Page 1 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Carrying a Sicilian Secret

Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER ONE

DIONIADRIANAKISDIDnot like a single thing about New York City, though she would die before she admitted such cultural heresy to anyone. It was crowded. It was almost entirely concrete. And astonishingly dirty and smelly, as was only to be expected, given the first two points.

Most especially, it was not a temperate and beautiful Greek island like the home of her childhood and her last few years. Nor was it the lovely finishing school she had gone to, high in the Alps, where serene views beckoned in all directions and one did not have to be debutante material to enjoy it.

But people were meant to love New York City.Lovewas one of the city’s defining characteristics and Dioni had decided she wouldadore itbased on its legend alone. Sight unseen, she had informed her brother that she wished to move here, he had consented, and off she’d gone.

Hoist with her own petard, really, she thought now as she rounded the corner onto her street in the West Village.

Or, more accurately, as she turned onto the street where one of her older brother’s properties waited. It was a lovely brownstone on a pretty street, as these things went. She had no complaints about it whatsoever. Everything in it was perfect and well-maintained. It even had its own garden, which she knew was a near unheard-of luxury here. Sometimes she would sit out in it and pretend she couldn’t hear the city all around her. But when she opened her eyes, there were tall buildings in place of the sky, no stars in evidence, and she was still alone.

She started down the street, reminding herself that it was better not to worry too much over her laboring steps because she wouldn’t be pregnant forever. A happy little thing she’d been telling herself that seemed less and less amusing the more pregnant she became. She had a good three months to go yet and she’d felt for a while as if she was trying to navigate the world, and this packed-tight city—in someone else’s body.

What she did like about New York City was the ease with which she could indulge the mad cravings that had taken her over these past months. The trouble was that she had to go and fetch them herself, something she would have loved if she had heroldbody. But she didn’t. And Dioni had told her older brother that she required fierce independence in this stage of her life, and therefore didn’t want the staff he’d offered here, which she knew he would have been only too happy to provide.

The trouble was, any staff members here would be loyal to her brother. Which meant they would report back to him.

She might not know what she planned to do, but she did know that there was no point bringing her brother in on the reality of her life until she had at leastsome partof it planned out. It wasn’t Apostolis’s fault that he was lovingly overbearing. It was simply who he was. Her hero, always, but he did have a tendency to take charge so there was nothing to do but trail along in his wake.

That had been fine when she was a girl. But Dioni was keenly aware that this situation was hers to solve. If there was anysolvingto be done.

And besides, how could she tell her beloved older brother exactly how and when and with whom she had gotten herself pregnant? She still couldn’t figure that out.

Today she’d run out—well, she’dwaddled—to get the particular cakes she fancied that were made at a bakery just around the corner. She could admit that it was that sort of thing that really did make New York special. Have a whim, cater to it within moments. She wasn’t sure that made up for the total lack of natural beauty that she was used to, but it was something.

And there was something else, she thought as she walked on, her eyes on the figure who looked to be standing there at the foot of the stairs to her brownstone. There were so many people in New York City at any given time that it was impossible not to walk down the street without thinking she saw every single ghost of every single person she’d ever met.

Though the truth was, Dioni sawthisghost all the time, so she didn’t have to wait for random strangers on a leafy street in the West Village to bring him to mind.

Her curse was that Alceu Vaccaro was the shadow cast over every breath she took.

No ghosts were necessary.

She took the opportunity to think of him objectively as she lumbered closer, and the figure that was almost certainly a figment of her imagination stayed where it was. She had known Alceu for what seemed like her whole life. Her brother, who had in many ways raised her while her father was off chasing the celebrities who were always present at the family hotel, was some ten years older than she was, and Alceu was his closest friend from his university days.

Alceu hailed from Sicily, an island of mystery and lore that he always spoke of in dark tones—though it was clear to her that a deep passion for his island lived in his gaze. She had always admired him, because who could not? He had grown up in what looked to her like a perfect fairy-tale castle set atop a hillside, surrounded by thick, reckless vegetation, and possessed of a commanding view of the rugged island and the sea beyond.

She’d seen all the pictures online, years ago. And more all the time in this age of drones that could fly where they would, privacy be damned.

What she had spent her months in New York asking herself was this: Had she always had a soft spot for him? Acrush, if she was being honest?

The simple answer was yes.

But the real answer was harder to fathom, because it had never occurred to her that Alceu was aware that she existed. As a woman, that was.

Of course he knew that his best friend had a younger sister, but in the same way that he knew that the Adrianakis family were intimately intertwined with the Hotel Andromeda, that legendary former mansion that was considered by many to be its own character in a sweeping, iconic story of the Greek islands and the very, very famous people who came there.

And to be honest, the hotel was far more impressive.

Dioni was not down on herself when she thought such things. She knew precisely what place she held in her storied family. Her father was larger than life and had been known to call himself the embodiment of Greek hospitality, especially if the guests in question were rich, powerful, and famous. Her brother had their father’s charm, but was also capable of thinking of others—like his lonely little sister. Her mother had been a woman of such grace and charm that even today, people felt the need to share with Dioni the many ways in which they had always felt touched by stardust in her mother’s presence. Just as her father had when he was still alive.

Strangers never seemed to remember that Dioni had never met her mother, having been instead the reason her mother had died, in childbirth. She thought her father had wanted to make sure she never forgot.

Not that she allowed herself to think about deaths in childbirth now that she was six months pregnant herself.

---