Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #1-4

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

S ICILY WAS A wild tangle of mysteriously treacherous and beautiful mountains, gleaming seas in all directions, and old, half-ruined cities that whispered of ancient secrets yet to be uncovered.

And yet everyone Dioni encountered made it clear that she was going to be unhappy in such a magical place.

They’d flown directly from an airfield outside Manhattan and she’d pretended not to notice the way that Alceu had ushered her onto his waiting jet as if he’d imagined that, given the opportunity, she might abscond at the first opportunity and charge off into the greater New York area.

She had almost pointed out to him that she would be running nowhere, whether she wanted to or not, because she was six months pregnant .

But instead, she’d found it almost endearing that he’d imagined it was a possibility.

The whole flight over, he was brusque and broody, muttering about the work he had to do and pounding away at his laptop in what she felt was a largely performative manner. Because she knew his business partner—her brother—and was fully aware that the work they did to rehabilitate faltering companies involved other employees and therefore did not necessarily require his hand on the wheel at every moment.

If I had to guess, she had written in another letter on her mobile that she would not send, I would tell you that this is Alceu flustered. Maybe it’s what men do when they are beset by feelings. Because anyone else would sit here and think that he was a wall of granite , but I know better. Because I know that whatever I felt inside, he felt it too. You might think that’s nothing more than the rambling of a delusional virgin who went ahead and got herself pregnant straight out of the gate with the most inappropriate person possible.

She had considered that for a few moments, sitting there as the plane winged its way across the Atlantic. She had thought about Jolie and the miseries she’d suffered while married to Dioni’s father. And how different it was, that thing that sparked between Jolie and Apostolis, no matter what the two of them had believed at first.

Then again, maybe you would understand all too well.

Once they made it to Sicily, they landed on an airstrip close to the sea. Dioni stood on the tarmac, breathing in the scented breeze that made her think of deep greenery and long swims into summer evenings. Then she was packed into an all-terrain vehicle that Alceu himself drove, navigating old, winding roads as if he’d carved them into the mountainside himself.

For a long while she could see the sea, the same sea, more or less, that eventually found its way to the island where she’d grown up. Then, as the road wound around and around, it disappeared. There was only the thick vegetation on all sides while everything got steeper and more treacherous and beside her, Alceu seemed to turn to stone.

Until, at last, he drove them out of the woods and all the way up a rocky outcropping that was boldly thrusting itself off the side of the mountaintop, unencumbered by any sense of its own danger. There was only one road, with cottages and outbuildings scattered along the way in a copse of trees here and a field there, but all she could focus on was that grand castle—really more of a fortress—that stood tall and imposing right there on the furthest edge.

The pictures from the drones had not done the place justice.

It was perhaps the most dramatic building she’d ever seen, and that was saying something when she’d grown up in a very famous hotel, but she suspected Castello Vaccaro had been built for an actual, practical purpose. It looked impregnable and easily defended. The approach from the road left them out in the open as they approached the battlements. Inside the thick walls, she assumed there would be the sorts of amenities that one expected from an old hereditary estate like this.

But it was clear that this particular approach had been built to impress. Or perhaps intimidate was the right word.

Alceu, who had maintained a dark silence the whole way, chose to carry on with it as he drove her up to the walls, then in through the gates that opened at his approach. Then closed—ominously—behind them. He parked in the forecourt, throwing himself out of the vehicle and stalking around the front to help her out, something she was forced to accept as she was too unwieldy on her own to get herself out her door before he could get there.

Once she was standing with her feet on the stones, he stared down at her. His eyes too dark, his mouth a hard line. And she could not begin to fathom the look on his face.

She thought he was about to say something, but instead he turned, then inclined his head abruptly. That was how she knew that someone else was approaching.

Because you are standing in a castle and the only thing you see is still him , she chided herself.

“Welcome home, signore ,” came a stiff voice.

Dioni turned to see a woman she assumed must be a housekeeper, given the uniform she wore, standing before them with a disapproving look on her face.

“Concetta, this is Dioni Adrianakis,” Alceu told her. Dioni watched the woman’s eyes fall immediately to her belly, then rise again, narrowed. “We will be married shortly.”

The woman crossed herself and muttered something in Sicilian that Dioni did not have to know to understand meant that she thought terrible mistakes had been made. By Alceu himself, if her frown was any indication.

