Page 106 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

“Maybe. Sort of. But you see, even when my father was setting me off into the world, he was there as a soft place to land if I made a mistake. He was there . He did not simply…stop being a parent.”

“And then he died,” Diego pointed out. The implied because of me hung in the air.

“Yes, he did, but I’d had the soft landing just the same.” Before she lost Diego to his guilt, she grabbed on to the past. “So, what happened after your parents told you to handle his insubordination yourself? You didn’t sack him, obviously.”

“I tried, I suppose. He’d followed me to the castello, waited outside the room where I’d yelled at my parents to fire him.

I walked out and there he sat. I was fuming, so I told him that I would no longer need him as my assistant.

That I would not tolerate insubordination.

Particularly when it came in the form of physical attacks.

I was pompous and overwrought, and your father sat there and nodded along like I was right. ”

Amelia smiled in spite of herself. That was how he’d gone about winning an argument. Agreeing and agreeing until a person began to realize they were being ridiculous, and Bartolo Baresi was right as usual.

“He stood and shook my hand. Told me he hoped that I took away the lesson he’d wanted to impart.

That it was my job to take responsibility for things.

That no one else could do it for me. That even my privilege and my parents and my money couldn’t excuse me from basic self-responsibility.

He said he could leave, then and there, and I could hire any replacement I saw fit. Or we could consider it a fresh start.”

Amelia wrapped her arm around Diego, squeezed. “You took the fresh start.”

Diego shook his head. “I was being lazy. I didn’t want to hire someone else to handle things like correspondence and arranging travel and the like. I wanted someone to do it, and I didn’t really care who.”

She studied him then. He would remember all the bad… “I wonder, Diego, what made you decide you could not take responsibility for anything except the bad.”

His frown turned into something like dawning horror, but the doorbell that played “Ave Maria” sounded around them.

“That’ll be our first guest.” She rose onto her toes, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “But if you must blame yourself for everything , I’d consider that this requires blaming yourself for the good too.”

And with that, she left her room, blinking back tears, to greet their first guest.

Diego had known the dinner would be an exercise in annoyance, discomfort and pain. He told himself that was why he’d come. Why he was still here. To see through these terribly painful things. His punishment.

He told himself it had nothing to do with Amelia.

It had everything to do with her .

The realization creeped up on him over the course of the evening. A terrible, choking thing he had to pretend wasn’t there along with all the grief that shrouded every corner like ghosts of Christmases past.

If he wasn’t here for her , he would have walked out of the room the first time someone came up to him to express their sympathies over the loss of his family. He would have walked away from the castello and the idea of taking credit for anything good forever.

Instead, he stayed. Instead, he nodded along to the sympathies, the stories, the memories. Mostly, it could have been worse, he supposed. But it was as if that thought made the worst appear.

Luliana Longo had been a staple at this weekend in his youth, and he’d never understood why his mother insisted on inviting her worst enemy to their home . But Mother had thought it gave her the upper hand, to never slight Luliana, no matter how mean and grasping she could be.

“It has been forever .” She airbrushed kisses across his cheek, then rocked back to study him with sharp eyes he remembered.

She’d liked to pinch young children who got “too loud,” then feigned ignorance if they tattled.

Diego hadn’t tattled. He’d gotten even. He and Aurora had gotten back at her by pouring gravy in her purse.

No one had ever been able to prove it was them, either, as Luliana had spent the entire weekend making people mad.

The memory brought him joy. And a sarcastic retort. “If only,” Diego replied, but he said it with a smile, so Luliana was frozen there, unsure how to respond.

His smile grew wider.

It was almost as if Luliana saw that smile as a personal affront, or a challenge.

“This brings back so many memories of your dear mother.” She blinked a few times, as if to give off the impression of tears, though her dark eyes remained dry as dust. “And that sister of yours. She was…a free spirit, wasn’t she?

I don’t know how you stand it. Being here.

Remembering them. Their lives cut so short. ”

“You’re here. Remembering them,” Diego pointed out. “I suppose that is what we humans must do. Remember. ” It was something Amelia would say, though she would probably mean it.

“Of course,” Luliana replied dully, but then she immediately perked up. “You missed so many of these. Off galivanting. Leaving your poor sister to be one of the few youngsters. She never took it well. It was always the talk of the weekend. What temper tantrum would Aurora throw?”

“None, this time around.”

Luliana’s mouth dropped at the crude reminder, but it brought Diego no joy because it was only the truth.

Sadly it wasn’t enough of a truth to dislodge Luliana from doing whatever it was she was hoping to do. Because she kept talking. Determined, clearly, to tell whatever story she’d approached him to tell.

“You weren’t here, but I remember the last ball. My! Aurora got into quite the row with your mother.” The woman dabbed her eyes, but Diego could not find any true sadness there. The dark gaze darted around to the chandeliers, the expensive crystal, likely totaling it all down to the cent.

She’d wanted to buy the castello from him. Had harassed him, in fact, those first few weeks under the guise of helping him.

