Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #1-4

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

A LCEU LET A POSTOLIS rant at him for a long while.

There was something freeing about it. Liberating, even—because there was no one else who would dare. He couldn’t think of the last time anyone had tried.

That kind of shouting had died with his father, long ago.

Alceu found himself bracing for impact. Would Apostolis take a swing at him? Would he throw something? He was pacing up and down the length of Alceu’s office and he certainly had the opportunity.

Maybe there was a part of him—and not a small part—that wanted it. The bright burst of sensation, of pain. Blood and bone, adrenaline and temper.

Those were things he would not hate himself for feeling, he thought.

But Apostolis never lunged for him.

And when his friend finally wound down, Alceu simply poured him a whiskey, took a pull of his own, and said nothing.

“It this how it is to be?” Apostolis asked then. “You plan to simply stand there, offering no defense for your behavior?”

“And if I did offer some kind of defense, what would that look like?” Alceu studied his friend. “Do you wish for me to express regret that I married your sister? That would indicate that it was some kind of terrible mistake. When the woman we are discussing will shortly become the mother of my child and I do not think you would care for it if I had not made her my wife.” When Apostolis glared at him, he sighed. “Do you really wish to discuss the details of what happened between your sister and me, Apostolis? Is that truly what you want?”

“It is not.”

They sat in silence for some time after that.

Alceu stared out the window, and found himself thinking of that salon in the Hotel Andromeda where he and Dioni should never have been on their own. He thought about Dioni herself. Her dragging hems and hair that never stayed put. And about her tears, more specifically.

As if all that sunshine and happiness, all those smiles, had been nothing but a performance all along.

The very notion made his bones ache, as if he had gone brittle overnight and might shatter at the faintest touch.

Because he thought that he could bear anything. That he had. That he would continue to do so until the last of his cursed bloodline quit the earth for good.

But now there was Dioni. And their baby.

And it turned out that Dioni’s unhappiness was the one thing he could not abide.

It made him want to tear down the castle all around them with his hands—or, perhaps, he simply wanted an excuse to explode. To prove he was every bit as bad as his father had been, as Apostolis had not quite said several times already.

Alceu did not need it said.

He felt it keenly.

He might as well start laughing and telling Apostolis that this was what Vaccaros did. That girls were his for the taking. That the peasantry were otherwise pointless, and he would sample them as he chose, like so many amuse-bouches.

Alceu could feel his father all over him, then, like a second skin. He could remember how the old man had reacted when news of Grazia’s death had reached the castle. A shrug, then a laugh, as if it was nothing to him what a young girl he’d ruined might do.

You are only angry because I got there first , Giuseppe Vaccaro had said slyly. I am disappointed in you, Alceu. Did no one tell you that village girls are to play with, not place on pedestals?

Somehow, he had not attempted to kill his father that day. And he had always thought it ironic that his heart had been what killed him, seeing how little Giuseppe had ever used that organ. Over time, Alceu had understood that he had likely been more in love with the idea of Grazia than the reality of her, but then, he had never had the opportunity to get to know her the way he’d wanted.

And yet here he was anyway. A despoiler of virgins, exactly like his father.

As if there had never been any point in trying to make himself something different. As if he’d been cursed from the start.

He thought he would have preferred it if his friend really had taken a swing at him.

Apostolis drank another whiskey. And then he looked at his oldest friend and business partner, and smiled. Ruefully, but it was a smile all the same. “I suppose there could be worse brothers to have.”

“A ringing endorsement.”

Apostolis lifted his glass in Alceu’s direction. “I might, at any point in time, punch you in the mouth. Just so we’re clear.”

“Understood.” Alceu nodded, and it was harder than it usually was to remain calm. But then, he had only ever unleashed himself with Dioni and that was why they were in this mess. He could not risk doing it again. Not with her and certainly not in any other arena. He was already tainted with his father’s mark. He did not know why he’d imagined he could ever be clean, no matter how bright Dioni shined. “It will be well-deserved, should it happen.”

