Page 95 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER EIGHT

Amelia hadn’t planned to do it. In fact, she’d told herself not to. To step away. There would be no getting through to him on a basic level if everything they did was clouded by… this .

But he was so close, and he was looking at her mouth. There was a hunger in his eyes that she wanted to experience. It echoed deeply inside her, an alarming and alluring pulse.

So she’d gotten closer. And then closer. Until she could feel his body heat, smell the soap on his skin. Until everything they’d been arguing about seemed to fade away and all she could think about was how much she’d like to know.

Because he was right. She’d built no life outside the castello. Had it been grief? Had it been fear? Simply a habit she hadn’t known how to break when everything else was breaking apart around her?

She wasn’t certain. But she was hardly going to bow down to his challenge. She hadn’t punished herself, even if she’d made some isolating decisions. She certainly wasn’t going to be so afraid of what she might have been doing to not reach out and try something new.

He’d challenged her, and that had tipped that tightwire between fear and excitement to ignoring fear if it meant meeting that challenge.

So she did the only thing that seemed to make sense in this stretched-out moment of touching each other, looking at each other, testing each other. She pushed onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.

Lightly. Perhaps the things raging through her were nowhere close to light , but she thought he felt…fragile. Oh, he was a strong, impressive specimen of muscle and power, but under all that was something…delicate.

Perhaps the tiniest flicker of the humanity he was so determined to ignore. She wanted to fan it to life as much as she wanted to know what existed on the other side of all this physical want.

The kiss remained gentle, but she could feel the hard, dangerous outline of him against her abdomen. All that power chained back. It was intriguing, and there was a part of her that was curious what it would feel like unchained. What she was missing.

But a bigger part of her was afraid of the dangerous lines she was walking. She could admit that perhaps she, too, had hidden herself away in her grief, but she didn’t think that meant she needed to destroy everything just because she wanted to meet a challenge.

Feel a tempting fire.

She eased back and forced herself to meet his gaze. She’d meet the challenge, even if she wasn’t quite ready to dive headfirst into the fire.

He looked down at her, ice in his eyes. But there was no ice in him . Still, his words cut. “What the hell are you doing?”

Humiliation and hurt warred with insult. She did not look away. She refused to. If he didn’t know what she was doing, he hadn’t needed to kiss her back. He was the one caging her against this counter. He was the one who’d advanced.

“Do not play games, Diego,” she scolded lightly. “Not if you do not wish me to follow along.”

“Games,” he repeated, utter shock chasing across his face. “You think this is a game?” It was only then he seemed to realize he was still holding on to her. He stepped back, not exactly gracefully. It was more of a stumble, as if she’d stabbed him clean through.

“You are young and naive, colored by your father’s overly kind impression of me, I suppose.

You have fooled yourself if you think there are…

games being played here.” He straightened, scowled at her in a way she supposed was meant to be intimidating.

“You haven’t a clue as to who I am, what I am, Amelia. ”

It didn’t intimidate her at all. Mostly because the way he said it made her wonder if he knew who he was.

She moved closer to him once again, reached out and fitted her hand to his cheek. “You could show me.”

For a moment, he was perfectly still. She didn’t even think he breathed. But she saw a fire leaping in his eyes that echoed in the pit of her stomach. Though hers remained while his was quickly banked.

“Oh, I could show you quite a bit,” he said darkly, moving away from her hand. “You have no idea the things I could show you.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It is a warning, tesoro . I would have expected your father to have taught you to heed a warning.”

With that, he turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen, leaving her twisted up in a million knots.

Shame and desire. Concern and a wistful yearning for recklessness.

So many conflicting emotions, and part of her wanted to hide away from that.

In all her life, her parents had always tried to protect her from that.

They had not argued in front of her, though her father had no doubt been angry about not knowing she existed for so many years. They’d treated each other with kindness, but Amelia had sensed their bitterness toward each other, toward her mother’s illness, toward everything.

But she had been shielded. Just like in the Folliero home.

She had been treated a bit like a…pet. Her father had kept her as hidden away as possible, unless Mrs. Folliero wanted to dress her up in Aurora’s hand-me-downs and insist she perform piano pieces for the family—which was only ever a jab at Aurora’s refusal to play.

Meanwhile, Aurora had used Amelia’s company as somewhere to lodge all her complaints and make all her contempt for the family and its treatment of her known. And heard.

