Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #1-4

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

A LCEU COULD FEEL too many dark thoughts pressing upon him, coming in fast, but he kept them at bay.

He could tell that Dioni was not sleeping, though she was lying there beside him, quietly enough. He found he couldn’t drift off himself. Instead, they lay there together, in the embrace of darkness all around, and he knew that he should be awash in regret. Recrimination.

The usual self-flagellation that followed his loss of control—something that only happened with this woman.

But he couldn’t quite get there. Not just yet.

He shifted beside her, stroking the heat of her belly with his palm. When she looked over at him, he traced the shape of her lips, something tugging at him inside when they curved. Then he moved, rolling her with him so that he could lift her up and carry her.

“I am far too heavy to be carted around like this,” she said, but she looped an arm around his neck and held on while he proved her wrong.

“If I cannot carry my wife and child, what kind of husband am I?” He meant that lightly, or he thought he did. But his voice came out far darker than he intended, blending in with the insistent press of the night outside.

And he could feel all the things he didn’t want to start thinking begin to turn into words, then bite at him, but he didn’t want them. Not now.

Not yet.

He carried her through the dark bedroom and did not turn toward the bathroom suite. Instead, he carried her outside to the battlements. Out on a wide part of the wall, as part of his renovation of the castle, he had put in an expansive outdoor shower. It was more properly several showerheads, there where the dark seemed closer than it was and the stars far brighter. When the water poured out, soft and warm, it was something like erotic.

“Who would have thought that a man so stern and uncompromising was secretly sensualist,” Dioni murmured as he worked up a thick, soapy lather on her skin. He used his own hands, smoothing his way over every part of her voluptuous form.

As if he was not so much washing her as committing her to memory.

And there was something about what she’d called him—stern, uncompromising—that sat on him wrong, though he knew that he went out of his way to appear to be both of those things. That was how he wanted the world to see him. An upright man of fierce morals, despite his name.

It was that she had called him that, he understood. That she saw him in that way, when for her, he had already bent far more than he had ever imagined he might.

But he did not allow himself to pursue that line of thought any further. He knew where it would go.

Instead, he lathered her in the thick, fragrant soap that he preferred, until every last part of her skin smelled like him. There was something in him that he did not wish to acknowledge directly that thrilled at that notion. That wanted nothing more than to mark her in every way he could. His ring on her finger. His son in her belly. His scent so deep in her skin that she could not breathe without thinking of him. Of the feel of him moving deep inside of her, haunting her as sure as the tight clench of her haunted him.

He said none of these things either.

Instead, there beneath the stars, he took her mouth beneath the shower spray. He slicked back her hair with his hands, finding his way to the glory of her mouth.

It was carnal, demanding.

And he could not stop himself. He didn’t want to stop, and he knew that was the real trouble. He moved her toward the built-in bench so he could take her hips from behind, then thrust himself deep inside her slick heat once more.

It was a blistering shot straight out into the cosmos, and he wasn’t certain how much of him remained when they were done.

He started the process of washing her all over again. Only this time, when he’d made certain that she was tended to and fully relaxed, he bundled her up the softest towel he could find, carried her back in, and laid her in his bed once more.

Dioni curled into him and was asleep almost immediately.

But Alceu found that he could not rest. Or perhaps he did not want to, because he knew what waited for him once he did. The darkness that knew his name was far too close, and too insistent.

Later he stood out on the battlements, watching dawn break far off in the distance, out where the ocean was nothing but a thick line against the sky.

He was not foolish enough to imagine that he could pretend this had not happened. Or that it had not fundamentally changed them, and more, made a mockery of all the rules he’d attempted to put into place.

There could be no going back, he understood that.

But that didn’t mean he had any idea how to go forward.

He stood there for a long while. And when he finally went back inside the castle, the sun was only just beginning to peek over the horizon.

Dioni was beginning to stir, so Alceu called down to the kitchen, and had food brought up. Because he might have been keeping his distance from her since he’d brought her here, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t fully aware of everything Dioni was doing while under his care.

Alceu took his duties and responsibilities seriously.

One thing he knew was that she was ravenous, particularly when she woke up.

He suspected that she would be even more so this morning. Sure enough, when Concetta wheeled in a cart stacked with plates of Sicilian pastries and pistachio granita, plus Greek yogurt, spanakopita, and other breakfast items, he saw Dioni smiling before she even opened her eyes.

