Chapter 9 - THE FRONT-ROW CHAIR AT THE HEAD TABLE
Forty minutes later, the late-afternoon October sun broke through the clouds over the sprawling back lawn of the Moretti estate, turning the autumn maples along the stone wall into canopies of bright gold.
Inside the massive white silk pavilion on the lawn, two hundred of Chicago’s elite were still mingling with champagne flutes, murmuring curiously about the forty-minute delay. Senator Vance—Daniel's stepfather—had quietly departed through the front gates twenty minutes earlier after Luca had a five-minute private conversation with him in the study and handed over a recording of Daniel's confession.
Waiters in white jackets stood by the carving stations. A string quartet played softly near the fountain.
Then the music stopped.
Every head in the tent turned toward the stone terrace steps leading down from the mansion.
Lily wasn't walking down the steps in a wedding gown anymore. She had changed into a simple cream cashmere dress, her hair brushed loose over her shoulders. Beside her walked Grace—still wearing the pale-blue dress from Lily's high school graduation, because when Luca had offered to have a designer gown brought down from upstairs, Grace had refused.
"This dress was bought with honest money from the happiest day of my daughter's life," Grace had told him quietly in the hallway. "I'm not ashamed of it."
Instead, draped over Grace's shoulders against the autumn breeze was Luca's own black tuxedo jacket. And pinned to her lapel, glinting in the sunlight, was the tarnished silver rosary with the tiny Saint Christopher medal.
Right behind them walked my seventy-one-year-old mother, leaning proudly on her cane in her Sunday floral cardigan, and me—no longer wearing my maid's apron, because Lily had untied it herself and thrown it into the laundry chute before we came outside.
And walking between Grace and Luca, holding tightly to Grace's left hand while clutching a battered red toy fire truck against his chest with his right, was four-year-old Leo.
He wore little denim overalls and sneakers that lit up when he stepped on the stone. His dark curls bounced in the breeze, and his wide, solemn Moretti eyes took in the towering white flowers and the glittering chandeliers inside the tent with quiet wonder.
Luca didn't try to force the little boy to hold his hand yet. He knew better. Instead, when Leo's sneaker untied halfway down the terrace steps, the most powerful man in Chicago dropped onto one knee in his white dress shirt on the damp flagstones, tied the little boy's Velcro strap gently, and looked up at him with eyes that were completely unguarded.
"You have a very fast truck, Leo," Luca said softly.
Leo looked at the silver-haired man, then up at Grace for permission. Grace gave him a warm, reassuring nod.
"It has a ladder," Leo told Luca seriously, holding the plastic truck out an inch. "Grandma Carter gave me two cookies. Because the loud man fell down."
"Grandma Carter is the bravest woman in Chicago," Luca agreed, his voice thick with emotion as he stood back up. "And if you ever want a real fire truck to park in the driveway, you just tell me."
Leo thought about that for a second, then reached out with two sticky little fingers and held onto the cuff of Luca's trouser leg as they walked the rest of the way into the tent.
The whispers among the two hundred guests rose to an astonished buzz.
Luca led all of us straight to the raised head table at the front of the pavilion—the table that had been set with crystal and gold chargers for the bride, the groom, and Luca's household.
He pulled out the very center chair first. Not for himself.
"Please sit down, Mrs. Moretti," Luca said clearly enough for the front three tables to hear, echoing the exact words I had spoken to her in the ceremony room an hour ago.
Grace sat down, lifting Leo right onto her lap where he immediately reached for a butter roll on the gold charger. Then Luca pulled out the chair right beside Grace for my mother, and the next one for me.
Only when Lily, Grace, Leo, my mother, and I were seated at the head table did Luca pick up the wireless microphone beside the five-tier wedding cake. He didn't sit down. He stood beside his wife's chair, looking out over the politicians, judges, and business leaders who had come to see him marry off his daughter.
"There will be no wedding today," Luca announced into the microphone. The silence in the tent was absolute. "An hour ago, I learned that the man who stood at my altar used lies and extortion to force my daughter's hand. That man is currently in police custody."
Several people in the crowd gasped.
"More importantly," Luca continued, his deep voice steady yet humbling itself before the entire room, "for the past year, many of you at these tables believed rumours that my wife of twenty-six years, Grace, abandoned our family. You were wrong. Every single one of you—and nobody was more wrong than I was."
Grace looked up at him, her eyes shining.
"While I failed my marriage and let deceit into my own house," Luca said, placing his hand gently on the back of Grace's wooden chair, "Grace spent the past twelve months working in a bakery on the south side to protect and raise the son of our late daughter, Clara—my grandson, Leo Moretti."
A collective gasp swept through the pavilion, followed by women pressing handkerchiefs to their eyes as Leo waved a half-eaten butter roll at the front table.
"Half of my shipping holdings are being transferred today into an irrevocable trust in Grace Moretti's name alone, along with the deed to the Lake Forest house she always loved, so she never has to rely on my word to feel secure again," Luca said. Then he looked directly down at me. "And Emily Carter—who risked her livelihood today to make sure my wife was treated with the honor she deserved—will no longer be cleaning my house. Starting Monday, she is taking over as director of the Moretti Family Foundation at ninety thousand dollars a year, with a company house provided for her and her mother."
My mother grabbed my hand under the tablecloth and burst into tears, while spontaneous applause broke out across the entire pavilion.
When the guests finally began lining up at the buffet tables, Luca stepped down from the microphone and knelt beside Grace's chair, away from the crowd.
"I don't expect you to come back to me today, Grace," Luca said quietly, pulling a small item from his waistcoat pocket. It was her gold tenth-anniversary Patek Philippe watch—he had sent a courier to the pawnshop on South Halsted thirty minutes ago to buy it back with twenty thousand dollars in cash. He fastened it gently around her wrist. "I broke a twenty-six-year vow. If it takes me the rest of my life living in the guest cottage just to walk you and Leo to the park on Sundays, I'll pay that debt gladly."
Grace looked down at her watch, then at the little boy leaning sleepily against her chest with his red truck, and finally into the eyes of the man who was finally looking at her the way he had when they lived over the bakery thirty years ago.
May you like
"Sunday at ten o'clock, Luca," Grace said softly, reaching out to brush the silver at his temple. "And bring cinnamon rolls from my bakery. Leo likes the icing."
Luca smiled—the first real smile I had ever seen on his face—and kissed the back of his wife's hand.
