Page 21 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

“My father threw one of his dinner parties,” Alceu continued. “I was not usually permitted to take part in them, but that night he insisted that I get dressed and attend.” His eyes seemed to sear straight through her. “Can you guess what he served?”

“Alceu...” she murmured.

“He told the whole party that it was important to teach children the circle of life,” he told her in that same remote tone with his eyes blazing. “But even then, I knew the truth. I knew that he didn’t care aboutlife lessons.He found a way to hurt me, so he did. That was the lesson. That is who raised me, Dioni. There was only one way that I knew to make certain that no part of him would ever be passed on.” That fire in him seemed to reach higher, though he did not move. “Alas.”

And she wanted to say something comforting to him, but she was certain that he would not be receptive to it. She nodded sagely instead. “I will make a note. No chickens.”

Alceu did not laugh, but then, she had not thought that he would. He scowled, and she fancied that it was a slightly less ferocious version than usual. “I can only try my best not to model the behavior I witnessed all of my life,” he told her with all of that intense dignity of his. “It was never my intention to lay a finger on you, yet here we are. Neither did I ever wish to have a child to bear the burden of the bloodline. Still, I will do what I must to give you some semblance of the life you deserve, and to do all that is possible to make certain that our child is nothing like the rest of the Vaccaros. It is the least I can do after permitting things to get to this stage.”

She realized her hand was still in his, and she no longer liked it as much as she had, so she it snatched back. “Yes, of course. You were simply the tide that rolled in and swept me out to sea. I had nothing to do with it. I was barely there.”

He rose then, another quiet feat of grace and offhanded athleticism. No one should be able to move like that, she thought. It was simply unfair.

Particularly when she wasn’t happy with him.

“I owe you an apology,” he said with terrific formality that made her want nothing so much as to thump him one. “I should not have kissed you in New York. I take the blame entirely. It sets the wrong example.”

“Once again, you seem to be under the impression that I was not involved,” Dioni pointed out. Perhaps from between her teeth. “That is not how I remember it.”

“The physical part of our relationship is over,” Alceu told her then, looking down the length of his body to where she was sitting, as if he knew full well that he was delivering a blow. “I hope you like the rooms that have been made available to you. If you do not, you may choose from any other apartments in the castle. Any but mine.”

She considered that for a moment, the breeze that teased at her face only reminding her that she was flushed. That his very presence did that to her, but he was acting like that didn’t matter.

“I’m not sure what’s made you imagine that I’m a good candidate for a nonsexual marriage,” she said, as carefully as she could. When she could hardly hear herself over the frantic pounding of her heart. “But I am not.”

“You are whatever I say you are,” he replied, starkly enough that she sucked in a breath. “I am sorry if that offends you, but it is the truth. And I did warn you. This is a prison, and in a prison, not a single one of us gets to do as we choose. You’ll see.”

Then he stood there, as if waiting for her to have some kind of explosive reaction—and maybe that was the reason why she bit it back.

Instead she curled her fingers tight, feeling the ring on her finger. A hard, cold intrusion for all that it still glittered and caught the sun.

When she still said nothing, he nodded as if they had come to some agreement, and then turned and headed back inside.

And Dioni had no idea if he lurked in there to watch her reaction or not, but she had to assume that he did. Because she thought that she would rather die than give him the satisfaction of watching her react to the bomb he’d just dropped on her.

She shifted her thumb in her fist so that she could wrap her fingers around it and play with her ring at the same time. She let her mind race around as it would. There was no point having fights with him when he so clearly wanted them, and certainly not now, right before their wedding.

Because Dioni knew that they would be signing those documents tonight. She had never been that woman he seemed to imagine she could have been. She had only and ever been his.

She also knew that she would marry him tomorrow, no matter what nonsense he came up with in the meantime.

Deep in that still place inside her, bright and warm, she knew.

So she sat there, slicked through with temper and longing and yet no second thoughts, and made herself smile out at the view as if none of this hurt at all.

Because he was going to fall in love with her any moment now.

Hewas.

CHAPTER FIVE

ITWASAsmall affair, as he supposed shotgun weddings tended to be, even in these so-called enlightened times.

If, that was, anything involving the Vaccaros could be said to beenlightened.

Alceu stood in the tiny chapel halfway down the mountainside that had served as his family’s church for centuries. It was in pristine condition—not a great shock, given that most of his ancestors might have reasonably assumed that they’d have been struck down upon entry. The priest stood at the altar, somehow managing to both look pointedly at Dioni’s belly as punctuation to every sentence and yet seem deliberately unaware that the ceremony was anything but perfectly normal.

Maybe no weddings were “normal.”

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