He’d forced Amelia to handle it as her first job as his assistant. He blinked once, wondering how he’d forgotten such things. But he’d been…

His first instinct was to call it guilt-ridden, but these days, with Amelia’s influence, he couldn’t seem to pretend it was anything other than grief and depression. And in the depths of that, this woman had poked at him.

He’d have to ask Amelia what she’d done to get her to back off.

“I’ve never seen a child say such nasty things to their parents,” Luliana continued. “Certainly not in front of people.” She tsked, as if it were a great shame. Instead of the fact that Aurora being dead was the shame.

Diego would have felt anger. Maybe it was kindling underneath the heavy swath of darkness. He wasn’t sure.

But the last ball, the one he was supposed to have attended but had decided last minute not to put himself through it, had been right before they’d died. And Aurora and Mother had gotten into a public fight.

He could only hope they’d made amends before…

It was a dark pall, or it would have been, one that sat there and festered, if Amelia had not interrupted.

She slid into the seat next to Diego, moving her arm over the back of his neck. “My favorite memory of Aurora was the year she performed an entire ballet recital at the Christmas Ball. Did you ever hear about that, Diego?”

He could only stare at her, a bright little light in all this vicious darkness. He didn’t answer, but she went on with the story anyway.

Aurora had meant to perform a piano recital but had never practiced. So she’d made Amelia play while she performed a little ballet routine she’d designed herself. It had impressed everyone, even Mother, who had always wanted Aurora to be a pianist, not a dancer.

The story was bittersweet. Since Aurora was dead and hadn’t gotten to live any life she should have been able to, but something about the laughter, about how easy he could picture Aurora eating up the crowd’s—and their parents’—reactions made it feel as though she lived on.

In that memory that had everyone laughing or smiling now .

Amelia had done that—not just here, he realized in a startling kind of wonder as the decadent struffoli was presented to the table. But constantly since she’d threatened him down the mountain.

She had taken all his darkest edges and offered them a kinder edge. Every horrible memory softened with a reason or a better memory. Every stab of guilt he tried to carry, she tried to lift up and away from him.

As if this penance wasn’t his to carry.

She made that seem possible. Amelia made it all seem like he wasn’t deluding himself. He could have a life. One with happiness and joy and people and her , and it wouldn’t be a degradation of the people he’d lost.

When that could never be true.

He made it through the rest of the dinner, noted how easily Amelia kept Luliana busy and away from him, down to escorting her to her room for the night after Luliana claimed there was something wrong with her accommodations.

Amelia insisted on taking care of it herself.

And while she did, and everyone else drifted off to their rooms, happily full and a little drunk, merry and bright, Diego found himself alone in the great ballroom, where the ball would be tomorrow.

It was dark except for all the Christmas lights that twinkled on the tree.

And he knew, in this darkness punctuated by light, that he had allowed himself too much. This was no longer pain. It was something bigger, something he did not deserve.

So now it was time to cut it off.

He had never shown up for anyone who needed him. He had only caused pain. So he could not take this chance at something more than darkness.

He would see the ball through. He would not make this harder on Amelia . But after…

After, they would need to come to an understanding. His first instinct was to run. To disappear.

But she’d reminded him of the lesson Bartolo had been so desperate to impart on him. He had a responsibility. He could not run away any longer. His choices, good and bad, were his. And they had effects on other people.

“I am sorry it took me killing you all to realize it,” he muttered—foolishly, he knew. But there was the strangest heft to the air, as if four sets of eyes were on him when there was no one in the room. The lights on the tree twinkled in reds, greens and whites, the air around him still and cool.

Tomorrow, people would be crushed into this room. Dancing, drinking, caroling. It would smell like cinnamon and pine and expensive perfume. There would be joy and celebration, and all because Amelia had decided to make joy.

And tried to give it to him when he didn’t deserve it. Her heart was too soft. Her forgiveness too easy. She was young and naive. She didn’t understand.

So this had to end.

One more night together. A goodbye of sorts. He would stay through the ball because he did not want to ruin it for her, because whether she realized it or not, she had not thrown the ball only for him.

She’d thrown it for herself too. A goodbye, and a step in the direction of her future, all at the same time. Amelia was good at that—those dichotomies.

He did not know how to do both. How to constantly live in two worlds—sadness and hope. Love and regret. Grief and joy in memory. They would split him apart.

No, he would never be able to give her that, and that was where she belonged.

Tomorrow night, he would return to where he belonged. It would not be running away. It would be a concrete, careful choice this time.

Because the choice he’d made two years ago had ended too many lives, and he did not deserve a life of happiness in the one place he’d always run away from, with the daughter of the man who’d taught him every important lesson.

She deserved better. So she would have better.

His choice. His consequences.

What about Amelia’s?

He stood staring at the tree, a lancing pain in his chest. The voice in his head sounded too much like hers.

Then a bell tinkled somewhere in the tree, sending a shiver down his spine.

So he left the tree and went to find his goodbye.