Page 139 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Amelia would use whatever means necessary to convince him. To make her father’s wish came true. Because if she was doing what he would have wanted, enacting the things he would have done—if perhaps a year or two too late—then it was like he was still here. Making the memory of him proud kept him alive inside her heart, she liked to think.

So she would do so. Before a new year dawned.

“There is nothing to pack,” Diego said darkly. He lifted the bag to his shoulder. He’d putsomethingin there, but not clothes or toiletries. She couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what it might hold. In two strides, he stood in front of her, glowering down at her. “You will regret interrupting my peace.”

He smelled like woodfire. His eyes blazed with fury. He was so much larger than her. Physically intimidating, and yet she did not feel any kind of self-preserving impulse.

Quite the opposite. She had to curl her hand into a fist to fight off the impulse to reach out andtouch.

She took a step back, afraid of herreactionto him more than she was ofhim. “Alternatively,” she said, seeking a calm and reasonable approach to his fiery response, “we could handle this in a rational manner. I could remain in your employ. You could allow me to open up the castello for its traditional Christmas events, thus helping that arm of your businesses. You could make a small handful of appearances, and when all is said and done, and the clock strikes midnight on a brand-new year, if you still feel as you do now, you may return to…” She made a show of looking around. “This. And I will close the castello to the public forever. I won’t bother you ever again, except to do your express bidding. Unless you’d like to fire me, that is.”

His gaze moved over her, and she had no idea what he was cataloging when he did that. What he saw. What it meant to him. But he seemed to keep doing it, taking her in as a whole.

“Such promises,” he muttered darkly, then pushed past her and out of the cabin.

It would be twenty-four hours—at most, Diego decided. He would have her contract altered, her power stripped. A simple meeting with his lawyers should make it so.

He would not get rid of her, though it was tempting. But he needed her for the day-to-day. Once she had no power over the castello, she could go back to doing what he’d hired her to do. She would understand that random acts of greed would not go unpunished.

Because what else could trying to sell the castello out from under him be?

She would stay in his employ because she was good at the jobs she was supposed to do, but she would not have the power to sellanything. Surely his lawyers could see to that. He could have called them, but he knew his presence would ensure they took this seriously. And it would ensure Amelia Baresi could not corrupt his plans.

What had changed in two years to have her suddenly crossing every boundary he’d so piously planted?

It did not matter. She did not matter. What mattered was arranging everything the way he chose, the way that suited his punishment.

The idea of returning to the castello was a physical, blinding pain.

Pain is the price.

So maybe this too was part of his penance. He didn’tenjoythat thought, but he reminded himself that his choices required him to movetowardthe pain now, embrace it.

He left the cabin without a backward glance, following Amelia out to where a car was pulling up in the snow. He found himself stopping short, already stabbed clean through by the identity of the driver.

He recognized the man, or thought he did. “Armondo…”

“That is Mondo, Armondo’s son,” Amelia said, the correction quiet and gentle. “Armondo still does some driving for the castello staff, but not these treacherous roads. They’re just a little too challenging for him these days.”

Diego looked at the driver through the glass—a picture-perfect replica of Armondo, if he hadn’t aged at all since Diego’s childhood. Diego remembered his father sneaking off to smoke a cigarette with Armondo when he would drive them into Bolzano for business. Mother did not approve of smoking, so those trips were the only times Father had indulged.

For all their faults, they had been devoted to each other. For all their faults…

“Shall we?” Amelia asked, her voice soft as she gestured to where the car waited.

Diego moved forward stiffly, some of his motivating fury dulled by the sight of someone he kind of recognized. Armondo—no, his son.

Mondo opened the door for them.“Buon pomeriggio, signor.”

Diego could not find his voice to respond, so he nodded and slid into the car. Amelia entered on the opposite side. They left a large gap between them on the expensive leather seats.

They drove in a heavy silence. Diego didn’t miss that when Mondo had a straightaway and could take his focus off the curving, narrow road for a moment, his gaze lifted to the rearview mirror, as if he were studying Diego and not sure what to make of him.

Amelia had her phone out, occasionally typing some sort of quick missive into the machine. She paid almost no attention to him at all.

Diego realized he had not been in a car for almost the entire time he’d been up at the cabin. He had walked everywhere he needed to, or had deliveries made when necessary. Being in a moving vehicle goingdownthe mountain was disarming.

Everything about this day was like an earthquake, scrambling up the foundations he’d built. Out of guilt. For his penance.