Chapter 9
“That eliminates several options.”
She laughed.
“No bodyguards sitting at the next table.”
“They’ll sit two tables away.”
“Vincent.”
“Three.”
She shook her head.
“Fine.”
His expression softened.
“Fine?”
“One dinner.”
Vincent smiled.
Elena pointed a finger at him.
“And if you ever announce to a cathedral that I’m yours again, I will slap you twice.”
“Understood.”
---
A year later, Elena stood outside the same cathedral.
This time there were no five hundred guests.
No business partners.
No society photographers.
No families negotiating behind closed doors.
Only forty-two people Elena actually wanted there.
Thirty-seven of them were dockworkers and their spouses.
Samantha sat in the second row.
Elena’s mother was there too.
Alone.
Reconciliation had begun slowly.
Honestly.
Her father had not been invited.
Some wounds required more than time.
They required accountability.
At the doors, Elena looked down at her simple ivory dress.
Then at Vincent.
He was waiting at the altar.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Vincent Moretti looked nervous.
Elena smiled.
A year earlier, another man had stood in that place and said no because humiliating her served his interests.
Vincent had spent every day since proving something entirely different.
He never asked her to shrink.
Never interfered with her company.
Never treated his protection as ownership.
When Marlowe Shipping needed financing, he offered terms identical to those he would offer any other company.
Elena rejected them anyway.
She found another lender.
Vincent had been absurdly proud.
The music began.
Elena walked down the aisle alone.
Not because she had no one to give her away.
Because she had finally understood that nobody did.
She reached Vincent.
He extended his hand.
Then paused.
“May I?”
Elena looked at it.
The same hand he had offered her on the worst day of her life.
Except this time there was no scandal behind her.
No trap waiting at midnight.
No desperate escape.
Just a choice.
Her choice.
She placed her hand in his.
“You may.”
Vincent smiled.
When the priest eventually asked Vincent whether he took Elena Marlowe as his wife, a quiet laugh moved through the cathedral.
Everyone remembered the last wedding.
Vincent looked at Elena.
“I do.”
Then came Elena’s turn.
The priest asked the question.
She deliberately waited.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Vincent’s eyes narrowed.
Elena smiled.
“Getting nervous, Moretti?”
The cathedral erupted in laughter.
Vincent shook his head.
“You’re enjoying this.”