He Chose Another Heir, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Rite

Serena's POV

Alessio answered Nico from the stretcher, in the hospital corridor, with a drip already in his arm.

"Come here," he said.

Nico came, and Alessio took his small hand in his good one.

"Your father was my brother. He was braver than me and louder, and he is in the photograph on your mother's wall." His voice was rough. "I am the man who stayed. I'll go on staying, if you'll have me."

"Can I have two?" Nico asked. "Two papàs?"

Alessio's face broke.

"You can have as many as you like."

Nico thought about it, nodded once, and climbed onto the stretcher.

Six weeks later, I walked into the old hall in a white dress with my mother's veil on my head.

Mama sat at the front in a carved chair that four Bellandi men had carried in, with the rosary around her wrist and her cheeks full of color.

She had been walking the garden for a week, and she had told three doctors off.

A hundred people stood to see me pass.

At the center table, Alessio waited in a black suit with his left arm out of its sling.

The old man bound our wrists with a white ribbon and asked the old questions.

I answered every one in a loud, clear voice.

"Do you take this man?"

"I do."

"Before both Families, as his only bride?"

"I do."

"Then it is witnessed," said the old man. "Wife of the Don, the house is yours."

He cut the ribbon, and Alessio kissed me before the benches could cheer.

He kissed me with his whole mouth, in front of everybody.

I heard Nico shriek with delight from my mother's lap.

The house that night was silent.

Alessio carried me up the stairs in his arms, though the surgeon had told him not to.

He shut the bedroom door with his foot and set me down in the dark.

"Three days," I said.

"I know."

"You said it to a hundred people."

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