After Concetta left, with only a single dark look his way to indicate that she had feelings about the fact he was not alone, Dioni wrapped herself in the top sheet. Then she pulled it with her from the bed like a makeshift gown as she came outside to join him on the wall, where the day was shaping into typical Sicilian perfection all around them.

She looked out at the landscape that was arrayed before them, treetops and the mountain’s steep slope and the watching, waiting sea, and sighed happily.

And Alceu was tempted to see the world the way that she did, all blue sky and a pretty view. Or maybe it was that once she sat down at the table, looking as if the breakfast before her was the result of a magic spell and she was swept away with joy, he could not help but notice that the sky really was a glorious shade of blue. The great tangle of the trees was green and pretty. The birds were conducting a concerto in the branches, the sun was warm and the breeze was light, and the scent of the sea danced in and around everything, as if making tides from the mountain air.

He almost felt as if he was drunk again as she dug in, tasting everything as if she’d never seen food before, and moaning with that joy that he was always surprised did not occur only when he was inside her.

“I do not think that I am a sensualist,” he found himself saying when he had intended to sit there in a dignified, perhaps appropriately forbidding silence. “Or perhaps I am not the only one.”

She smiled at him, looking dreamy-eyed and something he was deeply concerned was happy . “It’s not an insult, Alceu. If you ask me, it is the only way to live. Because otherwise, what’s the point of all these marvelous things we get to do and feel and experience?” When he only stared back at her, she sighed. “And when I was a girl, I learned that moments of marvel were fleeting and unlikely to be repeated, so if I wanted to enjoy them I needed to make sure I committed myself to them. Immediately and fully. The truth is, it’s a practice like anything else.”

He found that he could not stand the notion of the childhood she wasn’t describing in full, but he could picture all too clearly, knowing far more than anyone should have to about the late Spyros Adrianakis. And how he had conducted himself in the little fiefdom that was the Hotel Andromeda.

“My father considered himself something of a sensualist, I suppose,” he said, and he didn’t even know where the words came from. It should have seemed like a violation to mention that man when he had dedicated himself to wiping his memory from the earth, and yet somehow, because it was Dioni, it was fine. Even necessary.

And she didn’t react badly. She only nodded, and seemed to watch him more intently as she continued to feast on pastries.

Alceu picked up his espresso and leaned back in his chair, looking out at the mountainside but seeing far into the past. “One time—I must have been a teenager—I caught him with one of his lovers. They were cavorting about on a boat that we were all staying on for a so-called family holiday off the coast of Sardinia.” He made a low noise of remembered disgust, as much for those long-ago days when there was still the pretense of family anything as for what he’d seen that day. “His lover ran off into her stateroom, where she was staying as a guest of my mother, you understand. Because my father liked to steal his toys from others. I thought he would shout at me, or push me around as he liked to do. But he felt it was a teaching moment. He lounged about, naked, and forced me to stand there as he explained to me that great men have great appetites. That these were sensual delights gifted by the gods to those who deserved them. And only fools, the weak, and poor men who were not smart enough to improve themselves did without.”

“That sounds like a narcissist, not a sensualist,” Dioni said, and so matter-of-factly that it took Alceu back. Because it wasn’t an insult. She wasn’t screeching the way his mother liked to do. She was saying it as it if was obvious. And she kept going. “If I had to guess, I’d say that he could see the joy you took in life and wanted to make certain that it was twisted for you. Poisoned beyond recognition.”

“It’s as if you met him,” Alceu said, and then frowned down at his own hand when he found that he was rubbing his chest.

“In a way, I suppose I have,” Dioni said. She wrinkled her nose. “He sounds a great deal like my father, to be honest. Shockingly, surpassingly, almost operatically self-involved.”

“And yet your brother often marveled that you stayed so long in his company.”

He should not have mentioned Apostolis.

It was a dangerous road to start down, but Dioni only glanced at him. “I did not stay for my father. I stayed for Jolie. My poor friend who had no choice but to marry a man like him.” She blew out a breath. “Or rather, she did have a choice because there are always choices, but it was a terrible one. I stayed in solidarity. And however little I might have enjoyed my father’s last years, I will never regret spending that time with my friend.”

“She must be a very good friend, then.”

He watched her smile, though there was a sadness there. “She’s the best of friends.” Dioni looked down at her plate. “And I have been lying to her for six months. When she learns that, she will be hurt. But I could not see a way around it.”

“Because you believed, on some level, that you could...what? Wish your pregnancy away?”

Dioni shook her head. “What I knew was that if I told her, she might feel duty-bound to tell my brother. And if she told my brother, he would sweep in and make decisions for me. And I didn’t want him to do that. He’s been doing that my whole life.”

