Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
“I WISH YOU were coming with us,” Jolie said, after a strange sort of breakfast together. Dioni felt...split in two. She wanted nothing more than to tell her friend everything that had happened. All the things that Alceu had said to her earlier—but she didn’t.
Partly because she held on to a little bit of hope that Alceu had been...emotionally overwrought, perhaps. That he would think better of it all as the day wore on.
But even more than that, she felt strongly some things had to be only hers and Alceu’s, even if it hurt. Not hiding from her friend, but keeping faith with her husband.
Even if he wasn’t interested in the role.
“I wish I could too,” she said instead, and rather than try to make up a reason why she couldn’t—something she thought might make her burst into tears—she ran her hands over her belly. “I’m not sure I really fancy giving birth midflight, if I’m honest.”
Not that she was quite there yet.
Jolie only smiled. And later, when she hugged Dioni goodbye, she bent down to kiss her belly. “I can’t wait to meet him. He will be so loved.”
“Every day of his life,” Dioni agreed, feeling emotion flood her eyes.
Then she felt that very specific prickle all over her body, and looked up to see her husband standing there, waiting with Apostolis because of course they were all leaving together. Right now, whether she liked it or not.
She imagined Alceu thought that meant there would be fewer scenes.
Dioni was tempted to throw a fit just to prove him wrong.
But she didn’t.
Because she had dignity , she told herself.
When really, she thought, it was because she had no strategy. Not yet. She had no idea what to do about the line he’d drawn in the sand.
After what had happened with Alceu at the Hotel Andromeda, she hadn’t launched herself into action. Not immediately. First she’d taken to listening to some of the saddest brokenhearted songs she knew, to wallow and then heal. Then, when her period hadn’t come, she’d been something like paralyzed for a week. Two.
Only when she’d started to worry about things like morning sickness and showing had she launched herself into action.
So here, now, she let her brother hug her and give her his usual bossy advice, which she knew full well was his love language. “Make sure you sleep,” he told her, more than once. “And you must eat.”
“Apostolis. It would be difficult for anyone alive to be better fed than I am.”
He looked down at her with affection. “I understand why you didn’t tell me immediately,” he said gruffly. And then he smiled. “See to it that you never do such a thing again.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” she replied, smiling back, though she felt far too emotional.
Apostolis put his arm around Jolie and began walking toward the front door, and there was a part of her that wanted to watch them. To see the evidence of the happiness her friend had claimed they had in the way he bent to kiss her temple, and the way they leaned into each other as they moved.
But all she could really think about was that this was her last private moment with Alceu. Surely he would say something. Surely he would indicate that he’d heard what she’d said, that he knew that she loved him. That she was in love with him, and surely that must mean something —
“The staff has already begun carrying out my instructions,” he told her coolly. “I have put you in the finest cottage, which, I trust, will suit you. It can accommodate the typically sprawling Sicilian family, so I think it will be more than adequate. And the doctors will keep me apprised of the child’s progress.”
Her heart was thumping at her, but what she really didn’t want was that emotion she could feel pricking at the backs of her eyes to come flooding out. He would only take that as evidence to support his case, she knew.
“Are you forbidding me from contacting you?” she asked instead. “Is that why you’re telling me with such significance that the doctors will talk to you?”
And if she stepped back from all this and observed this moment like it was happening to someone else, she supposed it was fascinating, really, the way he could turn himself to stone as he stood there.
“There is no reason for you to contact me.”
“I understand that you have a genetic predisposition to melodrama, Alceu, but this does seem to take it a bit too far, don’t you think?”
And oh, she hoped he would never know how much it cost her to keep her voice calm and sweet.
“I meant what I said, Dioni.” He didn’t use that word , camurria . That insult that she had long since come to think of as the sweetest endearment imaginable. “There will be no more giving in to temptation.”
And when he turned to go, she could have yelled. She could have screamed the castle down around them, maybe. She was sure she had those things inside of her, so she wasn’t sure where the strength to stay quiet came from.
The strength to simply hold his gaze until he dropped it.
The courage to simply stand there, pitiless, and allow him to abandon her and their baby in real time, with no pretense that he wasn’t doing precisely that.
But the trouble with that was that he did it anyway.
And then she was left there, standing in a doorway and clinging to the wall while it seemed the world spun around and around, heedless of how dizzy it made her.
