Page 75 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

“I finally decided what I want to do with my life,” she said. And he thought she sounded unlike herself, but he was not going to tell her that. “I’ve decided that I’m going to pack up and move to America.”

“America?” He didn’t laugh. He could sense she wouldn’t like it. “America is a large place, Dioni. Have you picked a specificpartof the country?”

“I will.” She frowned at him again, and more deeply this time. “What I need you to do is be okay with it when I go.”

And maybe he was a worse brother than he’d ever imagined, because he didn’t think about anything at all in that moment except having the privacy to handle Jolie the way he wanted. At last.

Because he thought he finally knew how. It came to him in a blinding flash the moment he understood that he’d been wanting this privacy all along. He and Jolie had settled into their marriage, such as it was, by playing their roles in public—but continuing to live in their separate quarters. This arrangement had not seemed to worry his sister at all, or cause her to question their marriage in any way.Seeming happinesscould involve separate beds, as far as the innocent Dioni knew.

Yethappywas not how Apostolis would describe himself. Or his marriage.

He’d been dreaming this solution all along. It might be inconvenient to find he desired his stepmother in this way, and he chose not to question why it felt more like a long overduerecognitionthan some new bolt from the blue, but he could use it. Hewoulduse it. Because he finally had the weapon he needed to win this war decisively.

But here and now, he had to force himself to concentrate.

“First of all, you can go wherever you like, for as long as you like, and do whatever takes your fancy.” The Dioni he knew would have smiled brightly at that and started chattering on merrily about the great many projects that were already lighting up her mind. But today, his sister only looked back at him, but with that steady frown in place. He was tempted to think she was making him the slightest bit uneasy, but of course she wasn’t. This wasDioni. And he did not getuneasy.“If you wish to go to America, there is no need for mystery. I have properties in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. And, of course, Hawaii.”

That got a reaction from his sister. She blinked. “You do?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” he told her, with a grin. “It would ruin my image. The world prefers to consider me the grand waste of space our father did. And perhaps I am. But either way, I also have a robust real estate portfolio.”

He smiled blandly as his sister came close to gaping at him and wondered how she would react if she knew how he actually spent his time, or that Alceu was his partner in those far more low-profile activities. “Remember, Dioni. It’s a secret.”

“I think I’d like to go to New York City,” she said after a moment, then turned her frown toward the windows. “I don’t want any more beaches. I want concrete canyons and furious impatience wherever I turn.”

Somehow Apostolis thought that she would find the brownstone he owned in Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood, complete with its own garden, a little lessimpatientthan the rest of the city. But she could discover that for herself. “Are you sure?” he asked. When she nodded, he carried on. “Then only say the word, and we will have—”

“I am ready for a change,” his sister said, cutting him off. “Now.”

Her asserting anything so strongly was so unusual that he actually gazed back at her in something approximating shock.

“All right then. You can leave tonight if you like.”

“Wonderful,” Dioni replied, but even then she didn’t sound like her normally cheerful self. There was something brittle about her. He didn’t like it.

But if she didn’t want to tell him, he didn’t see how he could force her. And in any case, he knew from his own experience across many brooding years that while the geographic cure never quite lived up to its name, sometimes, a Band-Aid in place of anactual curecould do the trick just the same.

His sister deserved to find these things out for herself.

Everything happened swiftly, then. He called to have the plane readied. She went off to oversee the packing of her things—or perhaps, for all he knew, she was already packed.

And that evening, only a few hours after Dioni had come to speak to him in the office, Apostolis and Jolie stood out on the tarmac on the other side of the island—together—and said their goodbyes.

“I will miss you,” he told his sister fiercely when she hugged him.

“Really do miss me, then,” she replied, but she was smiling. “Don’t get weird and spy on me.”

“I would never dream of it,” he lied, and made a mental note to pare back the security detail he’d planned to keep in her vicinity.

He watched as Dioni hugged Jolie and thought it seemed longer and harder for someone merely taking off on a new adventure. Particularly when she was late to that game. Many people did such things when they were younger, with their gap years and their regrettable twenties.

But he was a terrible brother, clearly, because the only thing he could truly concentrate on was the fact there was the hotel and its guests waiting for them—but other than that, only and him and Jolie on the property. Staff quarters were further down from the cliff, giving them a bit of a break from the hotel when they weren’t on duty.

Members of the family had no breaks. And now his wife had nowhere to hide.

And maybe the anticipation of that was humming in him a little too brightly, because Jolie looked at him in askance when he started the sleek Range Rover and aimed it at the coastal road that hugged the coastline, then meandered along the length of the island to the Andromeda.

Especially when he drove a bit too fast.

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