Page 137 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

His fault.

He did not like to think of that day, but he forced himself to. If his adolescence and early adulthood had been a study in ignoring everything difficult, he’d learned in his guilt and his penance that he must absorb everything difficult. That he must be the opposite of the man who’d caused such tragedy.

So he met the gaze of Bartolo’s beautiful daughter, who watched him with gray eyes that gave the off-putting feeling she saw too much, too easily. “You have crossed a line,” he said firmly.

She shook her head as if she could simply disagree with his lines, even thoughhewasherboss.

“You put me in charge of your affairs. We have a problem that now requires your presence. The fact of the matter is, we have let two Christmases pass without holding the annual Folliero Christmas ball. And the profits at Castello di Natale have suffered.”

He waved this away. It was inconsequential. “I have other businesses.”

“You do, but the Christmas business was the one your father was most proud of.”

“What do you know of my father?”

“Aside from living under his roof for ten years, you mean?” she asked, a kind of sweetness in her tone that didn’t match her words. She was very good at that.

He looked at this woman. He knew next to nothing about her, except the sad circumstances that had brought her to Castello di Natale and required Bartolo to stay at the castello rather than continue to travel with Diego.

Diego had resented her existence at times but never thought much of her beyond that. Never considered that she’d lived in the castello with his parents, his sister. He knew nothing about her or how she’d moved through the Folliero world, because he had been off enjoying his twenties. His lack of responsibility. His wealth and freedom and all the many pleasures that came with it.

Pleasure. Avoidance. Enough alcohol and women to numb it all. So he’d rarely thought of anything more complex than which club to go to that night.

Now this woman was in his space. Now she was…demanding things of him.

He would have dismissed her outright, even if he owed her father’s memory more than that. After all, what was more guilt? But she’d made too good of a point… The amount of work and effort it would take to replace her would require him to return to the world at least for a little while anyway, and it would mean…too much connection.

He could let it all crumble. The business. The legacy. But continuing it was too wrapped up in his penance.

“I miss my father like a limb,” she said very quietly, sitting there on his only chair, a beautiful, discordant note to the bland, unwelcoming room. “But I miss them too, you know. They were not my family, but they were part of the fabric of my life, and they were never anything but kind to me.”

Grief, guilt and a thread of bitterness spread through him. He held on to the bitterness. “How novel.”

Her mouth curved ever so slightly, a kind of wistfulness that snagged his attention, his interest, against his will.

“Your sister would have said the exact same thing if I’d suggested your parents were kind,” she said softly.

“Because they were not.” But they hadn’t deserved to die because of him. Perhaps people like them did not have the capacity for kindness. Perhaps, like him, they had been nothing but spoiled and self-centered.

Still, he lived. They had died.

“People are complicated,” Amelia said, one hand resting over the other in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankle. All prim, easy grace.

“As is the situation we find ourselves in,” she continued. “You do not wish to return to the castello, or a life…around people, I suppose? Whatever it is that keeps you up here, alone and isolated and…” She trailed off, her gaze taking in the kitchen, the fireplace, the lone window. Then her gaze pinned him. “Is this some sort of…self-punishment?”

He refused to answer that question. He refused…this.

Except she was still here, and he did not know how to fix that just yet.

She shook her head when the silence stretched out into long minutes. “I’m afraid whatever it is you’ve attempted to accomplish up here, hidden away from the world, it must come to an end. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you must return to the castello.”

“I certainly do not. I do not know what has come over you, but you aremyassistant.”

“Yes, that is the job title.” She studied him, a little dent appearing between her eyebrows as if she was deep in thought. “I did not take you for a coward.”

“I am neither coward nor brave. I am nothing.”

Her face softened. “That isn’t true.”