time. The television is still on, the blue light moving across the walls.
Eleven weeks ago I walked away from him in a hotel hallway and said I didn’t want to see him… maybe forever. I meant it when I said it. I still don’t know if I mean it now.
What I know: Cassius lost years of himself because of what Sulla did.
What I also know: the footage didn’t lie. The rope bridge didn’t lie. The way he looked at me didn’t lie.
Both things are true. I can hold both things and still not know what to do with them.
Two weeks until the reunion. Fourteen days.
I turn off the television and go to bed and lie here in the dark, not sleeping, thinking about the space between who someone was and who they’re choosing to be, and whether that space is something you can cross or just something you learn to live with.
I don’t have an answer yet.
But I’m still asking the question.
Which might be something.