Oddly, she found that almost endearing.

Because, as she’d had ample time to think about on the plane ride, her expectation when she’d thought realistically about the dreams she’d had that involved marrying this man had returned to the same theme. That the disappointment and dismay at such a union would move in the opposite direction. She’d been certain that the general reaction would have been that she was not good enough for him. That she, in all her usual disarray, would in fact be a disheveled stain upon the Vaccaro name.

If she looked at it that way, this was all nothing short of delightful.

He was the mistake.

Clearly his housekeeper thought so. “I will show you to your rooms,” Concetta said to Dioni, shooting that narrow gaze at Alceu. “I can only hope you know what you’re doing.”

“ I certainly don’t know what I’m doing,” Dioni confided to the other woman, who looked shocked that she was speaking to her. “But I hope it involves food.”

Other staff came out then to handle the luggage, all of them staring at Dioni and frowning at Alceu and muttering things beneath their breath that they clearly wanted Alceu to hear. Dioni, meanwhile, wondered why none of them seemed to notice that the sky was a marvelous blue above them. The sunlight danced down into the forecourt, making the stone of this fortress gleam. They were all acting like it was a dark and terrible place when, as far as she could see, it was beautiful.

Even more beautiful than it looked in pictures.

“I hope you’re going to give me a room with a view,” she said merrily as the staring continued and Concetta made no move to lead her off to any rooms. “Not something in the dungeon.”

Nobody laughed at that, so she had to laugh herself.

“There are no dungeons,” Alceu said in a repressive sort of way, though that only made her laugh more. “Most people are wise enough to realize that the whole of Mount Vaccaro is its own prison, long before they make it to the castello. ”

“Of course,” Dioni murmured, though she still couldn’t control the laughter bubbling inside of her. “My mistake.”

What she really wanted was to ask him if she was going to get to spend time in his bedroom, but she didn’t. Somehow she imagined that he would not be receptive to that line of conversation, especially not with an audience.

But she hardly saw the point of marrying the man who’d gotten her pregnant if she couldn’t touch him.

She stopped worrying about that as Concetta, responding to a lifted brow from Alceu, finally led her inside. Because the castle was beautiful from the outside, but she knew full well that the interiors of such places could better resemble the Dark Ages.

But this place was even more gleaming and inviting within.

“Was the castle a hovel, or something?” she asked as they walked through an exquisitely rendered gallery into a hall that was filled with light, making it seem as if they were part of the endless sky.

Concetta frowned at her. “A hovel? Hardly. This has been the home of the Vaccaro family for centuries and they have always liked their comforts.”

“It’s just that if it’s a prison, it’s an awfully lovely one,” Dioni pointed out. “I can’t say that I’m an expert on incarceration, but I’m quite certain I have never seen so many Italian masters gracing the walls of any local jail.”

The older woman glared at her. “Just because something is pretty does not mean that it does not have knives beneath,” she said, in tones of the direst warning. “As you will find out soon enough, when you meet the signore ’s mother.”

“His mother?” Dioni was captivated. “I don’t know why I imagined that Alceu was an orphan.”

“He would be better off.” Concetta sniffed.

And she set off on a twisting route through the castle, delivering Dioni at last to a set of rooms that no one on the whole of the planet would consider anything but gorgeous. Concetta left her there so she could look around— and perhaps freshen up , the other woman had suggested, which indicated that Dioni was as bedraggled as ever.

She didn’t bother to confirm the inevitable in any of the dizzying mirrors.

Instead, she took in the high ceilings and the windows that were like doors, opening up onto the walkable, crenelated walls that functioned more like terraces with parapets set at each corner. She drifted out to stand outside, feeling the wind against her face. Her room was almost at the very edge of the cliff—or more accurately, the place where the castle and the cliff were one. As she looked out, she could see the lush tangle of greenery they had driven through to get here, all the way up the side of the steep slope, so thick that there was no hint of any road. In the distance, the blue of the Mediterranean beckoned, as if to remind her that she was not so far from home, after all.

“We can do anything, you and I,” she murmured to the baby she carried, rubbing her hand over a mighty little kick from within. “Just so long as we can see the water.”

So she felt something like fortified when she turned around and saw what had to be the most beautiful woman she had ever beheld, lounging in the floor-to-ceiling window she’d used as her door to get outside.