“More than well-deserved,” Apostolis agreed. He swirled his whiskey around his tumbler. “You did not bother to ask for my blessing, but I will give it to you all the same. As the urge to murder you fades, I believe that I want nothing but the best for the both of you. I have only one concern.”

“If you intend to question my ability to provide for your sister,” Alceu said, sardonically, “I invite you to speak to my business partner. He will tell you that I am more than capable of taking care of her and the child.”

“Very funny.” But Apostolis was frowning at his drink. “In all the years I’ve known you, you have been adamant that you would never marry, never have a child, never even date a woman long enough for her to think about such things. And yet here you are.”

Alceu wanted to drain the whiskey bottle, but he did not allow himself such indulgences. He could not trust himself. How many times did he need to prove that to himself?

“Here we are,” he agreed.

“I would hate to see my sister hurt, Alceu,” his friend said quietly. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“What I can tell you,” Alceu said, though the words seemed to wrench open a place inside of him he had no desire to look at more closely, “is that it is never my intention to hurt Dioni. If there is a way for me to avoid it, I will.”

His friend inclined his head. “Then I know it is as good as done.” He set his drink down and then smiled when he looked up. “You told me years ago that I could drop by at any time. Aren’t you glad that I decided now was that time?”

Alceu was shocked that he smiled at that, but he did. “As a matter of fact, I am. I did not like the idea that I was lying to you, if only by omission. But now it is done.”

It was done and there was no undoing it. That sat in him like stone, but there was no changing it.

Some part of him had known that since he’d seen the surveillance photos of her.

What he could not understand was why, knowing that he had already made such a mess, he had only made it worse since she’d come here. He had prided himself on his militant moderation in all things since his university days. Grazia’s death had taught him that emotions were foolish, dangerous, and could be used as weapons.

Worse, his intensity was as poisonous as his father’s dark pleasures, and came to the same end.

He did not drink to excess. He did not carouse. He had kept all of these extreme behaviors locked down tight, until Dioni.

Even now, he could not account for his own behavior.

And much later, after he made certain that Apostolis and Jolie were settled for the night in one of the many guest suites, he found himself wandering the halls of the castle as had long been his habit.

He knew every brick. Every stone. He had taken every bit of it apart and put it back together as if performing an exorcism and yet he still couldn’t seem to come to terms with what this place meant. What it was to him.

Who he would become if he stayed here. Who he had already become because he had stayed here.

And now, worse, he was already worried about what this place would do to his son.

Not to mention the woman who could not seem to understand her own danger.

He found himself down in the old ballroom again, though it seemed much emptier than he recalled it. He could not remember it being used for years. Not since his father was still alive, and had bullied half of Sicily into appearing at the lavish parties he had used as traps for the unwary, all games of dominance and spite.

Now, all he could see was Dioni, dancing by herself and holding her hands on the baby belly before her, making up her own music as she went.

And all he could think about was his best friend in the entire world and the look on his face when he’d said that he knew Alceu would not hurt her.

Apostolis had truly believed that. The same way Dioni had seemed to mean it when she’d said he was a good and honorable man.

How could they not see the rot within? When so much of it had already gotten out?

Alceu let out a breath and when he turned to go, he was unsurprised to find his mother standing there, staring at him with her usual malevolence. Sometimes he thought she tracked him through the castle, looking for opportunities to offload her bile on him.

He wanted to laugh, to ward her off the way Dioni did. He wanted to make some joke about her creeping around at night, though the only thing that came to mind was the possibility he knew was already whispered about in the villages—that Marcella Vaccaro was some kind of vampire.

But somehow the hilarity wouldn’t come tonight. No jokes. No laughter.

No attempt at a lighthearted smile.

Alceu was far too raw.

