Chapter 6: Four Terms at City Hall

I said yes at city hall on Monday at ten past ten, with a clerk reading from a card.

I wore the green dress again.

Vincenzo wore a dark suit and held his left arm against his side.

Fio stood beside me as my witness and cried the entire time and told everyone it was allergies.

Dario stood on the other side as his, with his hands folded and his ring turned in.

When the clerk said we could kiss, Vincenzo looked at me and waited.

I put my hand on his lapel and kissed him myself.

It was short, and it was in front of strangers, and it still went through me down to my knees.

He made a low sound against my mouth that nobody else could have heard.

Dario clapped first.

We did not go home to the lake house.

Vincenzo took me to the flat above Fio's restaurant, where it was quiet, and shut the door.

I sat at the kitchen table with my hands flat on it.

"Before anything else," I said, "I have terms."

His eyebrows rose.

"Terms."

"A year. After a year I can leave, and you give me a house and my own money, and nobody follows me."

"Agreed."

"You tell me where you are when I ask. But I never have to ask."

Something moved in his face.

"Agreed."

"I keep my own phone. Nobody takes it, not you and not a guard."

He took mine out of his coat pocket and set it on the table between us.

He had carried it for over a week.

"Agreed," he said. "What else?"

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