Page 25 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

He heard the shocked noise she made then and he moved closer, wrapping his hands around her shoulders. “That is when I knew for certain, Dioni. This family is sick. We are a cancer upon the earth and always have been. There is nothing good here. No good can come from us. No good can remain.”

“You are not your father,” she said after a moment, as if it was an effort for her to remain calm. “And our son will not be like him either, Alceu. He will be like you.”

“And you think that’s better?” He let out a bitter laugh, dropping his hands and stepping back, aware that he was not entirely within his own control when he rubbed a palm over his face. “What is good about me, Dioni? I impregnated my best friend’s beloved younger sister on his wedding day. I do not exactly qualify for sainthood.”

She frowned. “That is not exactly what I—”

He shook his head and backed away. “The sooner you resign yourself to the fact that this is a cursed enterprise, the better. When the child is born, we will decide how best to protect him from the ravages of this bloodline. But I’m afraid it is too late for you or me.”

“Alceu—”

“You must keep your distance from me, Dioni,” he told her, and he could hear that his voice shook, gravelly and grave. “I beg of you.”

He thought that settled it.

Because what else did she need to hear? How else could he illustrate the horrors that awaited her?

And so he was unprepared, a week later, to stagger from his office in the middle of the night into his bedroom only to find the wife who haunted him without even trying lying in his bed.

Completely naked.

“What the hell are you doing?” he managed to grit out, though all the blood in his body had surged to the hardest part of him.

She stirred, looking sleepy until she saw him, and then she smiled.

That burst of bright sunshine, even in the middle of the night, that made every last part of him ache.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked, and then laughed, to really plunge the dagger in deep. “I’m seducing you. Obviously.”

CHAPTER SIX

SEDUCTIONWASNOTexactly in Dioni’s wheelhouse.

If anything, she found the fact she was eventryingsuch a thing funny. She had grown up mostly unconcerned with her body, since no one paid much attention to the clumsy, scruffy, mostly overlooked daughter of legends, and so she could run and swim and wander about as she liked. At school she’d discovered that she was not only supposed to care deeply about her looks, but feel shame about it all, and she’d tried. But it was much nicer to curl up with biscuits and books.

She had nevertriedto employ feminine wiles in her life.

Dioni hadn’t actually known she possessed any. Not until the night of her brother’s wedding.

And yes, she supposed that her behavior could have been seen asseductivethat night,but she hadn’t thought about it that way at the time. She had wanted him, but that hadn’t been anything new. It hadn’t beenan action item. Andwanting himwasn’t anything new, either. She had simply wanted to dance in the rain. The way she often did, on her own. There had been something about the rain and the storm that had called to her. It had felt to her the way that he did.

It had been unconscious, was the thing.

But the same could not be said about tonight.

Because Dioni had spent a long time thinking about the things he had told her on their wedding night. She had spent the week since then going over and over how he’d left her standing there, in the middle of an empty dance floor.

She hadn’t felt much like singing, really. Not since that night.

But she had also completely disagreed with his conclusions. About everything.

Allowing the terrible things that had been done to him and those he cared for to wreck him was understandable. Yet if he never moved on from those things, he was allowing himself to remain wrecked forever.

Staying still was only an option if a person was in their grave.

Or maybe, she had thought earlier tonight, lying in bed and rubbing lotion into the parts of her body that were still expanding and growing, it was simply the space that she was in. Everything inside of her was shifting, changing, shaping itself into something else entirely.

That was what she wanted. The shift, the push. Creating room where there was none.

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