Page 88 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER FOUR

Amelia had made certain 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.

She was proud of her foresight, because while she’d thought that would simply be good practice, now she thought it might actually…get through to him, and this wall he’d built between himself and the real world.

She had known he was grieving. She had known he felt guilty for not being on that plane like he was supposed to have been.

She had even had an inkling that these were the things that had prompted his extreme isolation.

But she had known this in a far-off, inconsequential sort of way.

Assuming that said isolation was comfortable, easy—perhaps not fully healthy , but not… extreme.

Now that she’d seen just how extreme his self-punishment was, she was determined to show him there was life on the other side of grief and guilt and pain.

A good man existed under all those things. Her father had thought so, so it must be true, and the only way to honor her father was to prove it to Diego himself.

Her first attempt would be to use the ghosts of his Christmas pasts to open him up to that.

She couldn’t help but think it would have to work at least a little .

Because remembering her parents and her past with them always caused her to ache now that they were gone, but it was a comforting ache.

Remembering them meant remembering love, and, in doing so, reminded her that while her parents might have died, that love did not simply evaporate.

It lived on inside her for as long as she did the things that would make them happy. Proud.

Diego had hidden himself away, sunk into the hard grieving part of loss rather than keep moving through life. So now she would require it in her father’s stead. So that Diego felt the love that must still exist there, even if he’d had a complicated relationship with his family.

She walked across the paved walkway to the back door, nodding in approval at the greenery and red bows adorning the windows even at the back of the castello . No detail had been missed. In the darkness, every inch of this place—inside and out—would glitter with Christmas lights.

There wasn’t much snow this far down the mountain, but hopefully some would fall before the ball to add to the overall effect. She’d already decided to hold it whether Diego approved or not, whether he came or not, but she was still holding out hope she could convince him to attend.

She would convince him. She would get through to him.

She supposed she should be more concerned she wouldn’t have a job and he’d hire someone to cancel all her plans. A life without this job would be…terrifying.

But something about that realization was concerning. In a strange way, it made her see that she too had been in a holding pattern the past two years. Running around acting as his assistant, doing his bidding—as was her job—and little else.

She did not have friends. She did not socialize outside of work, outside of the castello. She’d hidden herself away and let working take the place of…living.

She hadn’t been terribly unhappy, and grief filled in all the lonely spots in a way that was oddly comforting.

This had made it easy to not realize she wasn’t happy.

She wasn’t living. She wasn’t doing what she’d promised her parents’ memory: that she would do her best because it was what they would have wanted.

This realization shrouded everything with a new sense of tension, worry. What if she messed everything up? What if she pushed him too hard, and he fired her, and she ruined everything?

What if, in all that ruin, she became truly untethered and fully alone?

She breathed carefully through the anxiety. Her father had always urged her to make a plan when she was worried. To take it step by step. A wrong plan could be fixed, but inaction left you in the same place.

It was better to be afraid, to be forced into a new situation, than to stay wallowing in the old. Diego could fire her. He could cancel the ball. But he could not take her goals away from her.

She would prove to him he was the man her father had thought he was. And if it required living an entirely different life from the one she’d comfortably settled into over the past two years, then so be it.

Because that would make her father happy and proud.

“So be it,” she whispered to herself firmly. She stopped at the door, turned to find Diego had not followed. He was still by the car, his gaze on the castello in front of him.

He stood there, expressionless. She knew he had some reaction to being here, though. He would not stand as still as he was if he didn’t have some feeling about it, but the feeling was hidden deep under a sheet of stoic rock.

It was her job to find a way to break that rock apart. “I suppose you have not celebrated Christmas up there in your isolation,” she offered across the expanse of the walkway. Then she crossed back to him, linked her arm with his in a friendly move that caused him to stiffen even further.

She kept her voice light and cheerful. “Well, no worries. We will celebrate big enough for these lost years. Just as your family would have wanted.”

He looked down at her, said nothing. The moment extended, tight like a rubber band that would either break completely from the pressure or snap back into place with a painful whack .

But neither happened. After moments of the tension building, he simply took his arm out from hers, looked away and walked inside.

Amelia didn’t immediately follow. She let out a slow breath, trying to find a calm center in the midst of all the strange sensations his dark gaze affected inside her.

As though he were in charge, when she was the one who’d gotten him down here. She was the one with the power, even if it was his name on all the businesses. She had handled everything for too long for him to be fully in charge.

Or so she told herself. But actually dealing with him, butting heads with him in person rather than through email, made her realize her position was far more precarious than she’d initially thought. Part of her wanted to give in to that pressure. To step back, do as he said.

But a bigger part of her could see her father’s careful handwriting.

He will be a good man someday. I wish I could convince him of that.

“I will convince him of that,” she whispered into the quiet night around her. “I promise.” Then she waited, not going inside just yet. She watched the sky turn dark, searching for that first star to appear. When it did, in perfect harmony with the timed lights, she smiled.

Not all wishes came true, but she wouldn’t say no to a little celestial luck.

Diego thought he might crack into two and crumble. Perhaps the pressure of all this would simply cause him to die, just as the blunt force of a plane hitting a mountain had killed his family.

And hers.

There was something about acknowledging that she was Bartolo’s daughter. That she’d known his family. Been this very tangential part of his world—far more connected to the pieces he knew than to him, but here. Part of the castello. Part of the Folliero world.

Which meant she had her own grief.

But nothing to feel guilty about.

It was not the comfort he thought it would be. Who could be comforted in this nightmare?

They’d entered through the back, which had never been a part of the home he’d been in much. Still, there was something about the smells here—yeast and cinnamon and pine—that brought old memories back.

An old life back. He thought he could simply ice it away. Ignore it. Focus on the injustice of her ruining his perfectly organized penance.

Then he’d moved into the first living room.

Everything came to another halting, painful stop.

There was a strange ringing in his ears, loud enough to be Christmas bells.

For a moment, he thought maybe he was hallucinating.

He could all but see the ghosts of his childhood in every corner.

Dressed in their Christmas finest. Drinking. Laughing. Sparkling.

It looked exactly as it used to. Was it memory or reality? It was all so disorienting that he wasn’t sure.

He blinked once, tried to swallow the hard weight in his throat.

The room came into focus, decorated just as it was in his memories.

Greenery in boughs across the fireplace.

Unlit candles in red, green and white scattered across everything.

Angels that seemed to peer at him from their mantels, finding him unfit.

The tree in the corner was huge, and white lights glowed from the scented branches. Red bows, gold bells, silver angels. He recognized all the ornaments—not individually, but as the aesthetic his mother had preferred.

Mother had insisted they all handle the trees in different rooms. Aurora had been in charge of the tree in the library. Father, his den. Diego, the sunroom. Because Mother and Father liked classic Christmas decor, Aurora’s tree had always been a brightly colored rebellion, but she’d still partaken.

As a child, Diego had enjoyed the tradition, what felt like autonomy.

As a teen, he’d resented it more and more and more.

This insistence he be involved in a family performance that, to him—though he wasn’t able to articulate it then—showed just how separate they all were rather than demonstrate any familial connection.

Because the four of them had never understood one another. Never tried to. They were connected by a name, by a legacy, but that was all.