Chapter 13 - THE WEDDING
Emma and Matteo married six months later.
Sophia cried before Emma finished putting on her dress.
Matteo cried too.
He denied it.
“There was dust.”
Emma looked around the immaculate church.
“Inside your eye?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
The wedding was smaller than Chicago expected.
Sophia called it “intimate.”
Emma counted almost one hundred guests.
Apparently Romano definitions remained flexible.
Emma walked down the aisle alone.
Not because she lacked family.
Her parents sat in the front row.
Her sister beside them.
She simply wanted to walk toward Matteo as herself.
Not handed over.
Not transferred.
Chosen.
Matteo understood.
At the altar, he took her hand.
No possessive grip.
No performance.
When the officiant asked if Emma took Matteo as her husband, she paused deliberately.
Matteo’s eyes narrowed.
Emma smiled.
“Yes.”
He exhaled.
Afterward he whispered:
“That was cruel.”
“You needed humility.”
“I had enough.”
“Clearly not.”
At the reception, Emma’s father approached Matteo.
“You know my daughter doesn’t like being told what to do.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“She also won’t accept money just because you have it.”
“I’ve noticed that too.”
“And when she’s angry—”
“Sir.”
Matteo looked tired.
“I have lived through this.”
Emma’s father laughed.
For perhaps the first time, Matteo’s family and Emma’s looked less like two worlds forced together.
They simply looked like relatives.
Messy.
Opinionated.
Human.
No alliance needed.
No business agreement.
No strategic purpose.
Later, when the crowd thinned, Sophia hugged Emma.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Making him happy.”
Emma shook her head.
“I didn’t make him anything.”
Sophia looked surprised.
“He chose differently.”
Emma glanced across the room.
Matteo was laughing with her sister.
“That’s better.”
Sophia smiled.
“Yes.”
It was.
Emma didn’t rescue Matteo from darkness.
Matteo didn’t rescue Emma from an ordinary life.
They had challenged each other.
Annoyed each other.
Protected each other.
And sometimes told each other uncomfortable truths.
The romance wasn’t that one person completed the other.
It was that neither required the other to become smaller.
That evening, when Emma kicked off her wedding shoes, Matteo picked one up.
“Should I be worried?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You know what happens when my shoes enter your bedroom.”
He smiled.
May you like
“Apparently my entire life changes.”
For once, neither of them had any objection.