She was strikingly voluptuous. And wanted everyone to know it, Dioni could see, based on the skintight gown she wore though it was barely midday. Her hair was jet-black with a dramatic wing of white that swooped low over one eye. Her eyes were a very familiar fathomless bit of darkness, and her lips—which might have seemed stern if unadorned—were painted a shocking red.

“You must be Alceu’s mother,” Dioni said.

Ruby-red lips pursed. “And you must be the sacrificial lamb, led bleating to the altar.”

“Will there be bleating?” Dioni asked. “Things must be different in Sicily. I grant you, a proper Greek wedding certainly has its own interesting rituals. But no bleating, as far as I’m aware.”

The woman moved with serpentine grace. She came closer, flicking her dark gaze all over Dioni, until she felt as if she’d suffered some sort of clinical examination.

“It will all end in pain,” the woman said. Darkly. “You will see soon enough.”

“I’m Dioni,” Dioni told her in as friendly a tone as possible. “And you are...?”

“I am Marcella Maria Vaccaro,” the woman told her, with the sort of enunciation that suggested that trumpets should have sounded. “Alceu is my son, and so I know him as only a mother can. He is pretending he is something other than what he is, and he does so to his detriment. You will see. Like it or not, you will know the truth.”

“The truth of what?” Dioni rubbed her hand over her belly at another insistent kick. “Your grandchild? We only have about three months to go, and then the baby will be here. Like a truth all on its own.”

Marcella moved closer still, but did not regard Dioni’s belly with any maternal warmth. On the contrary, she looked as if she thought the child might reach out and bite her.

“I always knew that he would fall, as they all fall.” She shook her head so her dark hair slithered this way and that. “Fate comes for us all, in the end.”

She looked expectantly at Dioni. Dioni smiled back.

Marcella let out a small huff, turned on her heel, and slunk off.

And Dioni did, then, indulge in the faintest bit of worry she’d made a terrible mistake.

But she dismissed it.

Because there was no changing course, and anyway, there was far too much to see, do, and absorb over the next few days.

Alceu made himself scarce—though in fairness, that was easy enough to do in such a large, rambling place. She would get the sense of him, like a disturbance in the air—a kind of rippling sensation, or possibly heat—lingering in otherwise empty parts of the castle. As if he had been there only moments before and the intensity of his presence remained.

She would find herself breathing a little faster, a little deeper. Her heart would set itself to hammering. And it would take her some while to get her breath back under control.

Dioni spent her first day or two simply exploring. She did her best to build a map for herself. Like how best to get from one side of the castle to the other when there was a courtyard in between. It was true that she had grown up in a kind of luxury, and that even her school had adhered to standards far beyond the reach of many. But this was certainly her first time in an actual castle .

It was difficult not to act like she was some sort of princess, though she was far rounder and less nimble than the singing, dancing princesses she’d loved to watch when she was young.

Then again, Concetta and the rest of the staff were universally dour and disapproving, which only made her more inclined to act as if she was a one-woman musical.

“The acoustics of this are marvelous,” Dioni said on one occasion, finding herself in what had once been a grand ballroom. She tried out a few bars of the first princess song that came to mind, about letting it go, and sighed happily. “I can only imagine what it must sound like with an orchestra here. Singer. Dancers going this way and that.”

When she swirled back around to face the housekeeper and the two maids who were accompanying her today—with her arms out wide, like a proper princess would do mid-song—they were all staring at her with the same expression on their faces.

Discouraging expressions, it went without saying.

“People do not sing here,” Concetta said oppressively.

One of the younger women bit back a laugh. “What would there be to sing about?”

The other one had a sort of musing look on her face. “It would be one thing if it was a dirge, don’t you think? Or a proper elegy.”

Dioni had laughed. At them. “I think this place could do with a whole lot more singing,” she told them. “And I certainly like to sing. So I suppose we will all have to come to terms with that reality.”

“It will change you,” Concetta assured her, and the other women nodded. “The Vaccaros are creeping poison and none survive it intact.”

The housekeeper appeared to be hale and hearty, and had been in the employ of the family for at least the last forty years. Suggesting that it was a slow-creeping poison, indeed. But after that interaction she took it upon herself to take her tours alone. She found the libraries—a whole set of them, one linking to the next. They were arranged around a kind of atrium that was filled with fruit trees, bright and bursting with blooms and fruit. She stood in the very center, her face tipped up to the soft morning light, and wondered how anyone could find this place anything but magical.

