Page 31 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4
She smiled at him, looking dreamy-eyed and something he was deeply concerned washappy. “It’s not an insult, Alceu. If you ask me, it is the only way to live. Because otherwise, what’s the point of all these marvelous things we get to do and feel and experience?” When he only stared back at her, she sighed. “And when I was a girl, I learned that moments of marvel were fleeting and unlikely to be repeated, so if I wanted to enjoy them I needed to make sure I committed myself to them. Immediately and fully. The truth is, it’s a practice like anything else.”
He found that he could not stand the notion of the childhood she wasn’t describing in full, but he could picture all too clearly, knowing far more than anyone should have to about the late Spyros Adrianakis. And how he had conducted himself in the little fiefdom that was the Hotel Andromeda.
“My father considered himself something of a sensualist, I suppose,” he said, and he didn’t even know where the words came from. It should have seemed like a violation to mention that man when he had dedicated himself to wiping his memory from the earth, and yet somehow, because it was Dioni, it was fine. Even necessary.
And she didn’t react badly. She only nodded, and seemed to watch him more intently as she continued to feast on pastries.
Alceu picked up his espresso and leaned back in his chair, looking out at the mountainside but seeing far into the past. “One time—I must have been a teenager—I caught him with one of his lovers. They were cavorting about on a boat that we were all staying on for a so-calledfamily holidayoff the coast of Sardinia.” He made a low noise of remembered disgust, as much for those long-ago days when there was still the pretense offamilyanything as for what he’d seen that day. “His lover ran off into her stateroom, where she was staying as a guest of my mother, you understand. Because my father liked to steal his toys from others. I thought he would shout at me, or push me around as he liked to do. But he felt it was a teaching moment. He lounged about, naked, and forced me to stand there as he explained to me that great men have great appetites. That these were sensual delights gifted by the gods to those who deserved them. And only fools, the weak, and poor men who were not smart enough to improve themselves did without.”
“That sounds like a narcissist, not a sensualist,” Dioni said, and so matter-of-factly that it took Alceu back. Because it wasn’t an insult. She wasn’t screeching the way his mother liked to do. She was saying it as it if was obvious. And she kept going. “If I had to guess, I’d say that he could see the joy you took in life and wanted to make certain that it was twisted for you. Poisoned beyond recognition.”
“It’s as if you met him,” Alceu said, and then frowned down at his own hand when he found that he was rubbing his chest.
“In a way, I suppose I have,” Dioni said. She wrinkled her nose. “He sounds a great deal like my father, to be honest. Shockingly, surpassingly, almost operatically self-involved.”
“And yet your brother often marveled that you stayed so long in his company.”
He should not have mentioned Apostolis.
It was a dangerous road to start down, but Dioni only glanced at him. “I did not stay for my father. I stayed for Jolie. My poor friend who had no choice but to marry a man like him.” She blew out a breath. “Or rather, she did have a choice because there are always choices, but it was a terrible one. I stayed in solidarity. And however little I might have enjoyed my father’s last years, I will never regret spending that time with my friend.”
“She must be a very good friend, then.”
He watched her smile, though there was a sadness there. “She’s the best of friends.” Dioni looked down at her plate. “And I have been lying to her for six months. When she learns that, she will be hurt. But I could not see a way around it.”
“Because you believed, on some level, that you could...what? Wish your pregnancy away?”
Dioni shook her head. “What I knew was that if I told her, she might feel duty-bound to tell my brother. And if she told my brother, he would sweep in and make decisions for me. And I didn’t want him to do that. He’s been doing that my whole life.”
Alceu frowned at her. “Your brother wants nothing but the best for you.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” She laughed, but there was something in her voice. It made him sit up a little straighter. “He has been so kind to me my whole life. Yet neither he nor I ever talk about the fact that he plays the role he does in my life because my birth robbed him of his mother.” Alceu stared at her and she smiled again, though he had never seen such a bittersweet expression on her face before. It made something inside his chest...catch. “I killed her, Alceu.”
If she had flipped the table and gone for his throat, he did not think he could have been more surprised.
“It is my understanding that your mother died in childbirth,” he said, very carefully.
This was not news to him. He had heard this before, and had even discussed it with Apostolis from time to time. At university, certainly, and no doubt since. It had always seemed an academic discussion to him, though he had been sympathetic toward his friend.
But the prospect of a woman dying while giving birth seemed wildly different to him now. It was his child in her belly. It wasDionihe would lose.
It all seemed a far more perilous enterprise than he had previously considered it.
Because now it would be personal.
“I accept the truth of it,” Dioni said and she sat back in her chair, too. She pressed her hands into the curve of her belly, as if assuring herself that it was real, that the baby within was still there. “I have always been very clear about what actually happened. It is everyone around me who wants to make it euphemistic. But you see, I’ve always believed that if my mother could, she would forgive me and tell me that it was all worth it. Because that’s what mothers do, isn’t it?”
Alceu thought that it was very unlikely his mother would do anything of the kind, but he did not say anything. He was not entirely sure that he could have if he’d wanted to.
“And now that I am close enough to being a mother myself, I know it’s true,” Dioni continued, with a certain soft urgency.
“You must be terrified,” Alceu found himself saying.
Her dark eyes found his and held. “I am not.” Though it was almost as if she was testing out the words as she spoke them aloud. “That might change the closer I get to it, I grant you. I suppose that if I allow myself to think about it, it would be overwhelming, so I choose to believe that particular history will not repeat itself. Maybe I believe that no history repeats itself unless we allow it. And if that’s the case...”
She trailed off. And he let her, because he didn’t want to follow that trail to its inevitable conclusion.
Because he wanted, much too badly, to take what she said to heart. To believe it. To change the history he had always worn like his very own hair shirt.