Alceu frowned at her. “Your brother wants nothing but the best for you.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” She laughed, but there was something in her voice. It made him sit up a little straighter. “He has been so kind to me my whole life. Yet neither he nor I ever talk about the fact that he plays the role he does in my life because my birth robbed him of his mother.” Alceu stared at her and she smiled again, though he had never seen such a bittersweet expression on her face before. It made something inside his chest...catch. “I killed her, Alceu.”

If she had flipped the table and gone for his throat, he did not think he could have been more surprised.

“It is my understanding that your mother died in childbirth,” he said, very carefully.

This was not news to him. He had heard this before, and had even discussed it with Apostolis from time to time. At university, certainly, and no doubt since. It had always seemed an academic discussion to him, though he had been sympathetic toward his friend.

But the prospect of a woman dying while giving birth seemed wildly different to him now. It was his child in her belly. It was Dioni he would lose.

It all seemed a far more perilous enterprise than he had previously considered it.

Because now it would be personal.

“I accept the truth of it,” Dioni said and she sat back in her chair, too. She pressed her hands into the curve of her belly, as if assuring herself that it was real, that the baby within was still there. “I have always been very clear about what actually happened. It is everyone around me who wants to make it euphemistic. But you see, I’ve always believed that if my mother could, she would forgive me and tell me that it was all worth it. Because that’s what mothers do, isn’t it?”

Alceu thought that it was very unlikely his mother would do anything of the kind, but he did not say anything. He was not entirely sure that he could have if he’d wanted to.

“And now that I am close enough to being a mother myself, I know it’s true,” Dioni continued, with a certain soft urgency.

“You must be terrified,” Alceu found himself saying.

Her dark eyes found his and held. “I am not.” Though it was almost as if she was testing out the words as she spoke them aloud. “That might change the closer I get to it, I grant you. I suppose that if I allow myself to think about it, it would be overwhelming, so I choose to believe that particular history will not repeat itself. Maybe I believe that no history repeats itself unless we allow it. And if that’s the case...”

She trailed off. And he let her, because he didn’t want to follow that trail to its inevitable conclusion.

Because he wanted, much too badly, to take what she said to heart. To believe it. To change the history he had always worn like his very own hair shirt.

All those things he ought to have been considering pressed in upon him again, but he shoved them aside, more ruthlessly this time.

Because the child would be born soon enough, and the reality of how he would need to be raised—to avoid all the pitfalls of the family name—would take precedence. Having failed to prevent the bloodline from continuing, Alceu would have to do the next best thing and make certain it polluted as little as possible.

This was a moment, this thing between him and the wife he’d never wanted. This was a marvel, it would not last, and he decided in the brightness of that deep blue morning that he would let it play out as it would.

Because it couldn’t last.

And so for the next few weeks, for the first time in his life, he simply...allowed his life to carry on at its face value.

The business was in one of its fact-finding phases, meaning that they were in between projects and looking for new opportunities to help struggling businesses get back on their feet. It was an enjoyable phase, allowing him to follow threads and fancies wherever they took him, looking at the kinds of projects that made him feel as if—despite the undeniable fact that he was a Vaccaro—he was putting good out into the world. He and Apostolis conferred when they found promising leads and sent ideas back and forth, and he allowed himself to enjoy that part of the process as much as he always did.

He also continued researching possible uses for the castle. The trouble was, Europe was littered with the ruins of grand legacies in the form of castles and keeps, and it took money and vision to transform them into something else. It wasn’t that Alceu lacked those things, but he needed to be sure that if the castle was to remain standing, it stood for good.

And outside his office, he allowed the marvel of it all to continue, because he knew it was temporary. He did not move Dioni into his side of the castle officially, but she never slept in the guest rooms. They woke up every morning wrapped around each other. He took great pleasure in feeding her and in making certain that each day started well. Blue and bright, for as long as possible.

When he found her again in the evenings, she was filled with stories about the adventures she’d had during the day. She had started venturing into the villages. To see them, she said. To wander about the markets, sit by the sea, and get a feel for the local culture.

Neither one of them mentioned the story he’d told her of the village girl who had lost everything because of her association with this family.

And besides, as he kept reminding himself, these days could not matter because they could not last.

“Every village is unique, and yet the same,” Dioni was saying tonight, at one of the dinners his mother insisted upon, claiming she liked the opportunity to be civilized. Alceu thought it was more likely because she thought she could exert her influence on the newest member of the family. “It’s always fascinating to explore them and get a sense of how they are different than the others, and what remains the same. This is true in Greece as well.”

