He Took His Childhood Friend Away, So I Came Back a Mafia Heiress novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: What He Carried
In April, the east wing of my father's house had walls again.
Rocco had not built them.
My father's captains had built them, on Saturdays, with their sleeves rolled up.
Pasquale had sat in a lawn chair and told every one of them they were doing it wrong.
The back door was new.
It was oak, painted green, and it opened inward onto the garden.
It had one latch on the inside and no hasp on the outside at all.
I had asked for that myself.
We married in the garden on a Sunday afternoon, with the plum tree in blossom and a hundred and ten people on folding chairs.
I wore a plain ivory dress.
Rocco wore the gray coat, the one he had kept when he gave everything else away.
His mother sat in the front row with the photograph of my father in her lap.
Aurelio performed the ceremony, which the law did not require of him and nobody had dared to forbid.
"Gemma Rinaldi," he said. "Rocco Santoro. You have both been married once already, to the same person, by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons."
The garden laughed.
"Say now what you would have said."
Rocco turned to face me.
His hands were bare, the scars on his forearms white and smooth.
They were not shaking.
"I was fifteen," he said. "I climbed through a window because I heard a girl and I couldn't stand not to. I thought it was the bravest thing I would ever do."
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