Page 100 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Running away wasn’t the answer, but Amelia had needed to get out of that room before she started crying.

She refused to cry in front of him. Because he wouldn’t understand the real reason for her tears. It wasn’t him being harsh, or even threatening to fire her. It was nothing about him , but he would assume it was. Survivor’s guilt and self-absorption was all he had in him.

She knew this wasn’t true. The depth of his guilt hid something more than self-absorption. But for right now she wanted it to be that simple. Needed it to be that simple.

He was the problem, and she should wash her hands of him. She should quit. She should start making plans for getting him out of her life so he could not casually threaten her employment.

But first, she needed a good cry. Not because of him , but because of…a combination of things.

First, that album. All the smiling faces of people who were gone.

People who’d never had the opportunity to fix their mistakes, if they would have taken the opportunity.

Even though she hadn’t loved the Follieros as she’d loved her father, she still missed them.

They had been kind to her. Aurora had been a friend of sorts.

And Amelia did not know how to ignore that the injustice of the loss weighed heavy on her heart.

And then there was Diego’s reaction to it all. He’d tried to be so stoic, but there’d been a war of emotions under the surface as he’d flipped through those pages. She hadn’t been able to recognize them all, but she knew pain when she saw it. No matter how hard someone tried to hide it.

Then he’d turned that pain around and launched it at her. She should be used to it by now, but in the softness of the moment, it had caught her off guard. And every time they had an argument like that, she came away with a new understanding of him and herself.

It was the herself that lodged like a weight in her chest. It was the herself that was making things complicated.

She had known it wouldn’t be easy, but part of her had assumed she would sweep in and solve all his problems. Absolve all his guilt.

It might take time and work, but it was possible and it would be done.

It had never occurred to her that by reaching out to him, insisting he return to the world he’d left behind, she might twist some things inside herself. She might realize that she had her own unresolved issues she’d been hiding from.

They were both leaning heavily on these crutches that weren’t helping them live any. She had tried to rid him of his, but she could not seem to do it. He was hers, so what did she do now?

Perhaps the real way to accomplish her father’s goal was to push Diego away. To quit today. Leave him to his cabin and forget the Follieros ever existed.

He’d either figure his issues out or he wouldn’t. He would find his goodness or he wouldn’t. The end.

Or was that just abandoning him to his worst devices, as his parents had essentially done? Wasn’t running the easy way out? Hadn’t she accused him of doing just that?

She stalked into her room, closing the bedroom door behind her. She breathed heavily, but the tears didn’t fall as she stood in the middle of her pretty, cozy room that she loved so much.

Crying would have been a nice release, but tears seemed stuck in her throat. She couldn’t breathe , but she couldn’t cry. She couldn’t move past the twisting, twirling thing inside her that whispered she needed to deal with herself .

“He’s a grown man,” she muttered aloud to the empty room. “At some point he has to make his own decisions, Amelia. And that is not your responsibility.”

But what was her responsibility?

Her father hadn’t tasked her with getting through to Diego. It was simply a wish he’d written down in his journal years ago. Not knowing he would die. Not knowing Amelia would read the entries, trying to feel comforted by his words since he was no longer here.

She squeezed her eyes shut, desperate for some moisture to spill over, but it wouldn’t. She slammed her fist against her dresser, a rare display of absolute frustration that was not soothed at all when the pain that jolted through her arm didn’t dislodge the tears either.

All pain was quickly forgotten when her door burst open and Diego stepped over the threshold of her room. For a moment she just stood frozen, staring at him. She could think of nothing to say. Nothing to do.

Why had he followed her?

“We are going to Dolcina,” he announced. Ordered?

For a moment, she only stared, not trying to find words or tears or her breath. She just took in this large, wild man standing in her bedroom, demanding…

Storming into her room and demanding she go take in nativities? “Have you absolutely lost your mind?”

“No. We will go see your nativities.” He took a step toward her. “We will plan this ball.” Another step with each demand. “We will do all your little plots and plans, and at the end of this you will see: You were wrong.”

Wrong. She couldn’t believe he’d followed her all the way up here to stomp and carry on about her being wrong . After…this afternoon. Looking at his parents as they’d been. Discussing how they’d failed him, even if they hadn’t meant to.

That he could stand there and demand she be wrong was…

as heartbreaking as it was infuriating. “Is that all that album meant to you? All those memories and realizations, and all you care about is that I was wrong about how you might feel about it?” Maybe her father had been wrong all along.

About Diego. About the Follieros. About everything . Maybe…

But no. No. She understood Diego. All too well. Or had, until this moment.

Right now she didn’t understand him at all because he wasn’t running, but he wasn’t feeling either. She’d thought he’d lashed out to get her to leave, and so she had. To get a handle on herself before she lashed right back.

But he’d followed? Demanding that she be wrong when she was right , damn it. Damn him .

She advanced on him now, stalking right up to him, her hands balled into fists as though she might strike him. Not that it would do any good. Not that any of this was for any good.

She didn’t know what it was for, just that something needed to explode. Something needed to… something .

He was the one who’d followed her to her room, so she would not temper her response to him. If he didn’t like it, he could go. Back to that damn mountain of his.

“You act as though guilt is all there is,” she shot at him.

“The only valid response to everything you’ve lost. You act as if the guilt is the only thing in you—like nothing exists before it.

