Page 140 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

They wound down from the part of the mountain where his isolated cabin was situated to the broader valley in which the castello was nestled. It was amazing what a mind could remember, what instinctual memory the landscape created. Because he knew the moment he’d see the first spire of Castello di Natale around the curve. He could count the seconds to when the first tower would come into view, then the second, then the third. Almost as if the entire castle was mapped into his bones.

If the feeling hanging around the center of his chest did not feelsingularlylike dread, he would not admit it to himself. Dread was the only feeling he allowed.

When the car drove from paved road to cobbled drive, Diego had to focus on breathing in and out carefully so he would not have a physical reaction Amelia might take as weakness.

He had heard so many people throughout his childhood go on and on and on about the beauty of Castello di Natale. The perfect Christmas castle. Opulence and luxury mixed with tradition, and a coziness that allowed each guest to feel every inch the wealthy class they were, while reminding them of something simpler.

Even when he had been a different person, he had never understood why the generations held on to this tradition. Opening one of their homes to other wealthy families, throwing grand Christmas balls, as his great-great-grandparents had once done in order to save their riches. His parents had enjoyed such revelry, he supposed, and showing off for their friends.

While Diego had once enjoyed a party, he’d never enjoyed the feeling of his parents wanting him and Aurora toperformfor their friends, as if they’d had children only to make them behave like trained monkeys.

But the tradition had continued. Until death. Until tragedy. He had considered selling off thecastello, and all the Folliero holdings, in those first grief-stricken days. Get rid of everything. Be nothing and no one since he’d killed them all.

But when he’d met with the lawyers and his father’s assistants and staff to arrange just that, he hadn’t been able to verbalize the desire. In that moment, selling it had felt like murdering them once again.

So he’d shut up the castello but held on, keeping the same staff in place. And now, even two years later, he could not fathom sellingoropening the castello.

“How long has it been?” Amelia asked, her voice gentle and kind.

How she could sound either when she had taken this evil turn of forcing him from his solitude and penance was a mystery to him, but the question hung there between them.

How long had it been? He’d not been home to the castello in quite a few years. Even when attending Bartolo’s funeral in the valley, he had not darkened this door. He had kept his distance.

“You were likely still in diapers.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She gave an injured sniff. “I was twelve when I came to live here. I remember a few of your visits quite clearly.”

He eyed her. “Do tell.”

“Well, Aurora loved to complain bitterly about your presence. And I was her favorite ear for complaining.”

“I did not realize you and my sister were close.” He could not bear to say her name aloud. It brought up too many images of a brazen young woman, spoiled in her own way but bright and vibrant. Someone who could have made something of herself, if her life hadn’t been cut so tragically short.

Because of him.

“Close? No. She did not consider me the sameclassas her, but despite that snobbery, she was an odd sort of kind to me, and she liked to have a rapt audience. I was young and lonely and happy to be anyone’s audience, particularly if they were under the age of thirty.”

He regarded her then. Her regal profile. The straight, elegant way she held herself. She had come to Italy at the age of twelve because her mother had died… Diego could not remember how. Only the sudden shock that Bartolo would be bringing a child into the castello and would no longer be Diego’s right-hand man in the same way he had been since he’d started university.

“Why did you come to an isolated castello? Why did your father not raise you in Milan? Or leave you in London?”

Amelia lifted a shoulder. “I couldn’t say. I never really thought of it. My mother was dead. I didn’t really care where I was, as long as I was with someone who loved me.”

She didn’t say it in any kind of pointed way, but it felt a bit sharp all the same. A reminder that she, too, had lost her parents, and he wasn’t special.

But she didn’t know that her father’s demise was partly Diego’s fault. No one did. Except him. She might have grief, but she did not live with guilt.

The car rolled to a stop behind the castello. Amelia moved to get out herself, then looked back at him with something akin to mischief in her steely eyes. “The other thing I remember quite clearly was you loving to make a drunken scene when you came home. Perhaps we can avoid that this time around, hmm?”

Then she was out of the car, striding toward the castello—hisCastello di Natale—as if she were in charge. Of this place, of his family’s legacy. Of everything he had pushed away, determined it was hispenance.

But he was beginning to wonder if that penance would have been staying here all along and living with the ghosts of those he’d killed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ameliahadmadecertain the castello would be decorated for Christmas before they arrived. Not just decorated, in fact, but decorated in the exact way it would have been when Diego’s family was alive.

She’d done much of it herself before she decided to head up the mountain to fetch him, but she had left the last few details to the staff. She’d made sure they had pictures of the balls from when Diego was a child so they could make it a picture-perfect copy of all those years ago.