When she opened her eyes, she thought she saw movement high above, as if someone was up on those battlements. Or had been, only a moment ago, looking down.

Not someone , she corrected herself. Him.

Something inside her wound tight and hummed, and she found herself daydreaming—again—about that kiss in New York. His mouth on hers, so demanding. So marvelously incapacitating.

It was a wonder she could think about anything else.

And she couldn’t see anyone up above her now, but she knew, all the same.

Alceu was not as immune to her as he pretended.

Or anyway, she amended, he came to look at her. Who could really say if that was an immune response or not?

She picked her way back through the series of libraries. One was stuffed with novels. Another was full of carefully arranged reference books and a wide, round table in the middle, sporting a map of the world with Sicily placed dead center. She took her time in the next, a bright, museum-like space featuring precious first volumes in seven languages, all set behind glass doors that indicated these books were to be admired, not loved.

It was then, suddenly, that she became aware of someone else in the room.

She could admit that when she looked up, her heart leaped, and she hoped—

But it was not Alceu.

It was, once again, his mother.

“It is a good thing you like a library, I suppose,” Marcella said. She was dressed similarly to the first time Dioni had seen her. It was well before noon, yet she wore an evening gown that appeared to have been painted onto the generous curves of her body. Dioni did not have to be an expert on fashion to recognize that the bold jewelry she wore was not exactly appropriate for the morning.

To say nothing of her vampire lips, still in that shocking red.

“I love libraries,” Dioni said brightly. “And this house has so many to choose from. It would take me a lifetime to read my way through.”

“That is about what you can expect.” Marcella drifted in, casting a derisive sort of look at one glass case, then another. “A Vaccaro wife is little more than a collector’s item. Chosen to sit aside, off on a shelf, good for a bit of breeding, and then left to her own devices. And you have already accomplished the first part of the business.”

Dioni had the urge to hold her belly, as if to protect the baby from Marcella, but that didn’t make any sense. It was only words. “That sounds like a lovely life. Books, my baby, endless solitude. I have to say, since everyone has been at pains to tell me how terrible it is here since I arrived, I did expect something a bit more onerous.”

Marcella sniffed. “You are so optimistic. But then, you are very young.”

“I’m not that young,” Dioni protested.

“It would not matter if you were eighteen or eighty,” Marcella declared, though she, herself, appeared something like ageless. “These walls are a curse to all. You will find out, child. Like it or not.”

And by the time she vamped back off to wherever she’d come from—like, perhaps, a crypt—Dioni could acknowledge that she was becoming ever so slightly tired of all these proclamations.

She was still thinking about that later that very same day as she enjoyed yet another meal all by herself. Today she was trying a selection of Sicilian delicacies like cheesy arancini , an aubergine caponata , and pasta con le sarde out on her formidable wall terrace with the steep mountainside and the sea in the distance as company. Every bite was a symphony, fresh and perfect, and then she glanced up to see Alceu there at last.

And every time she saw him it was like the first time.

Dioni told herself that she was getting used to those ripples he left behind him, like a wake, waves crashing into her and riptides carrying her away though he was nowhere in sight.

But she was not used to him . To the simple fact of his presence, and how it both enticed and overwhelmed her. At once.

He was dressed as formally here, in his own home, as she had ever seen him anywhere else. She wanted to ask him about that. She wanted him to tell her if he even knew that he did these things, but other topics were a little too heavy on her mind.

“Is there a particular reason that every person I’ve encountered here over the last two days, and specifically your mother, has gone out of their way to tell me how terrible it is?” she asked.

Without much heat, because the arancini were little balls of ricotta and rice, fried to perfection, and it was impossible to work up a temper with such goodness on her tongue.

“I told you,” Alceu replied in that dark, brooding way of his, as if they weren’t standing here draped in golden sunshine with the hint of the sea in the air. “This is a place of darkness.”

Dioni stared at him. She kept staring and then tilted her head, just slightly, and let her gaze go with it to take in the sky above. The view. The expansive brightness in every direction, cascading down the steep mountainside and stretching out across the Mediterranean.

Then she shifted her gaze back to him. “Yes,” she agreed. “The darkest.”

His brow creased at that, but he did not come any closer. He stayed where he was, standing in the doorway in a manner that she would describe as stiff if it was anyone else. But he was not stiff . He was Alceu and he might have been still, but he was also impossibly graceful, even wrapped in his usual forbidding cloud.

“My doctors will be arriving shortly,” he told her after a moment. “They will perform the necessary examination and blood test so that we can determine both if the baby is healthy, and that it is mine.”

She knew that she should have been offended at that. Maybe she was, a little bit. “Is there some doubt?”

But the truth was, a larger part of her was something like tickled that he imagined her life was exciting enough to allow for the possibility of two lovers. Or even more, for that matter. Not for the first time in her life, she wondered what sort of person she would have been if she’d been adventurous. If she’d set off when she was done with school and tossed herself headfirst into the kind of scrapes and mistakes and wild, impractical joys that so many of her classmates had.

Her trouble was, she had always thought that while those stories sounded so exciting when told to her later, the truth of them always seemed to involve sticky nightclubs, gritty, packed beaches in places like overrun Ibiza, and deeply regrettable nights that turned into long, nauseatingly hungover mornings.

It had always seemed a lot more fun to stay home.

But that didn’t make it any less entertaining to imagine herself a different sort of woman. And better yet, to imagine that Alceu thought she was just such a woman. She decided to take the entire line of questioning as a compliment.

“It is a matter of legalities,” he told her darkly.

“I fully understand,” she assured him, with a wave of her hand. “After all, it makes absolutely perfect sense that after having waited all those years to lose my virginity, I would take the loss of it as a starting pistol and hare off into a sea of men, sampling every single one of them that I encountered.”

“New York City is not exactly known as a place of quiet retreat and contemplation,” he replied. Coolly.

“I’m touched that you think I’m so energetic.” She rolled her eyes and decided she would, in fact, have another arancini . “But by all means, let’s make sure that everything is nice and tidy and legal.”

“I have already had all the documents drawn up.” Alceu’s gaze moved over her as she chewed, then swallowed. His frown deepened, but she thought she saw a flash of that heat she recognized. Her body reacted as if he’d touched her. “Once the doctors have presented me with the results, I expect that we will both sign, and we can then marry. I have the priest ready to go, tomorrow morning.”

“I thought this would all be a process.” Dioni ordered her own body to behave. It did not. “Don’t banns have to be read, sacraments discussed, conversions suggested?”

“I think you know that the rules are not the same for those who can afford to change them,” Alceu told her. “A sad but true fact of the world.”

“So, if I’m following,” she said, staring at the bright, fresh fruits that made her second plate so happy, “the intention was to end your bloodline with you so that you could make certain that no more abuses of power occurred. Unless and until you discovered that you could use that power for your own whims.”

“Yes, Dioni,” Alceu said, and this time, there was something in his voice that made her shiver into a kind of watchful stillness, different from that other kind that glittered her up and changed everything. “You’ve caught me. I am, like all of my ancestors I so despise, little more than a hypocrite. Nonetheless, we’ll be married in the morning.”

“This is all very romantic,” she said after a moment, and it was more difficult than before to find that lighthearted tone. But she managed it. She popped a bit of the fruit into her mouth and told herself that the first hit of tart sweetness was just the serotonin booster she needed. “My heart is aflutter.”

She thought he would turn and stalk off at that, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved closer, coming out from the shadows of the castle into the bright, direct light on the terrace.

And he kept coming until he stopped at the edge of the table, so that she had to crane her neck back to look up at him.

Not that doing so was a hardship, but it didn’t help her settle any.

She was sure that he could see the way her pulse beat hard in her neck. The way her eyes blazed a bit, because she couldn’t seem to muster up any other kind of response when he was near. Or maybe it was simply that she had been building towards seeing him these past couple of days, ever since walking away from him in that forecourt. She’d been sensing him in empty rooms. Imagining him up above her in fragrant, peaceful courtyards.

Maybe part of her still believed this was all a dream.

He glared down at her as if he was a breath away from a full-on scowl, so dark and forbidding was his expression, as he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a small box. Then he snapped it open, placing it on the table between them.

Dioni took her time looking away from the dark magic of his gaze, down to the mosaic top of the table. Where there was a ring nestled in the dark velvet box.

