Page 47 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

When he had made it clear that she was to stay back in Sicily, sequestered in the palace.

“Excuse us,” he said, perhaps a bit gruffly, as he took her arm the way he had before and tugged her off from the group. And even though that had a high likelihood of leading to that punch in the face Apostolis would still be only too happy to deliver to him, he didn’t care.

“They’re still newlyweds,” Jolie said with the kind of laugh that made others laugh with her and lean in closer. “Isn’t it romantic?”

That wasn’t the word that Alceu would have used, if asked. It sat on him strangely. It made him feel things he wanted nothing to do with—so instead of engaging with it, he pulled her out into the center of the crowded dance floor.

There were strings playing haunting melodies. There were couples in formal attire. He thought he glimpsed a tiara here, a famous necklace there.

But none of that mattered.

Only Dioni interested him.

He held her in his arms and glared down at her, not certain if he wanted to kiss her...or kiss her andthendemand to know what, precisely, she thought she was playing at.

“I’ll ask you again,” he said, thoughnotkissing her felt like an attack all its own. “Perhaps you can offer me a better answer than the one you gave your brother. What are you doing here,camurria?”

Alceu had not meant to call her that name. He had decided that he never would again, in fact, and then there it was. Right on his tongue whether he liked it or not.

“Well, Alceu, I considered the things you said to me,” she replied with a smile. “And I decided, pretty quickly, that you’re an idiot.”

And she let her smile go sweet.

So sweet that it took him a moment to hear what she’d actually said. “I beg your pardon.”

Dioni’s smile changed, then, and he hated it. He knew it was his fault that it was anything less than sunshine.

But she kept that dark gaze on him, still shaded with steel beneath. “I am not going to play these little games with you, Alceu. As I told your mother today, more or less, it is time to decide who you want to be.”

“You told my mother...what?”

There was a certain patience in the way she looked at him. A certain knowing kindness that made his ribs hurt. It didn’t seem to matter that her hair was coming out of its fastening and her nail polish was chipped and clinging to uneven nails.

All that mattered was that she was looking up at him.

As if, despite everything, she believed in him.

“Do you want to be the kind of father yours was to you?” she asked him softly. “Or do you want to be arealfather to your son? Do you want to be what he overcomes in life—or do you want to love him so wildly and so wholly that there is no possibility that he can become anything but the person he’s meant to be?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She leaned forward, fiercely, and pulled her hand from his. Then she thumped him in the center of his chest, seemingly unaware or uninterested in the stares she got from the people around them. She didn’t even seem to recognize that she was suddenly standing still in the middle of the crowded dance floor, calling attention to them both.

It was something Alceu was certain he should care about—and would at any moment, given his lifelong dedication to seeming perfection at all costs—but he didn’t.

Not then. Not yet.

Not when she was looking at him with so much passion flooding her face.

“Of course you don’t know,” she said, sounding something like ferocious. “Because everything you are doing is about fear.” He must have made some sound because she angled herself closer, or would have, if her belly hadn’t been there between them. “I don’t want that, Alceu. I don’t think you want it either.”

“Dioni—”

“I’m in love with you.” And she said it so matter-of-factly, then. As if it was a fact, not a feeling. “I’ve been in love with you for a long while. Do you really think it makes sense that I held on to my innocence as long as I did, then tossed it aside on a whim? Do I strike you as that kind of person?”

Everything hurt. He had to force words from his mouth and was half-afraid they would come out as something else. “I haven’t given the matter much thought.”

She poked her finger into his chest again. “That is such a lie. Every time you do this, every time you say something so harsh, I assume that it’s that father of yours coming out of your mouth.” He felt as if he had turned to stone, but she was still going. “You think that you’re making it better, somehow, by telling me these things. But you might as well be slinking around in inappropriate clothing with your mother. That’s what it sounds like.”

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