“I knew it would come to this,” Marcella seethed at him, shaking her head so that her jet-black hair slithered about like a premonition. “You can’t escape your blood, Alceu. It is inside of you. It makes you who you are—no better than your father. In some ways, I expect you are much worse. Giuseppe never pretended to be anything but rotted straight through.” She smirked. “You think you’re a good man, do you not? There is nothing more dangerous.”

He looked away from her, toward the ghost of Dioni on the smooth, gleaming floor. To the gleam of the chandeliers above, picking up light where there was none, a lot like she always did.

Maybe he was rotted well enough, because everything in him hurt .

“Everyone thinks that I renovated this place out of some innate sense of love,” he told his mother. “Or some regard for the family legacy, at the very least. They think that I consider this castle some kind of jewel, and set myself to polishing it.” He laughed then, though it was a bitter sound. “But the truth is, I hated it. I still hate it. Yet I made certain that I put my fingerprints on every single stone, every single corner, every cornice and buttress. So that it was no longer a monument to our history. So that I could make it mine, and then get rid of it, one way or the other.”

“Burn it to the ground,” Marcella challenged him. “Go ahead. You will still be you, Alceu.”

“Still the better bargain between the two of us, Mother.”

She let out a laugh to rival his. “You think that I married your father like this? Like the harpy you see before you now?”

She came closer, and then she was too close. She reached out and put her hand on his arm, and he let her. Maybe he needed to look down and see her talons. Maybe he needed to recall exactly what had happened to him and how she had hastened it all along.

Maybe it was pretending he could control his memories that had led him here, because if he hadn’t, would he have allowed all this to happen?

If he hadn’t, would he have known enough to walk out of that wedding breakfast at the Hotel Andromeda? Alone?

“I am what the Vaccaros made me,” Marcella told him, like a threat. “Think of that, while you listen to your happy little wife sing her songs and dance her way through this dark place. And think of this. One day, there will be no difference at all between her and me.”

That was one of his darkest fears, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of reacting. Instead, he stared down at her impassively. He watched her dig her nails into his forearm, then release him with a snarl.

“You will see,” she warned him darkly, and then she spun around and swept out of the room.

Leaving him with a dark ballroom and chandeliers that could only reflect back the shadows all around them.

And so Alceu knew, then, there was only one thing that he could do.

He felt like a condemned man as he made his way through the castle that too many of his ancestors had left their fingerprints on. He passed room after room filled with ghosts and scandals and long-dried tears. And he knew by now that Dioni did not see these things here. She could not feel the darkness in the walls and pressing in the windows no matter how many times he pointed it out to her.

Just as he knew that she would not bother to go to sleep in any bed but his.

That ache in his chest was becoming too familiar.

He made his way to his rooms and she was there, curled up in his bed the way she always was, now.

There was a large part of him that wanted to claim that she belonged there—but that was the trouble. That urge. That tide of something like desperation that wanted more than anything for him to be a different man.

The kind of man who could deserve a woman like her, sunlight and sweet songs, in his bed. In his arms. In his life .

The truly galling part of this was that Apostolis and Dioni, two of the best people he knew, were wrong about this. His mother was right. They had both lived this story. They knew how it ended.

Because it only ended one way.

Over and over again.

He had always been kidding himself that he could change that trajectory.

For some while, he stood in the moonlight at the foot of the bed and watched her sleep. And he even imagined that he could leave her there. That he could let her sleep and let her know from some distance what he had decided.

What he had been forced to decide, for all their sakes.

He let himself imagine that he could simply do what needed to be done, and remove himself with no further blurring of lines and intentions—but it seemed his mother had been right about him all along.

He was no better than his father.

He was weak, through and through.

He could not help but fail to meet his standards, no matter what he wanted to do.

Because Dioni lay naked in his bed, just as she had that first night. The sheet was crumpled at her feet as if she’d kicked it off, and so the moonlight caressed her curves like a lover.

And no power on earth could keep him from going to her.