She made herself move after what seemed like an ice age, wandering deeper into the castle, of half a mind to simply lose herself in the libraries again.
But she was intercepted by Concetta.
“If you will come with me,” the housekeeper said, sounding almost apologetic, “I will get you settled into your cottage.”
And once again, she could have fought. But what would it gain her?
So instead it was all a long, slow march out into the forecourt and then through the castle door. Then back along the rocky outcropping with only the music of what she was certain was her mother-in-law’s spiteful laughter on the breeze.
Concetta led her to one of the cottages, though Dioni could see that Alceu had not lied about its size. It was set back from the others, with the more wooded side of the outcropping all to itself, and what looked like gardens left to their own devices. Like me , she thought.
Once she let them lead her inside, the staff bustled all around her, though she could not have said what they were doing. She still had that sense that everything was a blur.
Maybe it was only that she wished it was.
And when she finally jolted awake from whatever daydream had her in its grip, she was screamingly hungry again. She was also alone.
The cottage was bright and lovely and pretty, filled with books and art and perfectly cheerful in every way, which made Dioni want to practice that screaming again. So loud that she might knock that castle down into pebbles. So fierce that it might send this whole outcropping of dark Vaccaro history tumbling down the side of the mountain.
But she did no such thing.
She had spent her whole life being quiet and unassuming, because why attempt to have a bigger personality than the infamous Spyros Adrianakis? Why attempt to compete with a circus like that?
Dioni found herself standing in the living room, her hands folded before her and some sort of strange smile on her face. Some terrible parody of something quiet and unassuming , she supposed.
It reminded her of when she’d first made it to New York. When she’d dismissed all the staff, made grand proclamations about her independence, and finally found herself standing all by herself in the townhouse.
Alone at last.
But back then, she’d had the pregnancy to come to terms with. She’d had all those dreams and daydreams about Alceu. All the various fantasies she’d entertained of seeking revenge, or accepting him back if he apologized, or a thousand other twisted little scenarios that she’d known would never come to pass.
Now she still had her baby on the way, but there were no fantasies attached to it.
She thought of all the things he had said to her. All the words he’d used, and that look on his face, and how stony and distant he had been when he’d left. Dioni supposed she should take all that at face value.
But instead, all she could think was that he was such a liar, because she knew how it felt when they moved together in the dark.
She knew how he groaned out her name.
She knew what it felt like to dance through the heavens while holding on tight to him.
There was no question. He was lying, though she wasn’t sure he was aware of it. Dioni believed that Alceu thought he was protecting her, but it was clear to her that the person he was really protecting was himself.
And Dioni was so sick and tired of being protected that she really did let out a sound that was as close to a scream as she’d ever come.
It didn’t rattle the art on the walls, but it felt good, so she did it again.
And she thought of all the times in her life that she’d cheerfully acted impervious to insult, neglect, or indifference. She thought of her childhood years of staying out of her father’s way on the one hand, and bearing the guests’ intrusive commentary regarding her mother on the other. More, that she had been expected to do those things.
Because Apostolis might have protected her as best he could. But he hadn’t been able to save her.
“He couldn’t save himself,” she muttered out loud.
It had taken Jolie to do that.
Dioni thought of the years, one after the other, on and on, that she had simply carried on and thought she was happy. Maybe she had been, because it hadn’t been a bad life. She’d lived at the hotel. She’d helped with the admin and had occasionally lent a hand in a staff shortage. She’d volunteered in the villages and danced in tavernas in the summers, and she’d gone swimming in the sea whenever the fancy took her.
She had read books as she pleased, and she’d had her best friend right there , and her brother had always remembered to call her to see how she was. The hotel was always packed with guests, some of them wildly interesting, and so there had always been decent conversation, laughter, long walks to look at the stars, and all the rest of the sorts of things that could make any life spectacular.
But all of that paled next to these last weeks, here on this mountain with the man she loved.
Because it was one thing to be happy without knowing that there could be more. It was one thing to play at a life, even such a lovely one. It was another to truly feel alive .
And now she knew the difference.
She thought about her father as she rubbed her hands over the places where her son kicked at her, as hungry as she was. Already she knew that the love she felt for a baby she hadn’t even met yet far exceeded anything her father had ever felt for her. He hadn’t wanted children. He wanted an heir to pass the hotel along to, and so Dioni was nothing to him. A silly thing to flit about, a jewel in his crown, but not a crown he wore often. Or at all.