Do you feel anything else?” She clutched his shirt.

She couldn’t seem to stop herself. She tried to shake him, but he was too solid, too strong.

“Do you feel anything at all?” she demanded.

Because maybe that was the real problem.

She was assigning him feelings that weren’t there.

That would never be there.

He stood there, eyes wide, breathing uneven but otherwise unmoved.

And there was no getting through to him. Not with Christmas. Not with memories. Not with kindness or acceptance or any of the things she’d employed so far. He did not want to be reached.

Why couldn’t she accept that?

She shook her head, forcing herself to loosen her fingers, relinquish his shirt and him. She had to stop this, give up on him and what she’d hoped to accomplish in her father’s memory. It wasn’t healing him . And all it seemed to do was unravel her .

What would be left if she allowed herself to be unraveled? She was alone .

Alone.

Maybe that was really the source of all this. She’d reached out to him without fully realizing that what she’d actually been doing was hoping to avoid the horrible realization that she had no one.

Nothing.

Except this ridiculous job. And if he didn’t care about anything, what was the damn point of this job anyway? The Folliero name could crumble, he could live his fake life off the grid and she could…

She could…

Something. She would find something. She had to. First, she had to leave. But before she could drop her hands from his chest, his closed over her wrists and held her there.

Too many feelings roared through Diego. He should have let her drop her hands. He should walk away now. He should run in the opposite direction. He knew this. Always, forever, he had done this. When emotions engulfed him, the only safety was retreat.

But her challenge anchored him in place. The tears in her eyes that did not fall, the demand of a question if he felt anything, like there was something more inside him.

Like only she could pull it out.

Except she was giving up on him, as everyone did. He should relish and celebrate this. It was what he wanted. What he always wanted.

And still he did not, could not, let her go.

Do you feel anything at all?

Hadn’t that been the problem? Feeling too much? So much that he had to do something to block it all out? He had felt the weight of his parents’ disappointment that he did not have his father’s head for numbers, so he had gotten as far away from it as he could.

He had used his wealth and privilege to insulate himself from having to care about anything. If there was no hope, he could not disappoint.

And somehow, in his most pointless, useless moments, he had managed not to disappoint them, but to kill them.

What else could there be but guilt? What else should there be? All that existed before had died with them and the choices he’d made to end their lives.

“Are you going to let me go?” she said very quietly, laying down her challenges as only she seemed to be able to do. With quiet, precise cuts.

Without demands. Without disappointment. Without malice, even now.

She seemed to tie him up in knots but make those knots his rather than some expectation she’d placed upon him that he could fail.

“Or are you going to hold me here as prisoner?” she continued. “I seem to recall you threatening to toss me out not that long ago, and now you won’t let me go.”

He should do it. Let her quit. Fire her. Something. He should be the one making the choice. But he said nothing, and he did not let her go. He could see fury there in her placid gray eyes, but she kept it out of her voice. Even as every statement got a little more scathing.

“If you’re waiting for me to kiss you again so you can issue warnings and storm away, I don’t think I’m in the mood to play those games this afternoon. Perhaps another time.”

He did not let her go. He could not look away. He just kept thinking about all the walls he’d built—willingly and unwillingly—to keep these swirling feelings at bay. To keep the emotions and the temper and the needs somewhere deep down under a surface that did not care.

And then even that lack of care he had punished with more walls and isolation and pain. Pain was penance. Pain was the price.

And there was pain in him now, but he did not recognize it. Because it hurt , but it was wrapped up in a warming want. In the floral scent of this room and her, the way she did not struggle against his hold or look away, like she, too, was snared in this net she did not understand.

Her cheeks slowly shaded pink, like she felt it too. She claimed she wasn’t in the mood, but when he loosened the hands on her wrists, danced fingertips across the soft inner skin of her arm, she didn’t dart away.

She let out a shuddering sigh and swayed toward him.

“It seems to me you are in the mood, tesoro ,” he said, his voice pained gravel. “Perhaps you are always in the mood when it comes to me, no matter how you feel about me.”

He watched her face in fascination, in crackling, divided hope—that she might finally step away and leave him to this pain that he had chased down by coming to her room. Pain that was his due and the only thing he knew how to deal with.

And the other feeling one of hope, just as sharp and disastrous, that she might lean forward and dive into this chemistry he should not allow to exist. He should never allow himself to hope for.

But if he allowed it, if he fanned this flame and saw it to its completion, he would have ruined everything, and wasn’t that the punishment he really wanted?

He lowered his head. She didn’t stop him. She held his gaze as her breath caught in her throat, but she did not pull or push away. She did not turn her head.

And when his mouth touched hers, still waiting for her to stop this madness, she only sighed and leaned in. Just as she had the first time their mouths had touched. All gentle, careful exploration, when everything inside him was the opposite.

There was a raging, clawing beast inside his chest. He didn’t understand why it didn’t burst free, why the kiss remained gentle, why his grip on her was soft as it traveled up her arms to her shoulders to bring her closer.

“This will solve nothing,” she murmured, there against his mouth, even as she pressed herself against him.

“Good.” Because he didn’t want to solve. He wanted to ruin.

Once and for all.

So he changed the angle of the kiss, the weight of his grasp, and threw them into the fire.