Page 45 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

She wandered around the cottage until she found a suite with her things in it. Then she took a long shower, and took even longer dressing herself. Only then did she begin making her arrangements.

It took a number of phone calls and a heart-to-heart with Concetta, but by the time afternoon rolled around, she was ready.

She walked back over to the castle, breathing in all of these scents that had become so dear to her. The flowers, the trees. She took in the warm sun, the rich earth. The view down the mountain and across the sea. The birds that looped in lazy circles above her, some calling out, some singing.

She walked over to stand near the castle gate and waited for the car to be brought round, and she wasn’t at all surprised when Marcella materialized beside her.

“Running off, are we?” purred the older woman. “I did try to warn you.”

“Were those warnings, Marcella?” Dioni asked. “How funny. They sounded a whole lot more like feverish prophecies to me.”

Her mother-in-law ignored that.

“This is how it begins,” she told Dioni instead, sounding triumphant. “Maybe this time he will chase you, as men do. You will think it is because he cares what happens to you, but you cannot kid yourself in this way. It is the bloodline, always.”

“He thinks his blood is a poison, Marcella,” Dioni pointed out. “So I somehow doubt he’ll be racing about after it.”

Marcella smirked. “Once the child is born, the truth will come out. Perhaps at first you will weep over his temper, because that is all you will see. As time goes on, you will find that you dream about that temper. That you wish you could have it back. Because in its place there will be nothing but the deadening indifference.” She drifted closer, so close that Dioni could smell the perfume she wore like a shield. And could see the faint bit of creping at her neck. “So you will do what you can to get his attention, however and wherever possible. Negative attention, positive attention, it won’t matter. These Vaccaro men are narcotic. Even when you know that it will kill you, you cannot walk away. Even after he dies, you will find yourself engaged in a pitched battle with his name. Tarnishing it as best you can, as if that might haunt him from beyond the grave.”

“Marcella...”

But the older woman laughed. “I tell you, foolish girl, this is how it begins. And I should know. Iwasyou, once. The die is already cast.”

Dioni looked at her mother-in-law. Really looked at her. She tried to see the girl that Marcella must once have been. Pretty, with prospects. A woman who even now, even riddled with bitterness, still dreamed of that prince who might have saved her if she’d chosen him instead of Giuseppe.

And she supposed that she could see exactly how she could become her mother-in-law’s clone. Howeasyit would be. How comforting, even, to imagine herself forever lost in a battle with her husband. One he did not even have to be alive to play.

Because that felt better than the truth.

She did not laugh, not today. Instead, she moved closer and took her mother-in-law’s hands in hers, ignoring Marcella’s shocked expression and the way she tried to recoil.

“You’re going to have a grandson soon,” she told her, her voice serious and her gaze direct. “He will not care about your behavior from before he was born. What he will want from you is agrandmother. He will not listen to the stories that are told about you. He will deny them if asked, because all he will see when he looks at you is love, Marcella.” The other woman took a breath and held it, and that made Dioni believe that she was actually reaching her. She went with it, squeezing her hands. “That is, if you decide, right now, that you think that’s what he deserves. And I hope you will, because deep down, that’s what you deserve, too.”

“H-how maudlin,” the older woman stuttered, but she did not pull away.

“And I will need a mother,” Dioni told her. She did not break her gaze. “Because I have never had one. I don’t know anything about raising a child, but you do. And for all of this slinking around, muttering dire warnings over the dinner table, and evening gowns before breakfast, your son is a fine man. Whether that’s because of you or in spite of you, it doesn’t matter, does it? You are involved all the same. Imagine, if you will, what it might be like if youhelpedme.”

And for a moment, then, Marcella looked stricken. She looked away quickly, composing her beautiful face into the mask she preferred. “I’m the least maternal woman alive,” she said, though she sounded something like shaken. “Ask anyone.”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Dioni told her fiercely. “Iwill care about two things only. Whatyourson thinks of you and whatmyson thinks of you. All the rest is up to you, Marcella.”

Her mother-in-law stepped back, looking pale, and her breath came too fast. “Fine words indeed when you are running away. You can talk all you like about breaking cycles, but what you’re doing is perpetuating one.”

“I’m not running anywhere,” Dioni told her, quiet and fierce. “Quite the opposite.”

When the car came, she nodded to the older woman, held her gaze a moment too long, and then climbed inside.

In the back seat, her doctor waited. Dioni smiled when she spotted him. “Flying is generally considered to be safe, but an abundance of caution never hurt anyone, I am sure,” he said.

“Wonderful,” she replied, and settled back against the seat, thinking through the next steps that needed to occur for her plan to work the way she wanted it to, proud that it hadn’t taken herweeksthis time.

When they landed in Vienna a couple of hours later, she was ready, having dressed herself on the plane.

She took a car to the grand old house that had been converted into some kind of museum in the heart of the Innere Stadt, the center of the old city, and did not allow herself to consider her feelings at all until she was climbing the stairs. Her determination was fueling her more surely than anything else ever could, and she decided that her feelings didn’t matter.

Not until she could share them with the person who had caused them, thank you.

Inside, she offered a dazzling smile to the attendants who waited there in the lobby. She told them who she was and watched them step out of her way, eyes wide as they took in her giant belly.

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