She thought about her brother, and how it had been so clear to her that Jolie was perfect for him, because she challenged Apostolis. She pushed him. She did not simply accept his magnificence like all of those women he had been linked to in the paper always did.
Or the way his younger sister always had.
And once again, setting a record for annual tears, Dioni cried.
Because she had always been alone, perhaps, but she had never felt that way.
Not until now.
She cried and she cried, until she exhausted herself. After an emergency raid of the kitchen to get some food in her, she sobbed some more. Then she slept on one of the sofas in her new living room and woke sometime in the middle of the night, the moon shining in to fill in all the corners of the room, and perhaps in her, too.
Because she lay there with her eyes swollen, feeling faintly ill and wrung dry, but something like replete .
Dioni took one breath. Another.
She let the moonlight dance all over her, silver and sweet.
Then she shuffled into her small kitchen, drank a lot of water and ate a little bit of food, because the baby needed it.
She went back out to the couch and slept till morning.
And when she woke up that time, she was furious.
Dioni felt nothing but a kind of towering rage, except instead of clouding her, it brought nothing but clarity.
The kind of clarity that felt a great deal like a knife edge.
She wandered around the cottage until she found a suite with her things in it. Then she took a long shower, and took even longer dressing herself. Only then did she begin making her arrangements.
It took a number of phone calls and a heart-to-heart with Concetta, but by the time afternoon rolled around, she was ready.
She walked back over to the castle, breathing in all of these scents that had become so dear to her. The flowers, the trees. She took in the warm sun, the rich earth. The view down the mountain and across the sea. The birds that looped in lazy circles above her, some calling out, some singing.
She walked over to stand near the castle gate and waited for the car to be brought round, and she wasn’t at all surprised when Marcella materialized beside her.
“Running off, are we?” purred the older woman. “I did try to warn you.”
“Were those warnings, Marcella?” Dioni asked. “How funny. They sounded a whole lot more like feverish prophecies to me.”
Her mother-in-law ignored that.
“This is how it begins,” she told Dioni instead, sounding triumphant. “Maybe this time he will chase you, as men do. You will think it is because he cares what happens to you, but you cannot kid yourself in this way. It is the bloodline, always.”
“He thinks his blood is a poison, Marcella,” Dioni pointed out. “So I somehow doubt he’ll be racing about after it.”
Marcella smirked. “Once the child is born, the truth will come out. Perhaps at first you will weep over his temper, because that is all you will see. As time goes on, you will find that you dream about that temper. That you wish you could have it back. Because in its place there will be nothing but the deadening indifference.” She drifted closer, so close that Dioni could smell the perfume she wore like a shield. And could see the faint bit of creping at her neck. “So you will do what you can to get his attention, however and wherever possible. Negative attention, positive attention, it won’t matter. These Vaccaro men are narcotic. Even when you know that it will kill you, you cannot walk away. Even after he dies, you will find yourself engaged in a pitched battle with his name. Tarnishing it as best you can, as if that might haunt him from beyond the grave.”
“Marcella...”
But the older woman laughed. “I tell you, foolish girl, this is how it begins. And I should know. I was you, once. The die is already cast.”
Dioni looked at her mother-in-law. Really looked at her. She tried to see the girl that Marcella must once have been. Pretty, with prospects. A woman who even now, even riddled with bitterness, still dreamed of that prince who might have saved her if she’d chosen him instead of Giuseppe.
And she supposed that she could see exactly how she could become her mother-in-law’s clone. How easy it would be. How comforting, even, to imagine herself forever lost in a battle with her husband. One he did not even have to be alive to play.
Because that felt better than the truth.
She did not laugh, not today. Instead, she moved closer and took her mother-in-law’s hands in hers, ignoring Marcella’s shocked expression and the way she tried to recoil.
“You’re going to have a grandson soon,” she told her, her voice serious and her gaze direct. “He will not care about your behavior from before he was born. What he will want from you is a grandmother . He will not listen to the stories that are told about you. He will deny them if asked, because all he will see when he looks at you is love, Marcella.” The other woman took a breath and held it, and that made Dioni believe that she was actually reaching her. She went with it, squeezing her hands. “That is, if you decide, right now, that you think that’s what he deserves. And I hope you will, because deep down, that’s what you deserve, too.”
