Page 163 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

He stood there, eyes wide, breathing uneven but otherwise unmoved.

And there was no getting through to him. Not with Christmas. Not with memories. Not with kindness or acceptance or any of the things she’d employed so far. He did not want to be reached.

Why couldn’t she accept that?

She shook her head, forcing herself to loosen her fingers, relinquish his shirt and him. She had to stop this, give up on him and what she’d hoped to accomplish in her father’s memory. It wasn’t healinghim. And all it seemed to do was unravelher.

What would be left if she allowed herself to be unraveled? She wasalone.

Alone.

Maybe that was really the source of all this. She’d reached out to him without fully realizing that what she’d actually been doing was hoping to avoid the horrible realization that she had no one.

Nothing.

Except this ridiculous job. And if he didn’t care about anything, what was the damn point of this job anyway? The Folliero name could crumble, he could live his fake life off the grid and she could…

She could…

Something. She would find something. She had to. First, she had to leave. But before she could drop her hands from his chest, his closed over her wrists and held her there.

Too many feelings roared through Diego. He should have let her drop her hands. He should walk away now. He shouldrunin the opposite direction. He knew this. Always, forever, he had done this. When emotions engulfed him, the only safety was retreat.

But her challenge anchored him in place. The tears in her eyes that did not fall, the demand of a question if he felt anything, like there was something more inside him.

Like only she could pull it out.

Except she was giving up on him, as everyone did. He should relish and celebrate this. It was what he wanted. What he always wanted.

And still he did not, could not, let her go.

Do you feel anything at all?

Hadn’t that been the problem? Feeling too much? So much that he had to do something to block it all out? He had felt the weight of his parents’ disappointment that he did not have his father’s head for numbers, so he had gotten as far away from it as he could.

He had used his wealth and privilege to insulate himself from having to care about anything. If there was no hope, he could not disappoint.

And somehow, in his most pointless, useless moments, he had managed not to disappoint them, but to kill them.

What else could there be but guilt? What else should there be? All that existed before had died with them and the choices he’d made to end their lives.

“Are you going to let me go?” she said very quietly, laying down her challenges as only she seemed to be able to do. With quiet, precise cuts.

Without demands. Without disappointment. Without malice, even now.

She seemed to tie him up in knots but make those knotshisrather than some expectation she’d placed upon him that he could fail.

“Or are you going to hold me here as prisoner?” she continued. “I seem to recall you threatening to toss me out not that long ago, and now you won’t let me go.”

He should do it. Let her quit. Fire her. Something. He should be the one making the choice. But he said nothing, and he did not let her go. He could see fury there in her placid gray eyes, but she kept it out of her voice. Even as every statement got a little more scathing.

“If you’re waiting for me to kiss you again so you can issue warnings and storm away, I don’t think I’m in the mood to play those games this afternoon. Perhaps another time.”

He did not let her go. He could not look away. He just kept thinking about all the walls he’d built—willingly and unwillingly—to keep these swirling feelings at bay. To keep the emotions and the temper and theneedssomewhere deep down under a surface that did not care.

And then even that lack of care he had punished with more walls and isolation and pain. Pain was penance. Pain was the price.

And there was pain in him now, but he did not recognize it. Because ithurt, but it was wrapped up in a warming want. In the floral scent of this room and her, the way she did not struggle against his hold or look away, like she, too, was snared in this net she did not understand.