Chapter 31 Giuliana
GIULIANA
Six Months Later
This time, the dress is exactly what I wanted.
No cathedral train, no hand-sewn crystals, and no designer label. Just ivory silk that skims over my rounded belly, sleeveless with a sweetheart neckline, and falling to just above my ankles. Katie helped me find it at a small boutique, and the moment I put it on I knew it was perfect.
This is what I should have worn the first time. This is the dress of a woman choosing love, not accepting captivity.
“You look beautiful,” Katie says from behind me, her voice thick with emotion. She’s been crying on and off all morning, happy tears that she blames on being “emotionally compromised by the whole situation.”
I meet her eyes in the mirror. “Thank you,” I tell her sincerely. “For everything. For being here, for—”
“Stop.” She comes to stand beside me, adjusting the small crown of wildflowers in my hair. “You’re going to make me cry again, and I just fixed my makeup.”
The wildflowers were Luca’s idea. He remembered me mentioning once that I loved the wildflower meadow behind my childhood home, how my mother would take me there and we’d make flower crowns together.
So this morning, I woke to find fresh wildflowers—daisies and black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace—waiting in the bedroom with a note in Luca’s slanted handwriting: for a queen who deserves flowers that grow free.
I’m definitely going to cry before I even make it down the aisle.
The chapel is small, tucked away in a quiet corner of the estate grounds.
Luca said it hadn’t been used in years but I had fallen in love with the quaint building.
It was easy to decide that we needed to use it.
It’s a place that would be ours, where we could start this chapter of our lives without the weight of our first wedding hanging over us.
“Are you ready?” Katie asks, and I can see the concern beneath her smile. Even after six months, she sometimes looks at me like she’s for signs that I’m not really as happy as I seem.
But I am happy. Deliriously, impossibly, completely happy.
“I’m ready,” I tell her, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.
Katie hands me my bouquet—more wildflowers and tied with a simple cream ribbon—and we make our way down to the chapel. The late afternoon sun filters through the trees, creating a deep green canopy on the path.
Danny is waiting at the chapel entrance, looking uncharacteristically nervous in a navy suit. When he sees me, his face breaks into a genuine smile.
“Mrs. Marchetti,” he says, offering his arm. “You look stunning.”
“Thank you for doing this,” I tell him as I take his arm. “I know walking me down the aisle wasn’t exactly in your job description.”
“It’s an honor,” he says simply, patting my hand. “Luca is a different man because of you; a better man. So thank you for giving him a second chance.”
My throat tightens with emotion. “He gave me one too,” I whisper.
Danny winks at me and opens the chapel doors, and there he is.
Luca stands at the altar, wearing a charcoal suit that makes his dark eyes look even darker. The chapel is empty except for Katie, who slips in behind us to take her place. No guests, no witnesses beyond our two closest friends. Just intimate and small and perfect.
The moment Luca’s gaze finds mine, everything else fades away. The chapel, the nervousness, the past. All of it disappears until there’s only him, looking at me like I’m the answer to every question he’s ever asked.
The walk down the aisle feels both too long and too short. I want to run to him, but I also want to savor every step, every moment of choosing to walk toward this man who was once my captor and is now my everything.
When I reach him, Danny places my hand in Luca’s. “Take care of her,” he murmurs, so quietly only we can hear. “Both of them.”
“Always,” Luca promises, his voice rough with emotion.
Danny steps back to stand beside Katie, and then it’s just the four of us in this small chapel, witnessing something sacred.
Luca takes both my hands in his, and I can feel them trembling slightly. He’s nervous. Luca Marchetti, who faces down rival organizations without flinching, is nervous about promising me his love in front of two people.
“Giuliana,” he begins, his voice thick with emotion. “Seven months ago, you stood at an altar and made promises you didn’t want to make. You agreed to a marriage that was about revenge and control and all the worst parts of who I was.”
He pauses, his thumbs stroking across my knuckles. “Today, I’m asking you to make different promises. I’m asking you to choose me. Not because you’re afraid of what I’ll do if you don’t, but because you want to. Because somewhere in the mess of how we started, we found something real.”
I’m crying unabashedly, but I don’t try to stop them.
“I promise to be your partner, not your captor,” Luca continues. “To listen when you speak, to respect your choices, to build a life with you where you have as much power as I do. I promise to be the kind of father our child deserves—patient and present and everything my own father wasn’t.”
