Page 223 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

“Make no mistake,” my love told me, his voice dark against my mouth. “I’ll make you pay for that.”

And we both smiled.

I pulled back, and it was my turn to get my hands on his face, to make sure he was looking at me with his whole beautiful soul in his eyes. “I love you, Giovanbattista. I love you, my Jovi. I will follow you anywhere.”

“I love you, too,” he told me in return, though it sounded as if the words hurt on the way out. He stared at me as if he couldn’t believe he had said that. “I love you,” he said again, more intensely that time. “I love you, Rux, and I will make sure you know it every day. Every single day that we have left, you and me.”

“I don’t care how we live or where,” I said, kissing him again. “As long as it’s with you. And as long as we live for as long as we can, as brightly as we can, together.”

“I vow to you, we will.” He intoned that as if he was standing at the front of a cathedral.

And I knew this man. I knew his heart, which meant I knew him better than anyone else on this earth, including him.

I knew if he vowed it, it was as good as done.

“Let’s go,” he said then. He took my hand and brought it to his mouth. “There is no forever here, and we’ve earned one. But there is one thing we have to do first.”

Jovi pulled out the gasoline after taking the bag he’d kept packed for Rux to his car, and throwing his own in beside it. They both splashed it where they could, working fast and determinedly, because the clock was ticking.

“Are you sure?” Rux asked him when they were done, and all that was left was the lighting of a match. She was staring up at the villa, a curious look on her face. Not sad, not exactly. Aware, perhaps, of the finality of what they were doing here.

But he was looking only at her. “I have never been more certain of anything.”

Still, it took a deeper breath than usual to do what needed to be done. To strike the match and let it arc through the dark to the ground. Then flare as it found the gasoline.

Then burn.

He watched the flames for a moment, remembering. Letting himselfremember.

And letting himself let go. Of ghosts and memories, lives lost and lives half lived, vows and promises, family and loss. So much loss.

Then he led Rux to the car, made sure she was safely inside, and left the old villa behind him, flames climbing high. By the time his uncle and his cousin and their men made it halfway up the hillside—Jovi was certain he’d just missed running into them on the narrow road—the place was engulfed in fire.

A long-overdue funeral pyre in honor of his family, Jovi thought.

A fitting end to the long, sad story of Donatello D’Amato, who had longed for a better life than the one he’d been mired in on this island.

Leaving Sicily felt much the same. Too much darkness, too many ghosts.

And nothing ahead of them but possibility and the deep blue sea.

They boarded the boat he had waiting for them and set off, leaving the lights of Palermo behind them. And high on the hill in the distance, he could see the fire he’d set.

“They will think you’re dead,” Rux murmured, tucked up against his side.

“It is better, I think, that they do,” he replied. But what he thought was,They will wish that I am dead. And then, in the night, they will wake from their nightmares of me and know better.

A satisfying end, to his way of thinking.

It took him about a week into their new life—a lazy tour of whatever beaches took their fancy, easy enough to do when he’d laid out a trail involving flights to Perth, Australia, and a cabin in his name in the far-flung Solomon Islands, about as far away as a person could get from Sicily—for him to realize that his lovely Rux was under the impression that they were on the run. Living hand to fist and forever looking over their shoulder.

“You misunderstand,” he told her as they lounged on the deck of the small yacht, having their dinner beneath the stars somewhere off the coast of Perpignan, France, near the border of Spain. “I’m a very wealthy man.”

“Your uncle was,” Rux said, nodding. “I understand that.”

“I lived in an empty house,” he reminded her. He stared at her until she blushed, one of his favorite new pastimes. “I spent my money on nothing. How do you think I got your passport in a couple of days? How do you think we’ve managed to effect our escape by means of a tranquil yachting holiday?”

“I…”