She stared at it.

Not because she didn’t recognize the fact that it was a ring, or understand what it must represent. She hadn’t thought there would be rings. In this strange little situation of theirs, she hadn’t thought about rings at all.

But the presence of one, here before her so unexpectedly, made the enormity of what was happening hit home.

“Does it not suit you?” Alceu asked, and his voice sounded...frozen. “I’m certain I can find something more to your taste.”

He reached out as if to snatch the ring back and she moved without thinking it through, slapping her hand down to cover the whole box. So that when he went to take it back, he grazed her hand instead.

And that was a whole different kind of fire, flaring to life inside of her. And jumping between them, she could tell. She could see it in the way his dark eyes gleamed.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” She lifted her palm and peered at the ring again. “I doubt there is anyone alive who wouldn’t like so many diamonds in one place.”

He let his extended arm drop to his side, though she was sure that he felt as caught in this bright little fire of theirs as she was. That he was just as unable to do anything at all but feel the same burn inside, and remember.

“It was my mother’s,” he told her.

And this time, she could call his voice—his whole demeanor—the very definition of stiff .

She smiled at him, then down at the ring. “Is it poisonous?”

And she watched as something perilously close to a smile moved over his stern mouth, then disappeared. Making her want nothing so much as to chase it, to bring it back, to bask in it some more.

“A reasonable question,” he agreed, and it felt like warmth, this quiet little moment between them. “But I assure you, it is not. This is the first ring my father gave her and it was little worn. It has been passed down in my family for generations. Almost universally, its owners remove it, usually in fits of rage. It has been thrown from the battlements. It has gone down more than one drain. And yet it always finds its way back.”

“So it is less a gesture toward a harmonious and fruitful marriage, and more an introduction to a family curse.” Dioni reached in and picked it up before he could follow the family tradition with this ring, as she suspected he wanted to. That frown on his face seemed to suggest that a good toss from the walls was imminent.

“What it is, camurria , is tradition,” he told her darkly. “For good or for ill.”

She held the ring between her thumb and forefinger, looking between its shimmering intensity and his.

“No bended knee?” she asked softly, from a daring place she would have said did not exist inside of her.

If asked, she would have said there was no possibility she would ever be bold enough to tease anyone. Especially not this man. But she had already experienced his thunder. His wildfire. All those flashes of lightning, all that danger and rumbling.

She told herself she was prepared.

First, there was that stark astonishment all over his face. Then the arrogant rise of his brow.

And then, to her amazement, he held her gaze—stern and forbidding—and sank to one knee.

It should have looked silly on him. A man so powerful, so austere and contained, making such a universal gesture of obeisance.

But this was Alceu.

On him, kneeling down only made him look more powerful.

He reached over and took the ring from her. Then he took her hand, and she didn’t know if she was frozen solid, or paralyzed, or simply in such disbelief that this was actually happening that every system in her body was trying to shut itself down.

All she could do was stare as he held her hand in his and smoothly slid the ring into place.

“You will be my wife,” he said with great portent, his voice seeming to echo deep in her bones. “May God have mercy on both our souls.”

And that did it.

That broke the spell and Dioni laughed, tossing her head back while she did it, and when she looked at him again there was a different sort of arrested expression on his face.

A different gleam in his gaze altogether.

“Really, Alceu,” she said. “You might want to consider opening a line of greeting cards. Surely the world is desperate for this level of sentimentality. I am swept away.”

She thought he would rise quickly, but he stayed where he was. It was as if he spent half of his life on his knees and found it comfortable. And he stared at her in that same fulminating way, as if he could see straight through her, to the darkest recesses of her soul.

Her trouble was, she wouldn’t mind if he could.

“You will be my wife,” he told her, more intently this time. “And it is not the lark you seem to imagine it, Dioni. For one thing, you will be the object of pity the world over.”

“If you say so.” She shrugged when his brow creased. “I think you’re drastically underestimating your appeal.”

“I am not a cruel man,” he told her, with that same intensity. “But cruelty is in my blood, my bones.”

“So you have said,” she murmured. “In a great many ways, though you have not specified what sort of cruelty you mean.”