“It is not necessary for you to do that,” Marcella said, frowning. “They are villages. They do not require study .”

“It might not be necessary, but I enjoy it,” Dioni replied cheerfully. “I was talking to a fisherman today, who told me—”

“A fisherman?” Marcella let out one of her slithery laughs. Alceu could feel it wind itself around and around until it felt like it was clamped to the base of his spine. “What on earth could a Vaccaro have to discuss with a fisherman ?”

Alceu had learned by now that his wife was a master at not reacting to provocation. She didn’t change her expression. She didn’t get tense. She only smiled.

“I don’t know anything about fishing for a living, Marcella,” she said in that same merry way of hers. “And the man I met is something of an expert on the subject. So we had a great deal to talk about, it turns out.”

Alceu saw his mother shift position in her seat, every part of her radiating disapproval, which he knew boded ill. So he adroitly changed the subject, talking about some or other world events, while promising himself for what had to be the hundredth time to stop allowing these dinners to take place.

He felt as if he was exposing Dioni, not to mention his unborn child, to a pit of snakes.

Moreover, there was no joy in these forced appearances. When they ate together, just themselves, it was as if the food itself became part of the symphony of their lovemaking. One feast leading into the next.

She was a banquet he would never tire of. He understood that too well.

He was so busy thinking about all the ways he’d had her the night before, and plotting how he planned to have her tonight, that he missed the start of whatever conversation his mother and Dioni had begun.

But he certainly heard the sharpness in Marcella’s tone as she leaned forward, narrowing her eyes at Alceu’s wife.

“You cannot possibly be so naive, child,” she said in her purring, nasty way. “I assume it must be an act, or I can only fear for you.” She waved a hand, her talons painted in a dark red that matched her lips. “Do you truly imagine that this honeymoon of yours is the marriage? You must know better. Do you think you signed all those papers for the fun of it? If you leave him—and you will long to—you take nothing. Not even the children you bear. That is how they keep you.”

“Mother, please,” Alceu began.

But Dioni was leaning forward too, her dark eyes intent on his mother. “That is very true, Marcella,” she said in her quiet way. “A mother’s love knows no bounds. She will put up with anything, won’t she, for the love of her child—never thinking of herself at all.”

“Do you think to shame me?” Marcella laughed. “You have no idea what I feel for my son. Or what I have suffered in this family. I could have chosen any man in Europe. Princes fought for my hand. I gave up a throne for this vicious little family, so don’t you tell me about a mother’s love .”

“That is enough,” Alceu ordered her.

Marcella turned to him then, her eyes narrowed, but he could see the hint of glee in them. Because though she enjoyed claiming herself the victim in all things, what she truly loved was this.

The opportunity to show she was as vicious as any other Vaccaro.

“You are a greater fool than your father ever was,” she said now, making a meal of the words. “At least he did not pretend that he was led around by anything but the little head in his trousers. You’re making moon eyes and wafting about like a lovesick calf. You know what happens to calves, my darling son?” She leaned in to enunciate. “They are slaughtered.”

Alceu was readying himself to handle that in the way it deserved when he was stopped dead—

Because Dioni was laughing.

That boundless, blue-sky laughter that made everything in him dance. And made his mother sit back in her chair in shock.

And still Dioni laughed, the way she had in New York. It was as if she’d gone over to a window, thrown it open, and let all the light of the stars inside.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she wiped at her eyes, all that laughter in her voice. “This is all just so over-the-top, isn’t it? What I love about you, Marcella, is that you’re so operatic . It makes me wish that everything was so dire and laced with doom and portent. That we could sing arias into the night, die spectacularly, and rise again tomorrow to do it all over again.”

She smothered another bout of laughter while across the table, Alceu watched as his mother’s mouth dropped open.

“This is so much better than my family,” Dioni continued, in a chatty sort of way as if there had been no hint of darkness here. She’d managed to spill something down her front, though she seemed unaware of it. And as ever, the simple twist she’d put her hair into, which should have looked elegant, was instead falling down on one side. There was no reason at all it should make him want to smile. “My father was very much in love with the sound of his own voice. He was never the least bit fun . All of his stories were about reflected glory, this movie star, that politician. It was never calves to the slaughter over the fish course.” She laughed again. “Honestly, I feel deprived.”

Marcella, Alceu noted, did not say a word for the remainder of the dinner.