And Diego, much like his father, had never really acknowledged her at all.

All these people were gone now, except Diego. And Amelia was now the adult in the situation, not a child. She was the one in charge.

Now there was no one to shield her, and she had two choices. Continue to shield herself, hide away from life’s complexities. Just as her life had always been.

Or be the kind of woman who handled complex, and since the people who’d shielded her from so much had died , it left the second the only true option.

What that meant for her and Diego, she did not yet know for sure. But she wasn’t about to be warned away .

Diego was disgusted with himself. He had resisted, but not enough. He had endured pain, but it seemed to have no satisfaction.

Which was the point, he supposed. He stormed back to his bedchamber, his body a maze of different kinds of pains and thwarted desires.

She’d put her mouth on him. He could not fully come to grips with this turn of events. His assistant. Bartolo’s young daughter. A woman who didn’t even know him—not really.

She’d pressed her mouth to his, and he would never be able to erase the hint-of-sugar-and-vanilla taste of Bartolo’s daughter.

Bartolo, who was supposed to have worked for Diego but had set expectations for him instead. Who had pointed out his extravagances and the way he lashed out to hurt. Who had calmly, steadily insisted there was a better way to be than the way Diego chose.

Without ever turning away from him. Without ever despairing of him. For years, Diego had hated Bartolo, this “assistant” who had felt more like a nanny or prison warden. Who could not be swayed by threats or bad behavior.

And then it had slowly shifted, until Diego craved those behavioral guardrails. He’d still enjoyed his excess, his irresponsibility, but with a guiding point of right , he’d felt less self-loathing. Less self-destructive.

Still quite a bit of loathing for his family. Still plenty of selfish desires he wasn’t about to resist. But there’d been a sense that once he had to, he could make himself into a more respectable person.

And then all those selfish desires he hadn’t curbed caused them all to die . While he lived.

Lived long enough to kiss Amelia Baresi. Not as monstrous as murder, but at the moment, with the desire for her still roiling through him, it felt similar. It all felt dire, like the weight of it should bury him alive.

Instead, he lived. He moved. He…

You breathe, caro . You are alive. This cannot be changed in this moment any more than death.

She had said those words to him, with a gentleness he could not grasp, could not understand. Bartolo had been steadfast. Diego had known that, for whatever reason, the man had cared for him, wanted him to be better. But it had not been centered in the warmth his daughter now extended him.

As if Amelia understood some piece of what went on in his mind. But she didn’t , because she thought it was a self-punishment he did not deserve.

He pushed through his room and then out the French doors onto the terrace outside his room. He had brooded out here many a winter night, frustrated that his parents insisted on this isolated mountain retreat for the entire Christmas season.

He’d felt like a prisoner then. Because it had all been a performance. They hadn’t wanted to spend quality time together; they’d wanted to show off their picture-perfect family to… Diego didn’t even know. Who had they been trying to impress? And for what ?

Even now, it filled him with an impotent anger to go along with all the other jagged edges cutting around inside.

He sucked in a breath out here in the dark. The air was frigid, the mountains grim shadows all around him. Lights dotted the landscape—from the castello, from the village beyond.

He was no longer a teen simply angry he was stuck here, though there was some irony to be found. His body raged like a teenage boy who’d never touched a woman. His frustration blazed in much the same way as it had back then.

Except everyone from back then was dead.

And the woman causing him to feel like a thwarted, hormonal teen was his punishment. Yes, he deserved this. That kiss. Her interest. He deserved having to resist it all.

And there was the answer. This was pain, and so this was right.

Every day, he would force himself into her orbit. Every day, he would resist whatever she offered. Every damn day, until something broke. Until it felt like enough, or she sent him back to his seclusion.

He sucked in the icy air and began the process of settling. Yes, that was the answer. Throw himself into all she wanted, into her, but resist this magnetic physical pull. Day after day after day. The more it hurt, the better punishment it was.

Christmas markets, Christmas cookies. The whole thing. Down to the Christmas ball. This was what she was insisting on having. This was what she’d collected him for. The damn ball.

He wanted nothing to do with it. He never had—and now that it was nothing but a memory of everything he’d killed with his carelessness, he wanted it even less.

So he would involve himself in every last detail. He would throw himself into the planning and execution and spend every last hour of the ball weekend socializing with the people who had once attended his parents’ parties.

This time, with Amelia at his side.

Pain was the price, and he would finally be paying it in full.