Chapter 7 - The Choice That Made Me His Wife
Thomas pointed the gun at Adrian.
Everything happened in silence before anyone moved.
Adrian shifted in front of me.
Even with Vincent bleeding at his feet, even with a gun aimed at his chest, his instinct was to shield me.
Thomas noticed.
"Pathetic."
Adrian's voice remained steady.
"You shoot me, you don't leave this house."
"I don't intend to."
"What do you want?"
"What should've been mine."
"The organization?"
"The family."
Thomas's bitterness had been growing for decades.
Adrian's father inherited everything.
Business.
Influence.
Respect.
Thomas received money but never authority.
When Rizzo offered partnership, Thomas took it.
He helped move weapons.
He created fake invoices.
When Daniel discovered the operation, Thomas gave Rizzo his schedule.
He arranged the roadblock.
He made sure a compromised officer would respond to the crash.
"You killed my brother," I whispered.
Thomas looked at me.
"Your brother killed himself with curiosity."
Something inside me turned cold.
Not fear.
Certainty.
I understood why Daniel had fought.
Some people survived by pretending evil wasn't happening.
Daniel hadn't.
Neither would I.
Thomas raised the gun.
Adrian moved.
I grabbed the heavy ceramic vase from the table and threw it.
It struck Thomas's forearm.
The shot went into the ceiling.
Adrian crossed the distance.
They crashed into the wall.
The gun fell.
I kicked it across the floor.
Two security guards rushed in.
Thomas reached beneath his jacket.
Another weapon.
Vincent, barely conscious, caught his ankle.
Thomas stumbled.
Adrian disarmed him.
This time the guards pinned him down.
Federal agents arrived minutes later.
Thomas DeLuca was arrested before sunrise.
Vincent survived.
The bullet had missed his heart by less than two inches.
He spent twelve days in the hospital and complained about every meal.
Rizzo's organization collapsed within three months.
Daniel's archive contained enough evidence for indictments across Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Officials resigned.
Detectives were charged.
Weapons routes were seized.
Millions in illegal accounts were frozen.
Marco accepted a plea deal and confirmed Thomas had ordered the roadblock that led to Daniel's crash.
For the first time, the official record changed.
Daniel Bellini had not died in an accident.
He had been murdered because he tried to expose a criminal network.
The truth didn't bring him back.
But truth changed grief.
For nine months, I had imagined my brother losing control of his car on a rainy road.
Now I knew he had been brave.
Scared, probably.
But brave.
Elena testified.
Afterward, she visited Daniel's grave for the first time since faking her death.
I went with her.
She knelt and placed blue hydrangeas beside his headstone.
"He wanted these here," I said.
She smiled through tears.
"He told you too?"
"He couldn't keep a cactus alive."
She laughed.
It was the first good sound associated with Daniel's memory in almost a year.
"I'm sorry I disappeared," Elena said.
"You were trying to survive."
"I should've found a way to tell you."
"Maybe."
I looked at the headstone.
"But Daniel would've understood."
We stood there quietly.
Later that evening, Adrian drove me home.
Except somewhere along the way, I realized I no longer knew what home meant.
My flower shop?
My old apartment had been repaired.
The townhouse?
Adrian?
That question frightened me more than Rizzo ever had.
Our marriage contract still existed.
Eleven months remained.
The threat was gone.
I could leave.
Adrian knew it too.
Two days after Thomas's arrest, he placed a folder on the breakfast table.
I looked at it.
"What is that?"
"An amendment."
I opened it.
Termination of marital agreement.
Effective immediately if signed by both parties.
My chest tightened.
"You want a divorce?"
His face revealed nothing.
"If you want one."
"That's not what I asked."
"You married me to survive. You don't need the marriage anymore."
"And?"
"And you should have your life back."
I looked at the paper.
Then at him.
He was setting me free.
Why did it feel like rejection?
"You don't want me here?"
His composure cracked.
"Sofia."
"Answer me."
"What I want isn't relevant."
"Of course it is."
"No. What matters is that your choice is yours now."
I stood.
He did too.
"Adrian DeLuca, you're an infuriating man."
"I've been told."
"You threatened me with logic until I married you."
"I never threatened you."
"You gave me a contract with a twelve-month escape clause."
"You needed one."
"You gave me a lock for my bedroom."
"You needed that too."
"You knelt on a bathroom floor because I cut my foot."
His eyes softened.
"You were bleeding."
"You kissed me back."
"That was a lapse in judgment."
I stared at him.
His mouth twitched.
I hit his chest.
He caught my wrist gently.
"Don't joke."
"I'm not."
"Then tell me what you want."
He released my hand.
"I want you to stay."
There it was.
Simple.
No performance.
I swallowed.
"Why?"
"Because the house feels empty when you're not in it."
He took a breath.
"Because I know which flowers you hate."
"Chrysanthemums."
"You say they smell like funerals."
"They do."
"Because you leave tea everywhere and never finish it."
"That's slander."
"Because you argue with armed men when any reasonable person would run."
"That sounds like criticism."
"It's admiration."
I couldn't help smiling.
Adrian stepped closer.
"And because somewhere between your brother's ledger and you yelling at me while bleeding all over my bathroom floor..."
I laughed.
"...I fell in love with you."
Everything inside me went still.
This man could command warehouses.
Businesses.
Men with guns.
But saying those words frightened him.
I could see it.
So I did what he had once done for me.
I made the frightening thing simple.
"I love you too."
Adrian stared.
"You don't have to say that."
"I know."
"You owe me nothing."
"I know."
"This doesn't have to be permanent."
I picked up the divorce papers.
Then tore them in half.
Adrian watched the pieces fall.