He seemed taken aback by that, as if it should have been obvious. As if the cruelty of his bones and blood should have been evident at a glance. “When I was a young boy I became enamored of the chickens in the yard. The cook kept them for eggs, but I liked them. I suppose you could say I considered them friends.”

Dioni found that her throat was constricted as she tried to imagine Alceu as a small boy, playing with chickens, of all things—and as she tried to imagine that, she was also trying to ward off her sense of foreboding.

“My father threw one of his dinner parties,” Alceu continued. “I was not usually permitted to take part in them, but that night he insisted that I get dressed and attend.” His eyes seemed to sear straight through her. “Can you guess what he served?”

“Alceu...” she murmured.

“He told the whole party that it was important to teach children the circle of life,” he told her in that same remote tone with his eyes blazing. “But even then, I knew the truth. I knew that he didn’t care about life lessons . He found a way to hurt me, so he did. That was the lesson. That is who raised me, Dioni. There was only one way that I knew to make certain that no part of him would ever be passed on.” That fire in him seemed to reach higher, though he did not move. “Alas.”

And she wanted to say something comforting to him, but she was certain that he would not be receptive to it. She nodded sagely instead. “I will make a note. No chickens.”

Alceu did not laugh, but then, she had not thought that he would. He scowled, and she fancied that it was a slightly less ferocious version than usual. “I can only try my best not to model the behavior I witnessed all of my life,” he told her with all of that intense dignity of his. “It was never my intention to lay a finger on you, yet here we are. Neither did I ever wish to have a child to bear the burden of the bloodline. Still, I will do what I must to give you some semblance of the life you deserve, and to do all that is possible to make certain that our child is nothing like the rest of the Vaccaros. It is the least I can do after permitting things to get to this stage.”

She realized her hand was still in his, and she no longer liked it as much as she had, so she it snatched back. “Yes, of course. You were simply the tide that rolled in and swept me out to sea. I had nothing to do with it. I was barely there.”

He rose then, another quiet feat of grace and offhanded athleticism. No one should be able to move like that, she thought. It was simply unfair.

Particularly when she wasn’t happy with him.

“I owe you an apology,” he said with terrific formality that made her want nothing so much as to thump him one. “I should not have kissed you in New York. I take the blame entirely. It sets the wrong example.”

“Once again, you seem to be under the impression that I was not involved,” Dioni pointed out. Perhaps from between her teeth. “That is not how I remember it.”

“The physical part of our relationship is over,” Alceu told her then, looking down the length of his body to where she was sitting, as if he knew full well that he was delivering a blow. “I hope you like the rooms that have been made available to you. If you do not, you may choose from any other apartments in the castle. Any but mine.”

She considered that for a moment, the breeze that teased at her face only reminding her that she was flushed. That his very presence did that to her, but he was acting like that didn’t matter.

“I’m not sure what’s made you imagine that I’m a good candidate for a nonsexual marriage,” she said, as carefully as she could. When she could hardly hear herself over the frantic pounding of her heart. “But I am not.”

“You are whatever I say you are,” he replied, starkly enough that she sucked in a breath. “I am sorry if that offends you, but it is the truth. And I did warn you. This is a prison, and in a prison, not a single one of us gets to do as we choose. You’ll see.”

Then he stood there, as if waiting for her to have some kind of explosive reaction—and maybe that was the reason why she bit it back.

Instead she curled her fingers tight, feeling the ring on her finger. A hard, cold intrusion for all that it still glittered and caught the sun.

When she still said nothing, he nodded as if they had come to some agreement, and then turned and headed back inside.

And Dioni had no idea if he lurked in there to watch her reaction or not, but she had to assume that he did. Because she thought that she would rather die than give him the satisfaction of watching her react to the bomb he’d just dropped on her.

She shifted her thumb in her fist so that she could wrap her fingers around it and play with her ring at the same time. She let her mind race around as it would. There was no point having fights with him when he so clearly wanted them, and certainly not now, right before their wedding.

Because Dioni knew that they would be signing those documents tonight. She had never been that woman he seemed to imagine she could have been. She had only and ever been his.

She also knew that she would marry him tomorrow, no matter what nonsense he came up with in the meantime.

Deep in that still place inside her, bright and warm, she knew.

So she sat there, slicked through with temper and longing and yet no second thoughts, and made herself smile out at the view as if none of this hurt at all.

Because he was going to fall in love with her any moment now.

He was .