Page 15 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

She realized that for all his bluster, he hadn’t known how she would respond.

And deep inside, that stillness glowed, and she knew.

You are going to fall in love with me, she thought.

And it was so impossible, so wildly unlikely, that it could only be true.

Dioni intended to see to it herself.

CHAPTER FOUR

SICILYWASAwild tangle of mysteriously treacherous and beautiful mountains, gleaming seas in all directions, and old, half-ruined cities that whispered of ancient secrets yet to be uncovered.

And yet everyone Dioni encountered made it clear that she was going to be unhappy in such a magical place.

They’d flown directly from an airfield outside Manhattan and she’d pretended not to notice the way that Alceu had ushered her onto his waiting jet as if he’d imagined that, given the opportunity, she might abscond at the first opportunity and charge off into the greater New York area.

She had almost pointed out to him that she would be running nowhere, whether she wanted to or not, because she wassix months pregnant.

But instead, she’d found it almost endearing that he’d imagined it was a possibility.

The whole flight over, he was brusque and broody, muttering about the work he had to do and pounding away at his laptop in what she felt was a largely performative manner. Because she knew his business partner—her brother—and was fully aware that the work they did to rehabilitate faltering companies involved other employees and therefore did not necessarily require his hand on the wheel at every moment.

If I had to guess, she had written in another letter on her mobile that she would not send, I would tell you that this is Alceu flustered. Maybe it’s what men do when they are beset by feelings. Because anyone else would sit here and think that he wasa wall of granite,but I know better. Because I know that whatever I felt inside, he felt it too. You might think that’s nothing more than the rambling of a delusional virgin who went ahead and got herself pregnant straight out of the gate with the most inappropriate person possible.

She had considered that for a few moments, sitting there as the plane winged its way across the Atlantic. She had thought about Jolie and the miseries she’d suffered while married to Dioni’s father. And how different it was, that thing that sparked between Jolie and Apostolis, no matter what the two of them had believed at first.

Then again, maybe you would understand all too well.

Once they made it to Sicily, they landed on an airstrip close to the sea. Dioni stood on the tarmac, breathing in the scented breeze that made her think of deep greenery and long swims into summer evenings. Then she was packed into an all-terrain vehicle that Alceu himself drove, navigating old, winding roads as if he’d carved them into the mountainside himself.

For a long while she could see the sea, the same sea, more or less, that eventually found its way to the island where she’d grown up. Then, as the road wound around and around, it disappeared. There was only the thick vegetation on all sides while everything got steeper and more treacherous and beside her, Alceu seemed to turn to stone.

Until, at last, he drove them out of the woods and all the way up a rocky outcropping that was boldly thrusting itself off the side of the mountaintop, unencumbered by any sense of its own danger. There was only one road, with cottages and outbuildings scattered along the way in a copse of trees here and a field there, but all she could focus on was that grand castle—really more of a fortress—that stood tall and imposing right there on the furthest edge.

The pictures from the drones had not done the place justice.

It was perhaps the most dramatic building she’d ever seen, and that was saying something when she’d grown up in a very famous hotel, but she suspected Castello Vaccaro had been built for an actual, practical purpose. It looked impregnable and easily defended. The approach from the road left them out in the open as they approached the battlements. Inside the thick walls, she assumed there would be the sorts of amenities that one expected from an old hereditary estate like this.

But it was clear thatthisparticular approach had been built to impress. Or perhapsintimidatewas the right word.

Alceu, who had maintained a dark silence the whole way, chose to carry on with it as he drove her up to the walls, then in through the gates that opened at his approach. Then closed—ominously—behind them. He parked in the forecourt, throwing himself out of the vehicle and stalking around the front to help her out, something she was forced to accept as she was too unwieldy on her own to get herself out her door before he could get there.

Once she was standing with her feet on the stones, he stared down at her. His eyes too dark, his mouth a hard line. And she could not begin to fathom the look on his face.

She thought he was about to say something, but instead he turned, then inclined his head abruptly. That was how she knew that someone else was approaching.

Because you are standing in acastleand the only thing you see is still him, she chided herself.

“Welcome home,signore,” came a stiff voice.

Dioni turned to see a woman she assumed must be a housekeeper, given the uniform she wore, standing before them with a disapproving look on her face.

“Concetta, this is Dioni Adrianakis,” Alceu told her. Dioni watched the woman’s eyes fall immediately to her belly, then rise again, narrowed. “We will be married shortly.”

The woman crossed herself and muttered something in Sicilian that Dioni did not have to know to understand meant that she thought terrible mistakes had been made. By Alceu himself, if her frown was any indication.

Oddly, she found that almost endearing.

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