Katie sniffles behind me. Our baby kicks against my belly, as if agreeing with him, and Luca’s eyes drop to where his child grows.
“I promise to love you not just today, not just when it’s easy, but through every hard moment we’ll face.
” He wipes his eyes briefly. “Through sleepless nights with a crying baby and arguments about whose turn it is to change diapers and all the ordinary, beautiful chaos of life.” He’s smiling now, even through his tears, and it takes my breath away.
“I promise to be worthy of the second chance you’ve given me.
Every single day, for the rest of our lives. ”
I'm crying so hard I can barely see, because oh my god, how do I top that?
“My turn?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Your turn,” he confirms, squeezing my hands gently.
I take a shaky breath, trying to collect myself enough to speak. The vows I practiced last night have completely fled my mind, so I speak from the heart instead.
“Luca,” I start, and my voice cracks immediately. “When I first met you, I-I hated you. You were everything I feared. You took away my freedom, my clinic, and my life as I knew it.”
I see him flinch slightly, but I squeeze his hands tighter.
“But somewhere in that darkness, I found you. The real you, beneath all the anger. I found a man capable of extraordinary kindness. A man who reads terrible romance novels out loud to make me laugh.” Luca playfully winces at me bringing that up, but whoever would have thought that the billionaire werewolf novel I read to him in the hospital would spark his love for reading?
Turns out, even crime lords love romance books.
“Who brings me wildflowers because he knows they mean something. Who loves so fiercely it terrifies him.”
Luca bites his lip, more tears trailing down his cheeks.
“I promise to stand beside you as your equal, your partner, your wife in more than just name,” I continue, my voice growing steadier.
“I promise to be honest with you, even when the truth is hard. To fight with you when I think you’re wrong, and celebrate with you when you’re right.
” I place one of his hands on my belly, where our baby is currently doing somersaults.
His eyes widen and he smiles so beautifully it makes my heart clench.
“I promise to love our family—you, me, and this little one. Through every beautiful moment and every challenge we’ll face. ”
I pause, gathering courage for the next part.
“You gave me a second chance when you could have destroyed me completely. You let me choose you freely when you could have kept me prisoner. That kind of grace, that kind of growth”—my throat grows tight—“that’s what I’m promising to honor for the rest of my life.
Not the man you were, but the man you’re becoming.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I choose you. Today and every day after.”
Behind me, I can hear Katie crying softly. Even Danny is clearing his throat suspiciously.
Luca pulls me close, careful of my belly, and rests his forehead against mine. “I love you too. More than I ever thought possible. More than I have words for.”
“Then show me,” I tell him.
And he does.
When we finally pull apart, Katie is openly sobbing and Danny is grinning like an idiot.
“Congratulations,” Danny says warmly, shaking Luca’s hand then pulling him into a brief hug. “Both of you.”
Katie wraps me in a fierce embrace. “I’m so happy for you,” she whispers, her brown eyes full of tears. “You deserve this, Gigi. All of this.”
The sun is setting as we emerge from the chapel, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. Luca pulls me close, and we just stand there for a moment, hand-in-hand, watching the day fade into evening.
“Mrs. Marchetti,” he murmurs against my hair. “Again. But better this time.”
“So much better,” I agree, turning in his arms to kiss him. “This time I mean it.”
“This time we both do.”
Danny and Katie tactfully excuse themselves, saying they’ll see us at dinner tomorrow, leaving Luca and me alone on the chapel steps.
“Come on,” Luca says, taking my hand. “I have something to show you.”
He leads me back to the house, up the stairs, to our bedroom. And when he opens the door, I gasp.
The room has been transformed. Candles are everywhere, casting soft light across surfaces. Rose petals are scattered across the bed—red roses this time, dozens and dozens of them.
“Luca,” I breathe, taking in the romance of it all. “This is…this is…”
“Too much?” He looks suddenly uncertain. “I wanted tonight to be special. Different from—”
I kiss him, cutting off his words. “It’s perfect,” I tell him, meaning every word. “You’re perfect.”
He laughs against my lips. “I’m really not.”
“Perfect for me, then.” I start working on his tie, my fingers fumbling slightly with nerves. “And I’m ready for the wedding night we should have had the first time.”