And he found himself lingering at the table with Dioni long after his mother had pleaded a convenient headache and stalked away.

“You handle her masterfully,” he said. Quietly, not certain where that dark and brooding urge to confide in her was coming from. “So masterfully that I can only wonder how it has never occurred to me to treat her in the same way.”

“This castle is like the Dread Pirate Roberts,” Dioni said softly. “Do you know that story?” Alceu shook his head. She smiled, resting her arm on the swell of her belly. “He was a great and terrible pirate who ravaged the seven seas, as you would expect. And when he took a captive, particularly one he took a shine to, he would order them about all day and then every night say something to the effect of, ‘Well done, but I’ll almost certainly kill you tomorrow.’ And that could go on for ages. That’s what it’s like here. No matter what actually happens, everyone carries on as if at any moment the castle will be struck down from above. Or perhaps simply crumble off the side of the mountain and fall into the sea. At any moment. ” She smiled at him, her eyes seeming more fathomless than usual in the candlelight. “And yet every day here dawns the same. The most beautiful blue skies over mountains and far-off beaches. It’s peaceful up here. Everything is lovely. No matter how much your mother vamps about, that doesn’t change. Maybe it’s time that the Vaccaro family accepts the fact that despite their very best efforts, they might just end well, after all.”

Alceu felt a great wash of sensation, deep inside. It seemed to flood him, taking him over, until he hardly knew what he was about. He stood, then walked around the table until he could stop by her chair, lean down to brace himself on its arms, and then set his mouth to hers.

It was a wildfire, and the flames danced higher every time they touched.

One conflagration led to the next, until it was all the same blaze.

He tugged down the rest of her hair. He liked it all around her, flowing and unruly.

He kissed her and kissed her, as if that alone would scour him clean of all the shadows, all these memories, all these burdens he’d agreed were his long ago, when he’d had no idea what any of it might mean.

When he had been sickened and heartsick and had wanted nothing more than to hurt his father in return for what he’d done to Grazia.

He kissed her until the heat was too much and then he bent down, lifted her up, and carried her through the castle to his bed.

Where it turned out he was as hungry for her as if he’d never touched her before. He spent all night learning new ways to adore her, and in the morning, watching her enjoy her breakfast so much made him take her to bed all over again.

Alceu could not concentrate on work that day. All he could seem to remember was the way she’d laughed and laughed, and how that laughter had done the impossible. How it had stopped Marcella in her tracks. How it had changed everything.

He was terribly afraid that it had changed him, too.

Or maybe that wasn’t fear , that thing like dawn deep inside him, threatening him with light.

He went to find her when he knew she would be taking her lunch and found her in the library of novels, sitting on a sofa surrounded by stacks of books.

She looked up and smiled wide, as if immediately delighted to see him.

He still could not get used to that automatic response. It still made something in him seem to dance.

“I never see you at this time of day,” Dioni said merrily, waving him to a spot beside her on the sofa, and he took it, because he could not refuse her anything. Another problem he knew he would have to deal with, and soon. “The baby and I were enjoying some of my favorite books from childhood.”

And then she showed him each one, describing them all to him, sounding as passionate about the books she chose as she was about the things she ate. Or the things they did in bed.

Or the way she tipped her face into the sun whenever she was outside, and breathed deep.

Alceu felt as if the insides of him were clawed into pieces, flayed open in some catastrophic way that must surely lead to disaster—

But he didn’t do a thing to stop it. He sat there, watching this calamity approach him as if he had no choice at all but to let her change him.

Change for her , something in him suggested. Try that.

He didn’t want to try anything, but as he sat there he could feel the whole of his chest begin to ache. He opened his mouth to make all of this worse—

But at that moment, the door to the library swung open.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Concetta said in her very formal housekeeper’s voice, which would have been surprising had he cared about anything but his wife. “You have some visitors.”

Alceu glanced over, already disinterested. Beside him, one hand on her belly and the other brandishing one of her books, Dioni looked up—and then went still.

And for a moment, they both stared as the apparition of the doorway slowly resolved itself into two distinct people.

A man. A woman.

Both of whom stared back at them with similar looks on their faces. Shock, first and foremost.

A kind of dawning horror on one, a considering sort of recognition on the other.

Then it all seemed to flare into temper, like an electric charge that made the whole castle seem to flicker in its wake.

“What,” bit out Apostolis in a clear fury, taking in his sister’s rounded form and then turning his gaze toward his best friend, his gaze a mix of outrage and betrayal, “in the bloody hell is going on, Alceu?”