“H-how maudlin,” the older woman stuttered, but she did not pull away.
“And I will need a mother,” Dioni told her. She did not break her gaze. “Because I have never had one. I don’t know anything about raising a child, but you do. And for all of this slinking around, muttering dire warnings over the dinner table, and evening gowns before breakfast, your son is a fine man. Whether that’s because of you or in spite of you, it doesn’t matter, does it? You are involved all the same. Imagine, if you will, what it might be like if you helped me.”
And for a moment, then, Marcella looked stricken. She looked away quickly, composing her beautiful face into the mask she preferred. “I’m the least maternal woman alive,” she said, though she sounded something like shaken. “Ask anyone.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Dioni told her fiercely. “ I will care about two things only. What your son thinks of you and what my son thinks of you. All the rest is up to you, Marcella.”
Her mother-in-law stepped back, looking pale, and her breath came too fast. “Fine words indeed when you are running away. You can talk all you like about breaking cycles, but what you’re doing is perpetuating one.”
“I’m not running anywhere,” Dioni told her, quiet and fierce. “Quite the opposite.”
When the car came, she nodded to the older woman, held her gaze a moment too long, and then climbed inside.
In the back seat, her doctor waited. Dioni smiled when she spotted him. “Flying is generally considered to be safe, but an abundance of caution never hurt anyone, I am sure,” he said.
“Wonderful,” she replied, and settled back against the seat, thinking through the next steps that needed to occur for her plan to work the way she wanted it to, proud that it hadn’t taken her weeks this time.
When they landed in Vienna a couple of hours later, she was ready, having dressed herself on the plane.
She took a car to the grand old house that had been converted into some kind of museum in the heart of the Innere Stadt, the center of the old city, and did not allow herself to consider her feelings at all until she was climbing the stairs. Her determination was fueling her more surely than anything else ever could, and she decided that her feelings didn’t matter.
Not until she could share them with the person who had caused them, thank you.
Inside, she offered a dazzling smile to the attendants who waited there in the lobby. She told them who she was and watched them step out of her way, eyes wide as they took in her giant belly.
Dioni walked further into the house, following the gleaming lights and the sound of a string quartet. She allowed herself to be swept up into the glittering, old-world charity ball, the sort that were put on all the time in graceful places like this, comprising a very particular social circle for a certain set of people.
She knew exactly which set, because she recognized some of the faces here. Old school friends. Socialites and celebrities. And, as always at these things, the sort of truly powerful people who did not operate in spheres that ended up in papers because they owned those papers. Lavishly appointed rooms like this were the places where they were instantly recognizable, but not outside in the streets.
But she didn’t care about any of them. What she was looking for was a little knot of people she eventually found in a far corner, having what looked like the sort of friendly conversation that was actually business in a place like this, though it was important for all parties involved to act as if it wasn’t. Genteel negotiating was the only sort allowed in these balls, because outright negotiation would be considered gauche.
Then again, all the same people considered her gauche, too.
It was the hair that she could feel was finding its way loose from the twist she’d put it up in. It was the hem of the dress that she was sure was unsewing itself as she moved, and she had to be careful not to go too fast or it was a certainty that she would do an inelegant header.
Not that anyone would be surprised.
Though she did take some comfort from her lack of elegance. At least she wasn’t that filled with despair tonight.
If this was temper, Dioni decided she liked riding it.
Accordingly, she marched across the ballroom floor. She nodded at the raised eyebrows and the familiar faces. She made no accommodation for her enormous belly and found it gratifying, she could admit, to see the way that people leaped out of her way.
As she moved closer, it was Jolie who looked up and smiled. Because it was Jolie, of course, who had volunteered their whereabouts tonight and had directed Dioni straight to them.
Just as it was Jolie who now took her husband’s arm and held on to it so that as Dioni bore down upon their group, he could not intercede.
They both knew Apostolis well.
“Good evening,” Dioni said merrily as she joined the group, stepping close to her husband and sliding her arm through his. “I’m so sorry to be late.” She could feel the way that Alceu stiffened beside her. She could feel his startled glare on the side of her face. She smiled at the people, who she vaguely recognized as some or other billionaire, his heiress wife, and a set of minor nobles. She smiled even more widely at them. “What a pleasure to meet you all. I am Dioni Vaccaro. Alceu’s apparently secret wife.”