13. Nova #3
Luca is waiting at the bottom of the steps.
He doesn’t say anything. Just holds out his hand.
I take it.
***
Luca
I watch her walk away from her sister, and I feel something crack open in my chest.
Pride. That’s what it is. Pride so fierce it almost hurts - pride in this woman who just faced down her abusers, her betrayers, her entire broken past, and didn’t flinch. Didn’t falter. Didn’t apologize.
She takes my hand, and her fingers are ice-cold, trembling slightly.
But her eyes are clear.
“Get me out of here,” she whispers.
“With pleasure.”
I turn toward the door, keeping her close, my arm around her waist. The congregation parts before us like the Red Sea. No one wants to be in our path, no one wants to be associated with the spectacular wreckage we’ve left behind.
But before we can reach the exit, a voice rings out.
“You think you’ve won something?”
We stop.
Dante is stumbling down the altar steps, his face red and tear-streaked, his composure completely shattered. Chloe is still standing at the altar, alone now, her white dress a mockery of purity.
“You think this changes anything?” My brother laughs - that same horrible, broken sound. “Mother will get out. She always gets out. She has lawyers, connections, people who owe her-”
“She has nothing.” I keep my voice level. Calm. “Everything she had, I’ve taken. Every ally, every resource, every escape route. By tomorrow morning, her accounts will be frozen. Her properties will be seized. Her precious social standing will be ash.”
“You can’t-”
“I already have.” I take a step toward him. “Eight months, Dante. Eight months I’ve been building this case. Every payment she made to silence witnesses. Every doctor she bribed to falsify records. Every journalist she paid to bury the story. I have all of it.”
Dante’s face goes gray.
“And you know what’s going to happen next?” I let him see it - the cold satisfaction, the patient fury I’ve been banking for a lifetime. “They’re going to want someone to corroborate. Someone who was inside the house. Someone who saw what she did and chose to ignore it.”
“I didn’t - I never-”
“You watched your wife suffer for two years and did nothing.” My voice drops. “That makes you complicit. And when the investigators come calling, and they will, you’re going to have to explain why you looked the other way.”
“I let myself believe her!” Dante is crying now, openly crying, snot running down his face. “Mother handed me a version where it wasn’t happening, and I took it. It was easier than what I’d have had to do if it was true-”
“You believed what was convenient.” I feel Nova’s hand tighten on mine. “You believed what let you sleep at night. And now you get to live with the consequences.”
I turn away from him.
But he grabs my arm.
“Luca - please-” His voice breaks. “She’s my mother. She’s all I have left. If you do this - if you destroy her-”
I look at his hand on my sleeve. Look at his face - desperate, terrified, finally understanding that his world is ending.
“You should have thought of that,” I say quietly, “before you let her destroy your wife.”
I shake him off.
We walk out of the cathedral together - Nova and I, hand in hand, stepping into the sunlight while the flashbulbs explode around us. Behind us, I hear Dante collapse. Hear Chloe screaming his name. Hear the chaos erupting as the guests finally process what they’ve witnessed.
But I don’t look back.
Neither does she.
We walk down the cathedral steps, through the gauntlet of paparazzi, toward the Rolls-Royce waiting at the curb. The driver opens the door. Nova slides in first, and I follow, and the door closes behind us with a sound like a final verdict.
Silence.
The tinted windows block out the chaos, the cameras, the screaming. Inside the car, it’s just us. Just the sound of our breathing, gradually slowing. Just the weight of what we’ve done, settling into our bones.
“It’s over,” Nova says finally.
“Yes.”
She turns to look at me. Her eyes are wet, but she’s not crying. She’s… calm. Peaceful, even. Like something inside her has finally been laid to rest.
“What happens now?”
I reach over. Take her hand. Bring it to my lips.
“Now,” I say against her knuckles, “we go home. And we start our life.”
The car pulls away from the cathedral.
Behind us, the wreckage.
Ahead of us, everything.
My phone buzzes against my chest.
I almost ignore it. Almost. But old habits die hard, and I pull it out, and Marco’s name is on the screen.
“Tell me.”
“The story’s live, signore. Every outlet.
It’s already the most-read piece in the country and it’s been eleven minutes.
” A pause, and when he speaks again, there’s something careful in his voice.
“And signore, the prosecutor’s office just called.
They want to move fast, before her lawyers regroup. They want Nova’s testimony.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
I look at Nova. She’s watching me, reading my face the way she always does, and I see her understand before I say a word.
She squeezes my hand. Lifts her chin.
“Then we give it to them,” she says.