Page 146 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Damn Amelia. He was only in this meeting, this house, this fiasco because ofher, and they were telling him it would becomplicatedto pluck her from the carefully woven fabric of the castello business.

She’d no doubt done it on purpose. Maybe she didn’tseemlike the scheming type, but he’d only trusted her because he’d trusted Bartolo. Perhaps it had been a mistake.

But these lawyers made it seem like a mistake he did not wish to deal with correcting. Perhaps heshouldlet her sell the castello out from under him. He got the money either way. It wasn’t like she could do it for her own gain. She could only act inhisinterests.

So why is she threatening to sell?

He glared at the lawyers across the table from him, then waved them away. “You are useless, and you may go back to the holes you crawled out of.”

The man’s face got very red. The woman rolled her eyes. But without argument, they both got up, collected their things and left him to brood in the formal office his father had once presided over.

Diego stared at the huge painting that hung on the wall across from him. A family portrait that had required interminable hours of sitting when he’d been an antsy young man.

His mother, painted much younger than she’d actually been at the time. His father, painted taller. The frown his sister had sported any time they’d had to sit for the painter had been turned into a serene smile she’d never once been capable of accomplishing. And he…

He looked at a version of himself that was so certain of his place in the world, so certain of all he was entitled to. Brash and arrogant and…listless. Purposeless. He felt like the only one who was honestly portrayed in the painting, but perhaps that’s because he could only look on the young man he’d been with disgust.

But sitting here, facing himself, he was confronted with a question he had not expected. A question he did not want.

How was he any different from that young man? How was hispenancedoing any good? Or was that too simple selfishness? Was that all he was? His chest got tight, and it was hard to inhale around this confrontation of thought.

A quick knock sounded at the door, and before he could decide on how to deal with an interloper on his current internal crisis, it opened. Amelia walked in with the same purpose she’d walked in with at his cabin in the mountains, and then again this morning in his bedchamber.

But he was dressed this time around, and he watched as her eyes darted away from him, like she was remembering the last time she’d entered a room with little warning.

Because her cheeks grew pink as she stood there, though whatever was going on in her imagination did not leak into her voice. “If you are done with your lawyers and I am still employed, we have an appointment.”

He could address that—her employment—but he didn’t want to. “What kind of appointment?”

Her smile was…soft. Sweet, almost.

He hated it.

“Come, Diego. Where is your sense of adventure?”

“Dead.”

She tsked, not at all cowed by his harsh response. “You breathe,caro. You are alive. This cannot be changed in this moment any more than death can be changed in any moment.”

Her words shook him, though they shouldn’t. Of course he was alive. Of course hebreathed. He knew this.

And yet…the way she said it, with a cheerful gentleness, as though she understood the depths of despair that went into knowing you were alive when you should not be. Others were dead and they should not be.

She did not know, could not know, the weight that he strove to make right with his punishment.

“Come,” she said, a warm, gentle order. “Breathe. Live. If only for a moment.”

He wanted none of it. Still…he found himself following in spite of it all.

CHAPTER SIX

Ameliaknewithad been a Folliero tradition to visit the Christmas markets in the towns surrounding Castello di Natale in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day, so she would force Diego into reliving such traditions for as long as she could force him to do anything.

She was a little surprised he hadn’t put up more of a fight, especially as furious as he’d looked after the meeting with his lawyers.

He’d no doubt found out what she already knew—though hecouldget rid of her or strip certain powers from her, because he had instilled so much responsibility and power to act in his stead, it would take time to untangle her completely. Especially if he didn’t want to do the work she’d have to leave behind if he fired her.

This gave hersomesatisfaction, and it was something she tried to hold on to as she found her gaze drifting to him. To places she should not look. To things she should not remember existed under the fabric of his clothes.