Modern Romance Collection July 2024 Books 1-4

CHAPTER ELEVEN

VALENTINOSTAYEDOUT in that storm for a long time.

Every word she’d said hit hard and pounded into him, like hail.

One stone after the next, each one of them hitting their mark with deadly accuracy.

Was that his father’s voice inside of him, that dark sneering thing that was so quick to point out his failures?

He thought of his family’s history and all of those things he’d always taken as fact. Because he felt them himself? Or because his father had known what he felt and had steered him one way or the next as it suited him?

Had his brother betrayed him? Had his father made it seem as if he had betrayed his brother?

Maybe Carliz was right to point out that the true act of defiance would have been to stay friends with Aristides. The only true friend he’d ever had. They had adored each other.

His father hadn’t liked that, had he?

And something else occurred to him, then. Was it possible that there was something critical he was missing when it came to love, to feelings, that Ginevra showed every day—by choosing to remain in a place she could have left? By choosing to love as she chose, no matter if it was returned. No matter what anyone else thought.

No matter if it was love or penance or something more complicated, it was hers. And she did not shy away from it.

And Ginevra had been a good mother not only to her son, but to Valentino, too. Little as he might have understood that at the time.

He thought of the kind of mother Carliz already was, and how different that was than his own. Because she had been so fragile, so consistently precarious, his poor mother. She had been so unable to fight her own demons, much less the man who’d married her so that he could toy with them too.

She had never stood a chance against Milo.

Then again, she also hadn’t tried.

That truth seemed to hit him like lightning.

Because there was no way that his father could have done the extent of the damage on his wife if she’d been a woman like Carliz. It simply would not have happened.

First she would have laughed. Then she would have left.

And she most certainly would have taken her child with her.

Something in him seemed to grow warmer and brighter at that thought. And then, the more he held on to it, it was as if something inside him began to melt.

And as it melted, he felt seized with what he could only call a tidal wave of the kind of emotion he never allowed himself.

Not openly. It had to be sex, and specifically the kind of sex he controlled. It had to be the rules he made. The life he lived.

That was his emotion. That was how he felt.

But she’d known all along, hadn’t she?

And as it broke over him, he began to run. Through the rain, through the gathering dark. He catapulted himself down the side of the cliff and raced through the gardens, desperate to get there.

He made it to the door and threw it open.

Because inside, there was color. Inside, it was bright and warm and happy.

And Carliz was here.

Since the moment he had laid eyes on her in Rome, she had been a bright, hot light leading him home.

Little as he had wished to accept that.

He ran through the house, shouting her name, not caring at all that his servants looked at him in astonishment.

He shouted again and again, until she appeared wrapped once more in what looked like a selection of scarves—

Except these were not chosen to seduce.

These were blankets, and if he was not mistaken, she’d chosen them to hide.

Something about the notion of his vibrant, gloriously bright Carliz hiding herself away made him ache. This house was already a monument to her vulnerability, painted in bold strokes so there could be no mistaking it.

She had made his house into a masterpiece to show him her love, and he had delivered her to a monster.

It was time to rectify this situation, once and for all.

Valentino walked up the stairs, aware of every brushstroke as he passed. The color here, the competing color there. She had told him the story of her love, of their love, and he had rewarded her by telling her that a stone house of misery was their future instead.

When he got to the top of the stairs he stared at her for a wordless moment, and then he simply dropped to his knees.

She made a startled sort of sound, or perhaps it was a sob. The blankets fell all around them as she reached out to take his face between her hands.

Carliz gazed down at him as if she wanted to soothe him, even now.

“I looked up across a standard, boring event, and was hit by lightning,” he told her, hoping she could hear that he was speaking from his heart. Hoping she could see it on his face. Or even hear the way his heartbeat was threatening his ribs. “You know exactly what my life was like. It was this house. Beautiful in its way, but cold. Deliberately empty. Stark and studied. And then there you were. With your hair too many colors and your eyes too wise and knowing, and you saw me. And I looked at you and I saw nothing but color.”

She moved closer, and whispered something, but he knew he had to get these things out. Because he was tired, so tired, of the things he’d kept deep inside.

The things that had hurt them both.

“Later I would say you were a witch. That I was compelled against my will, but I wasn’t. You are so bright. I wanted to get close to you. I wanted to see if it was possible that anything could warm me the way you looked as if you could, and then you did.” He gazed up at her. “I think I started melting then, and I’ve been fighting it ever since, and Carliz, I want that love story I’ve been reading about in the papers for years. I want to love you so much and so well that strangers pick up on it in a crowded room that I wasn’t even in. I want to make you happy, and I understand what an extraordinary thing that is to say. I don’t think I have ever been happy a day of my life unless you were beside me. And even then, I did my best to ruin it. But I want it all the same.”

“The good news,” she managed to say, her voice rough and her eyes shining, “is that we did vow to stay together forever. So we have some time to practice.”

Something in him eased then, little though he understood what she was doing. He had expected to find her packing. He had expected her to show him coldness. He had expected—

But he got it, then.

She loved him. This was love. She was forgiving him in real time. She was showing him what it was like when someone was truly in love with him.

It wasn’t easy. It might even hurt. But the love never stopped.

The love was like that light of hers, and it shone on forever.

“You could not have made anything more clear to me,” he forced himself to say, to keep going, because that must be love too. Because that was what she did, What she had done and was still doing. “Than when you told me that I was set to become to my own son the very father who has worked so hard to ruin my life. So this is my other vow to you, while it is still just us.”

Though it wasn’t. Not really. Their baby was there between them. He smoothed his hands over her belly, filled with awe and reverence, as always.

And love, he understood at last.

All of this was love.

“I will love you,” he whispered to the child she carried. His son. “I will not use you as some kind of sick entertainment that only I enjoy. I will try to raise you to be a good man, freed from the kind of voices I carry around inside me. And I promise you, I will not be a monster.”

Carliz winced. “I didn’t mean that.”

But Valentino smiled. “You did. And you were right.”

He stood then, pulling her close so he could smooth his hands over that wild hair of hers, let loose again from the knot she’d tied it in. Then he wiped away the moisture beneath her eyes, carefully, as if every tear was precious.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“Mia principessa, then there is no time to waste. We have already wasted too much time. You must know that I have always loved you. You have told me you knew it. And I intend to love you forever, as best I can, and I...” But he paused, then. His heart pounded against his ribs. “I want to start over. If, of course that is what you want.” And he realized, in this moment, how strong she was. How courageous to paint her bleeding, broken heart all over this house When he could hardly bear to ask a simple question. “Is it, Carliz? Can we start again, you and I?”

And for a moment, she looked something like dazed.

But then a smile broke over her face, brighter by far than any of the paint she’d slapped on his walls. Better than the brightest, sunniest day.

“Valentino,” she said, smiling so wide he found himself smiling too, as if that was something he did with regularity—though he thought perhaps he should, “I thought you’d never ask.”