He Chose Another Heir, Now He Wants Me Back novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Wedding Rite

Alessio's POV

I lay on the floor of the old hall with my head in her lap, and I waited for her answer.

It was the longest I had waited for anything, and I had waited six years.

The bullet had gone through the meat of my shoulder, and the surgeon on his knees beside me said it had missed the bone.

I barely heard him.

I was looking at her face.

She had blood on her cheek, and her hair had come loose, and she was shaking.

"You ask me this now," Serena said. "On a floor. Bleeding on my dress."

"I have no better place."

"You have a church, and a priest, and a white dress for me, that you promised."

"I did." I swallowed. "Her father made me promise one night in a hospital bed. The hall first, he said, and then the bed. I was so afraid of breaking my word to a dying man that I broke every other one."

Her eyes filled.

"That's what this was?" she said. "All those years?"

"That was the whole reason. It was not a good one."

"No," she whispered. "It was not."

"I would give you every one of those nights back."

"You can't."

"I know."

"You can't, and I want them anyway."

She laid her hand flat on my chest, over the blood.

I had expected a speech.

I had expected her to make me pay for another hour, and I would have paid it.

She turned her head instead and looked around the hall.

A hundred people were standing on the benches.

The old man held the green registry book against his chest.

Livia had stopped at the doors and stood there with her hands pressed over her mouth.

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