Too Late. I'm Married to the Godfather novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Donna's Night

The judge waited a polite moment for me to stop crying.

Then he gave up and said, "You may kiss the bride."

Giancarlo didn't wait for the rest of the sentence.

He took my face in both hands and kissed me under the chandelier, slow and deep.

Three hundred people stood up and cheered.

The capos whistled through their fingers. My charge nurse screamed. Somebody threw rice, which Nonna had expressly forbidden.

Rocco climbed onto a gold chair, held Steve over his head and roared.

When Giancarlo finally let me breathe, he kept his forehead against mine.

"Mrs. Marchese," he said.

"Dr. Marchese."

"Dr. Mrs. Marchese."

"That's not a thing."

"I own the hotel. It's a thing now."

The reception was in the ballroom upstairs, the same ballroom where Whitney had read a text into a microphone.

Nobody mentioned it.

Rocco danced with Nonna, standing on her shoes. The capo with the pinky ring ate three plates of clams and showed me his blood pressure app between each one. The chief and my charge nurse did a dance that I'm still trying to forget.

The bigger guard asked me to dance.

He stepped on my foot twice and apologized over and over.

"You can stop," I told him.

"I won't ever stop," he said, and grinned.

At midnight Nonna took Rocco home, asleep on her shoulder, with Steve dangling from his fist.

She kissed me on both cheeks at the elevator.

"Now," she said, "give me another one. A girl. I'm eighty-four. Hurry."

"Nonna!"

She got in the elevator and pressed the button with great dignity.

The top suite of the Hotel Marchese took up half the twenty-second floor.

The manager had filled it with white roses. Hundreds of them. On every table, every windowsill, a trail of petals across the carpet to the bedroom.

There was a card on the champagne. "With my deepest respect, Donna. Forever."

"He's never going to stop," I said.

"He's going to name his first grandson after you."

"I'm a woman."

"He's going to try."

Giancarlo stood behind me at the window. Fifth Avenue glittered twenty-two floors down, the trees in the park strung with lights.

He found the first button at the back of my neck.

There were forty-one of them. Nonna had counted.

"Doc," he said. "Who designed this dress?"

"A woman who hates husbands."

He undid the first one.

Then the second.

His mouth followed his fingers down my spine.

He undid each button so slowly I could feel the shape of every single one.

His mouth landed at the top of my spine and followed the opening down, one kiss per button, hot through the thin silk.

"Forty-one," he said against my back. "Nonna knew exactly what she was doing."

← Chapter 22 · All chapters · Chapter 24 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend