Page 110 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“You must wake up, Diego.”

Diego did not open his eyes, even as the voice got more insistent.

He was too used to ignoring his mother’s proclamations. They were never what he wanted to hear, and she always—

His mother.

His eyes flew open, then crashed closed again at the painful, searing light causing untold agony throughout his body. He threw his arm over his eyes, but the pain the movement caused nearly sent him hurtling back into the blackness.

He was freezing, shivering. Everything hurt, ached, throbbed. He was wet and cold and…outside? What had happened? Where was he? Why had he thought he’d heard…

He blinked his eyes open more carefully this time. It was still blinding because there was nothing but blue sky above him and white snow around him. He managed to turn his head a little to the right.

No, the snow wasn’t all white. Next to him, it was rather red.

That couldn’t be good.

He looked beyond the stomach-turning stained snow to his car. Amelia’s car. Crumpled against the rock face of the mountain. Glass was shattered across the snow, metal twisted, a grisly scene.

And he was alone and bloody in said snow. But…how had he gotten here? He didn’t remember anything besides the initial skid of the crash.

He must have…done something to get over here. Even though it was the driver’s side that was crushed against the rock.

He had the strangest mist-tinted memory of being…pulled? By light? But there was no one here. Nothing but the mangled car, and his bruised and bloody and potentially broken body.

Well, he must have crawled across to the passenger side, climbed out and then walked a ways before…collapsing here in the snow.

He remembered none of it. Only the crash itself. A strange light and warmth, which didn’t make sense. None of this made sense .

Certainly not the marks in the snow that were not footprints, but just a long divot, making it look like he’d been dragged from the car. But there were no footprints of whoever had done the dragging, so…

He tried to move into a sitting position, get a better view of everything around him to make sense of things, but that only caused another wave of excruciating torment, so he didn’t try to move again.

But you must.

He looked around wildly, wondering why he kept hearing a voice that sounded alarmingly like his mother’s. Even as pain throbbed through him, he searched. The world was bright and peaceful now. No heavy snow, no howling winds, no incessant dark.

There was no one around him though. No evidence of anyone. He was just…alone. And likely dying. Completely and utterly alone.

Just as he deserved, he supposed, though that thought felt incredibly wrong instead of right or peaceful. Amelia would be upset. Even if she hated him, this would hurt her, and he’d already caused her so much pain.

So what was a little more?

Now you must find your phone.

It was a male voice this time.

His heart thundered in his chest, making him feel shakier than even the cold was doing.

He looked around again, ignoring the way pain was seared into every second of every movement, but he saw nothing but endless white and the evidence of his car crash.

How was he hearing voices? His mother’s voice.

His father’s voice.

I found it.

Aurora’s voice.

He was having some sort of psychotic episode. Hearing the voices of the dead all around him. Or maybe he was already dead. Maybe this was the end.

Well, what are we supposed to do about it? Aurora’s voice demanded. He’s all the way over there.

Diego had the errant thought to roll over onto his stomach, crawl toward the voices. But they weren’t real voices. He was just…delusional from loss of blood. In the throes of death and hallucinating the dead before him.

A soft wind that almost felt warm, a direct contrast to the icy cold enveloping him, drifted over his face. And in that warmth were words.

You have more strength than you give yourself credit for. You always did.

“Bartolo?” his raspy, barely there voice sounded loud in the quiet all around him. What was happening to him?

Well, he was dying. Bleeding out.

He wanted to laugh, but no sound would come out of his body.

You will not leave my daughter alone as I did.

It was a sharp order that made him open his eyes once again. It wasn’t real, but he could feel the words. The guilt. Guilt and ghost voices. Proof enough it was just some sort of dark, twisted fantasy.

Because why should Bartolo feel guilty for dying when he’d had no say in it? He hadn’t crashed that plane. He’d simply gotten on it and waited for Diego. Just as his family had.

For some reason, he remembered Amelia asking him why he hadn’t blamed the pilot, when he’d had a choice not to take off. He remembered what she’d said earlier—last night? “Guilt is just a phase of grief, a misguided belief we have some control, but we have no control. Not about the end.”

It seemed to hit him harder now. The idea that guilt was only grief. Only an attempt at controlling the uncontrollable. He’d rejected it when she’d said it, not because she was wrong, but because…

It hurt. It hurt to have lost them for no damn reason. It felt better for him to be the reason. It felt better to punish himself than grieve that which he could not change. Ever.

Come now.

The voices were insistent, some combination of his parents and Bartolo, a clear enough delusion. But insistent.

Diego didn’t want to move, but it seemed wrong to ignore the voices that couldn’t possibly be around him. He managed to roll over onto his stomach. He tried to push up, but his arms shook with the effort and his vision swam with agony.

Crawl if you must , Bartolo’s voice insisted.

Still, Diego saw nothing, but it felt as though… It felt as though someone was there, pushing him.

He managed to get onto his hands and knees, and as the voice that couldn’t possibly be an actual voice suggested, he crawled. Toward the sound of an argument that reminded him of the last time he’d seen his family.

Mother and Father chastising Aurora, while she glibly retorted barbs designed to make them madder.

