Page 5 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

And so she was only a few steps away when she was forced to admit the truth.

This man didn’t simplylook likeAlceu. ItwasAlceu.

Dioni stopped dead, suddenly wishing that this was a far busier street. One where she could call out for help from passersby, or hail a cab.

But there were only the two of them.

Closer, he looked as perfect as always. As if he had been put upon this earth to wear clothing that exalted the sheer glory of his form in an exquisitely cut suit. Wide shoulders, narrow waist. He was a lean man who nonetheless had power pouring out of him from every pore.

As she had discovered, and vividly.

Though today there was something a whole lot like fury blazing from his dark eyes.

“Alceu,” she said, and it wasn’t until she said his name that she understood how nervous she was, how breathless she became in his presence. She had forgotten that, somehow. “I’m shocked thatpitybrought you all the way to New York. That seems like a long trip.”

He lifted a hand and slashed it through the air in the universal signal to stop. Except in this case, it was also imbued with the kind of temper she would have sworn he could not possess. Not Alceu. Not this remote, inaccessible man.

“I think,” he said, every word a frigid punch, “that you had better explain yourself, Dioni. And fast.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALCEUVACCAROHADnot been so close to losing control of himself since—well.

Since the last time he had been in the presence of his best and only friend’s younger sister, which made something inside him seem to roar.

But that was the trouble. There should be no roaring. There should be no reactions of any kind. That reminded him of his parents and their bitter theatrics and he had spent his entire life making certain that he was absolutely nothing like them or anyone else in his cursed family.

His late, venal, grasping father. His histrionic mother. His uncles, all of whom had met their bitter ends, and his grandparents, who were legends in Sicily for all the wrong reasons. In a place known for warring tribes and badly behaved people, his family had managed to distinguish themselves.

They had all been despicable. His mother still was. Alceu wanted nothing to do with them.

So he had decided, long ago, that it would all end with him.

He would not inflict himself on some poor woman as a spouse. He would certainly not bring another member of his bloodline into being. He would repair what he could, make reparations for what he couldn’t, and when he died, the diseased strain of Vaccaro genetics would pass forever into oblivion.

Because that is not at all depressing, Apostolis had often said.

Though Alceu had never thought so.I consider it a liberation, he had always replied.For everyone else.

He had been in Paris with his friend when Apostolis had let it drop that his sister had taken off for New York City, an urge she’d developed seemingly out of nowhere.

Alceu had not reacted well to that news.

Because much as he preferred to pretend that he could not remember any part of that wedding or its aftermath, the truth was that he remembered it entirely too well. He had learned a great many things about Dioni Adrianakis, and not all of it had to do with her responses to his touch.

For example, he had discovered that she alone managed to light a fire in him no one else ever had. When, in fact, every other woman he had ever gone near had seemed like nothing more to him than a little match, quickly extinguished. But that was his cross to bear.

The more germane thing he knew about Dioni was that she had no interest at all in ever leaving that island. She had waxed rhapsodic about how much she loved that she got to live there all throughout the painfully awkward run-up to Apostolis’s forced wedding. He knew her opinions of all the villages, each beach, and a great number of the localtavernas.

He could think of only one reason that she might leave.

It must have something to do with what had happened between them.

Or more likely, a hard voice inside had chimed in,what happened after. When you dismissed her as if she was an embarrassment.

He had done what was necessary, he assured himself now.

Again.

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