Page 81 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

He’d known something bad would happen that night. Some sixth sense weighing down in his guts had stopped him sharing a bottle of wine with his grandmother that warm summer evening. And so, when his phone had rung with his sister’s name, he’d taken a deep breath before answering. ‘Rosaria?’

‘Diaz, it’s Rose,’ a panicking voice had said.

‘What’s happened?’ he’d snapped.

‘Rosaria’s overdosed. The ambulance is on its way…’

‘Where are you?’

He’d arrived at the address to find his baby sister being wheeled into the back of an ambulance and a group of crying partygoers huddled by his car.

‘Who provided the drugs?’ he’d demanded as he’d slammed his door shut. ‘Tell me now or I will hold each of you culpable.’

‘Rose brought them,’ one of them had said tearfully.

In the back of the ambulance, his unconscious sister. Sobbing beside her, Rose.

‘Get out,’ he’d snarled.

‘Diaz, I…’

‘I saidget out,’ he’d roared.

White faced and shaking, she’d obeyed.

She had still been white faced and shaking when he’d returned many hours later to his grandmother’s, after it had been established his sister was expected to make a full recovery. To that day, he had no idea how Rose made it from the party address to his grandmother’s house. At the time he hadn’t cared to ask. At the time he’d been too intent on releasing his fury, shouting so loudly and viciously that his grandmother had intervened.

‘Diaz, it wasn’t Rose’s fault.’

‘Not her fault?’ he’d shouted. ‘She provided the damned drugs!’

‘Ididn’t,’ she’d protested.

‘See, not only is she a drug dealer but she’s a liar too!’ he’d yelled at his grandmother before rounding back on Rose. ‘It’s already been confirmed that it was you, and I’ll make damned sure the police know it too…’

‘You will do no such thing,’ his grandmother had cut in. ‘Whoever provided the drugs—and if Rose says it wasn’t her then I believe her—no one forced Rosaria to take them. Your sister has developed a drug habit, Diaz.’

‘Bull.’

‘You’ve not been here.’ It was Rose who’d said that. Rose, who had been very much responsible for his avoidance of Devon and subsequent failure to notice his sister’s unhappy relationship with narcotics.

‘Rose, go to bed,’ his grandmother had said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

And so Rose had disappeared upstairs to the bedroom he’d thought of as belonging to his parents, and his grandmother had sat him down and given him the truth about his sister’s drug habit, a habit both she and Rose had been increasingly concerned about and Rosaria increasingly devious about. His grandmother had told his parents but their attitude had been that all young people experimented and that she wasn’t doing anything they themselves hadn’t done, and that she’d grow out of it in her own time. The typical laxness he’d expected from his feckless parents.

His grandmother had been the one who’d decided not to tell Diaz. She’d feared he would overreact and that Rosaria’s rebellious nature would see her rail against him and push her deeper into a habit that could easily flip into an addiction. Even as angry as Diaz had been, he’d known his grandmother had acted for what she’d—mistakenly, in his opinion—thought was the best.

Not long after his grandmother had gone to bed, Rose had crept back down, and cringed when she’d found him alone in the unlit kitchen, the only illumination that early morning coming from the full moon.

‘That’s right, run away,’ he’d sneered when she’d turned to flee.

She’d turned back to face him. She’d been wearing a short nightdress, her braless high breasts jutting against it, her dirty blonde hair loose and messy… Bed hair. She’d cleaned her face but remnants of make-up had ringed her eyes. She’d been as dishevelled and sexy a sight as he’d ever seen; a sight that had only made him hate her more.

‘You’re poison, do you know that?’

This time she hadn’t cringed. She’d folded her arms, pushing her high breasts even higher, and looked him square in the eye. ‘No, it just suits you to believe that.’

‘You fed my sister drugs.’

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