From sliding into bed beside her and running his hands all over her satiny flesh and feeling her heat beneath him. Nothing could keep him from caressing her, everywhere, and waking her up to pleasure. From making her spin and sob and cry out his name.

Over and over again.

When he was deep inside of her, he understood that he would never feel whole again. That he never had before.

That he had been lost at sea seven months ago. That his surrender that night had been total—that he had drowned then and had spent all this time trying to pretend that he had been treading water instead.

It would have been kinder all around to simply slip beneath the water then.

But he hadn’t.

He couldn’t.

Somehow, deep down, he knew he never would. Not while she lived.

And when he finally tired even himself out, dawn was already breaking outside. And though she slept, it was a fitful thing.

He knew because he watched her.

Alceu did not bother to sleep himself. He wanted to soak in every last minute here. He knew he would treasure these moments, that he would take them out like a hoard of jewels across the years that yawned ahead, look at them in the light, and remember this goodbye.

When she woke up, he did not have food waiting for her. He stood there, fully dressed, keeping his expression grave. As if this wasn’t killing him.

But the point was her, he reminded himself, not whatever he might feel.

Because he knew too well that his feelings were toxic.

“This looks ominous,” she said.

She didn’t smile. He thought nothing could have wounded him more.

Still, he pushed on. “I’m going on a trip,” he told her, very matter-of-factly. “Your brother and I have some things to tend to in various corners of the globe, including a very boring charity ball that you will likely see in pictures. You will not be coming with us.”

“Because I am pregnant?” she asked, though she looked...cautious.

“You are very pregnant.”

“Yes,” she said. “The very makes all the difference.”

“While I am gone, I will have the staff move you into one of the cottages.” And then, because she only blinked at him as if it didn’t make sense, he said, more roughly, “I don’t want you in the castle. I don’t want you in my bed, Dioni. Must I be more direct?”

And he watched as he accomplished the very thing he had told her brother last night he would try not to do. He watched the effect those words had on her.

He watched himself hurt her and he didn’t take it back.

And it was cold comfort indeed to know that hurting her now would save her far greater pain in the future. That it was a kindness to do this now, though he doubted very much she would agree.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Everything will be set up for you and the baby,” he assured her, and if his voice was colder than usual, well. That too was a gift, little though she might realize it. “The doctors will be on hand. You will want for nothing.”

“Except you,” Dioni said quietly. “I will want you. My husband. The man I love.”

He stared back at her, that tide in him too high, because he could not have heard her correctly.

She swallowed, naked and regal and his, and yet out of his reach. “I love you, Alceu. You must know that I always have.”

And Alceu felt as if he was cracked wide open. As if those words were an explosion, deep inside. He couldn’t take them on board.

He couldn’t allow them to take root.

“I have been pretending that this might be a manageable situation,” he managed to grit out at her. “But nothing has changed. I married you for the protection of the baby I made with you. You are both under my protection now and always will be. But the rest of this?” He slashed his hand through the air, as if that could keep his body from its typical reaction to the ripeness of her body and those wide, dark eyes. “It is no good. All of it will end in pain.”

“Being afraid is no good reason—” she began to argue.

“Not my pain, Dioni. Yours. Our son’s.”

His voice was harsh. He could hear it in the room. He could see it all over Dioni’s face.

But that only made his resolve harden. “I’m not willing to risk that. I told you this from the start. And I take responsibility for what has happened between us. I knew better. I should have stopped it.”

She rose from the bed then, uncurling herself to stand and then moving toward him, her hand outstretched.

“If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, and I don’t believe you can, I will remove the temptation,” he said, like he was handing down a sentence from on high, and her hand dropped to her side. “When I’m here, you will not know it. You will lack for nothing, but you and I cannot continue like this.”

“Alceu...” she whispered.

But he turned to go.

He made himself turn and then, harder still, he made himself walk away from her.

Because this way, she would be safe. The child would be safe.

He could not let anything else matter...especially not that shattered, jagged emptiness where his heart should have been.