It wasn’t his family. It couldn’t be. He didn’t believe in ghosts or angels, and they were most assuredly dead. He was simply going insane, but that didn’t make him stop his crawl. Because if he could find his phone…

And there it was. He could see it a ways off, lying on top of a large piece of shattered car window. Still so far away.

He’s never going to make it.

Aurora’s harsh words spurred him on, but a few sad attempts to crawl later, he had to admit to himself she was right. He couldn’t seem to make his body move forward anymore. His arms shook so hard and eventually just gave out, earning him a face full of snow.

I’m going to do it.

He didn’t know what Aurora thought she was going to do—considering she was dead, just a vocal hallucination. He heard voices calling his name insistently even as he sank into the snow.

Mother. Father. Aurora. Bartolo. All insisting he move. But he couldn’t. He was fading again. Dimness crept around his vision. The pain was numbing into something else. Was it death?

Maybe. Maybe he’d join the voices all around him. Maybe it was all there was to be done.

All because he’d sought to get away from Amelia’s love. It seemed so foolish now, with all this pain swamping him. Why had he been so determined to run away from what she offered? How had he fooled himself into believing he was saving her, when all he’d done was hurt her?

You always hurt the people you love.

But if he’d stayed, he wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t be here. If he’d stayed, worked through his fear, found some courage, he wouldn’t have hurt her like this. What a waste to realize this now, as he was dying.

Except he realized he hadn’t heard any voices in a while.

And he wasn’t dead just yet, because what he did hear was sirens in the distance.

Amelia had considered calling for a cab since Mondo and his father were busy using the castello cars to get guests to the airport. She had considered having Mondo drive her up to the cabin—where she would not go see Diego at all. She’d simply get in her car and go .

It was her car after all.

But rushing through her decision to leave for good made her feel like she was running away rather than making a careful, informed decision. So she took her time. Made arrangements for the staff. Wrote her letter of resignation, which she would leave with Mondo to deliver to Diego once she was gone.

She waited for the guests to filter out, wished them happy holidays and wonderful New Years with a smile frozen to her face. While Mondo was driving the last couple to the airport, she packed.

When he returned, she’d ask him to take her to the airport.

She had not packed everything. Just enough to get her through the first week or two if she stretched things. Once she figured out where she was going, what exactly she was choosing, she would send for her things.

London felt like the best option for a first stop. She had spent her early childhood there with her mother. Maybe there would be bittersweet memories, but she was hardly going to be afraid of that like some people were.

She would need to secure a position, but she was a frugal sort and had been carefully tucking away her salary the past two years. Plus she hadn’t touched what her father had left her.

She would now. She would finish his journals, use his money, say goodbye. She would not be afraid to say goodbye.

He would always be with her, regardless of what she did or didn’t do with the things he’d left behind.

Amelia hefted her bags downstairs and put them by the door so she would be ready when Mondo returned, but before she could decide what to do next, she heard the shout. Concerned, she raced into the kitchen to find the source. Had someone fallen? Was there a fire?

She found Mrs. Moretti in the kitchen, the house’s landline phone at her feet. Apparently the sound Amelia had heard was it clattering onto the ground.

Mrs. Moretti looked as white as a ghost.

“Mrs. Moretti. What is it?”

She picked up the phone she’d dropped and put it back in its cradle. “That was a police officer. Mr. Folliero is in the hospital.”

For a moment, Amelia could not react. The words would not penetrate in a way that made any sense. Luckily, Mrs. Moretti kept talking.

“There was a car accident. The ambulance brought him in this morning, but they could not identify him right away. They finally did and… And you must go.” Mrs. Moretti crossed to her, grabbed her hands and squeezed hard enough to break through the fog of shock. “You must go at once,” she insisted.

Go. Go. She was supposed to go , not run back to him.

Car accident. Hospital.

“Is he… Will he…”

Mrs. Moretti shook her head, eyes filling with tears. “They will not give me his prognosis. They were looking for next of kin, and he has none. But you… You’ll know what to do, Amelia. Won’t you?”

Amelia felt like her mind was a scramble, but she’d done this before.

Oh God. The thought of Diego ending up like the rest of the Follieros curdled her stomach.

She pushed the end result of the past out of her mind. She’d been the one to contact Diego, to handle things, back then. She could handle this. She would have to handle this.

There was no one else.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll know what to do.” But she didn’t move, because… “How will I get there?”

Mrs. Moretti threw her hands in the air, hustled over to a closet and then pulled out a purse. She pawed through it before retrieving keys. “Here. You will take my car.”

Amelia looked down at the keys Mrs. Moretti shoved into her hand. She knew where the hospital was. And his being at a hospital was a good sign. A positive sign.

Her father and the Follieros had never made it there. So there had to be some semblance of a living body to try to save. Diego had to be alive. He had to…survive.

She didn’t have to go be there by his side while he did it, though. Even if he had no one, that was his own choice.

She couldn’t accept that though, even if part of her wanted to.

Maybe he’d chosen his pain and his guilt and his punishment, but it would be her choice to abandon him now.

A choice made in direct opposition to what she wanted.

A choice that would remind her too much of the way she hadn’t spoken up to her father when he’d left the last time.

She wouldn’t beg Diego to love her. She would go on with her plans to leave.

But first, she had to be certain he was alive.