"I know."
He kissed me.
This time there was no contract between us.
No debt.
No gunfire.
No reason except choice.
Six months later, Bellini Blooms reopened after renovations.
I kept the name.
Adrian never asked me to change it.
He invested exactly zero dollars because I refused to let him.
Then he secretly purchased the empty storefront next door and leased it to me for one dollar a year.
I discovered it from Vincent.
Adrian claimed ignorance.
We fought for three days.
Then I turned the extra space into a greenhouse.
Marriage, I learned, was complicated.
Marriage to Adrian DeLuca was ridiculous.
He had security protocols for grocery shopping.
I had rules about guns near peonies.
He wanted six bodyguards at public events.
I negotiated him down to two.
He pretended to dislike the flower shop cat.
The cat slept on his coat.
Vincent recovered fully and became the world's most irritating honorary uncle.
Elena moved to New York after the trials.
She visited Boston every month.
Grace demanded a raise after being kidnapped.
I gave it to her.
Rizzo received a sentence that ensured he would spend most of the rest of his life in prison.
Thomas received even longer.
One year after Daniel's death was officially ruled a homicide, Adrian and I returned to his grave.
We brought blue hydrangeas.
I placed them beneath Daniel's name.
"Your plan was insane," I told the stone.
Adrian stood beside me.
"But it worked."
I glanced at him.
"Don't encourage him."
Adrian almost smiled.
I touched Daniel's headstone.
"I wish you could see me now."
The grief still existed.
I knew it always would.
But it no longer felt like a room with no door.
I had a life outside it.
On our first real wedding anniversary—the anniversary of the day we chose to remain married rather than the day necessity forced us into it—Adrian brought me upstairs after dinner.
The bathroom had been remodeled.
I stared.
"You renovated the bathroom?"
"The floor was dangerous."
"The floor?"
"You cut your foot."
"On a perfume bottle I dropped."
"Still dangerous."
I laughed.
Then I saw what he'd placed beside the bathtub.
A ceramic basin.
The same kind he had used that night.
Inside it sat hundreds of white rose petals.
On top rested a small velvet box.
"Adrian."
"No."
"What?"
"You are not allowed to make fun of this."
"I haven't said anything."
"Your face has."
I opened the box.
Inside was a new wedding ring.
Simple.
Elegant.
Nothing like the original ring chosen for a contract.
Adrian stood before me.
Then, slowly, he lowered himself onto one knee.
I covered my mouth.
The first time Adrian DeLuca knelt in front of me, I had been frightened, bleeding, and married to a stranger.
This time there was no blood.
No debt collector.
No enemy waiting outside.
No contract.
Only him.
He looked up at me.
"I know we're already married."
"Very observant."
"Sofia."
I smiled.
"Sorry."
He took my hand.
"The first time, I asked you to marry me because I could protect you."
His thumb brushed my fingers.
"This time I'm asking because you changed what I thought protection meant."
My eyes burned.
He continued.
"You made me understand that keeping someone safe isn't the same as keeping them close. You stayed when you were free to leave. I will never take that choice from you."
He opened the box fully.
"So, Sofia Bellini DeLuca, with no debt, no threat, no bargain, and no obligation..."
His voice softened.
"Will you marry me again?"
I looked at the man everyone else feared.
The ruthless mafia boss.
The man who had offered me his name when mine had become a target.
The man who had lied because he believed the truth would hurt me, then learned to trust me with it.
The man who once lowered himself onto a marble floor and held my bleeding foot as though there were nothing beneath his dignity about caring for someone.
I remembered Daniel's handwriting.
If Adrian offers marriage, say yes.
My brother had known something before I did.
Maybe not that Adrian and I would fall in love.
Maybe simply that behind the reputation was a man who still understood loyalty.
I touched Adrian's face.
"Yes."
His shoulders relaxed.
"But I have one condition."
He narrowed his eyes.
"What?"
"No twelve-month escape clause."
A smile appeared.
"Agreed."
"And I keep the flower shop."
"You were always keeping the flower shop."
"And the cat isn't allowed in your office."
"Absolutely not."
"You let him sleep on your coat."
"That is unproven."
I laughed.
Adrian rose and kissed me.
Later, downstairs, Vincent was waiting with champagne.
Grace and Elena stepped out from the dining room.
I stared at Adrian.
"You planned this?"
"No."
Four people simultaneously said, "Liar."
For once, Adrian looked outnumbered.
I thought Daniel would have loved that.
A year earlier, I had believed my brother's death had left me with nothing but grief and a debt I could never repay.
Instead, Daniel had left me the truth.
The truth had led me into danger.
Danger had led me to Adrian.
And Adrian had never saved me by making me weak.
He had protected me long enough for me to discover that I was stronger than everyone who had tried to frighten me.
That was the part no contract could have predicted.
I looked around the table at the strange family built from everything we had survived.
Vincent arguing with Grace.
Elena arranging hydrangeas in a vase.
Adrian beside me, his hand wrapped around mine.
For the first time since Daniel died, I didn't wish I could return to the life I'd had before.
I missed my brother.
I always would.
But I no longer believed happiness betrayed grief.
Sometimes surviving meant carrying both.
I leaned against Adrian.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"You have that look."
"What look?"
"The one you had before throwing a vase at my uncle."
"Very romantic memory."
"It saved my life."
"Then you're welcome."
He kissed my forehead.
Outside, Boston moved beneath the evening lights.
Somewhere beyond the windows was the waterfront where our lives had almost ended.
But inside, there were flowers.
There was laughter.
There was family.
May you like
And there was the man I had once married because I was terrified of dying.
Now I stayed because I had finally learned exactly how I wanted to live.
