Chapter 49
VIOLET
"Stop crying. You're fogging up your glasses."
"I'm not crying. My, um, eyes are leaking. There’s a difference.”
"There absolutely is not."
Kylie wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand, pushes her tortoise glasses up her nose, and resumes pinning my hair. The focused determination on her face is the kind I typically only see when there’s a laptop in front of her.
“God, this is totally not my forte,” she says. “But we’re getting there.”
“Think of it as coding. But instead of ones and zeros, it’s my hair.”
She pulls back and regards me with an expression of total bemusement. “That’s got to be about the worst analogy I’ve ever heard. But it’s your wedding, so I’m going to let it slide.”
That gets a laugh out of me.
We’re in the bedroom—our bedroom, mine and Gianni’s. It’s been months, but I’m only just now getting around to thinking of it as our place and not some hideout. But it’s not. It’s my home—Patrick’s home.
The dress is hanging on the closet door—ivory and simply and altered three times because the shape this baby’s putting my body in absolutely refuses to cooperate. At eight months pregnant, I feel like I’m smuggling a watermelon under anything I wear.
"Hold still," Kylie says, sliding the last pin into place. "You have a cowlick situation happening on the left side and I need to sort it out.”
"Just pin it down."
"You can’t just pin hair like this down. You have to… persuade it into compliance."
I catch her eye in the mirror. She's wearing a deep green dress—my choice, to match the ring—and her hair is freshly cut and she looks beautiful in the way Kylie always looks beautiful: like she's not trying and doesn't care and would be annoyed if you mentioned it.
She pauses, pulls away and regards me with skepticism. I know that look—it’s the one she gives me when she knows there’s something on my mind and she’s not going to let it slide.
“What?” I ask, even though I know.
“Vi. Come on.”
I shift my weight as she works on my hair. “It’s… I looked up something about Lance yesterday.”
“Come on. You know better than to even think about that guy. You know he’d love it if he knew he was still hanging out in that head of yours rent-free.”
“I know. And I’ve been getting better about it. But…”
“No, I get it—force of habit and all that. But I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t at least give you a little shit about it.”
“And you’re right. But here’s the thing—I looked him up and the last thing I could find on him was an article about how he’d just been transferred to federal prison. He’s… gone. At least, for the next decade or so.”
“How… how do you feel about it? Wait, stupid question—I know you’re happy. But I mean, now that he’s actually locked up?”
“I feel… amazing. Knowing he’s gone, knowing he’s somewhere he can’t hurt me. I feel… free. That’s the only word for it.”
“And it’s true. You don’t have to worry about him. But… OK, I have to ask—what did Gianni say about when Lance finally gets out?”
“He said that Lance will step out of jail and be greeted by a small team of men who are going to give him a plane ticket to anywhere he wants out of the country and a very clear warning about what will happen if he ever tries to come back to America.”
“Least he deserves.”
Silence hangs in the air as she works.
Something occurs to me. "Ky."
"Mm."
"We made it."
Her hands stop. She meets my gaze in the mirror, and for a moment I see a love in her for me that’s so fierce and so stubborn it rebuilt an entire life from scratch because giving up was never an option.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "We did."
She squeezes my shoulder and I squeeze her hand.
Then she picks up the mascara wand. “We’re doing waterproof, because I have a good feeling you’re going to be more of a mess than you’re anticipating.”
The moment passes. Kylie’s good like that—she feels things, but never lets them overwhelm. The sentiments land, and then they move.
A knock at the door. Nina pokes her head in. "He's ready. Patrick is—" She pauses. Smiles. "Patrick is having a conversation with the officiant about whether dinosaurs can be ring bearers."
"Can they?" I ask.
"The officiant is surprisingly open to it."
The rooftop.
Gianni wanted something small. I wanted something real.
The result is thirty people on the private terrace of our building, surrounded by white flowers and candlelight and the Manhattan skyline doing what it does best—making everything look like a movie, even when the people in it are too busy being human to notice.
The chairs are arranged in a loose semicircle. No aisle, really—just a path between the rows, lined with votives in glass holders that flicker in the early evening breeze. The officiant stands at the far end, in front of a simple arch wrapped in greenery, and beside him, Gianni.
I can see him from the doorway. He’s dressed in a black suit with no tie, his hair slicked back in a way I rarely see with him.
His jaw is clean-shaven for the first time in weeks, which makes him look younger, softer, less like the head of an empire and more like a man standing on a rooftop waiting for the woman he loves.
And he’s so mouthwateringly gorgeous and sexy that I can’t believe I get to marry him.
Spackman is right beside him, dressed in a sharp gray suit and standing steady as a statue. As always, his weight is shifted forward, eyes scanning, his hands at his sides, like there might be a threat popping out at any moment. I guess some habits don’t break for weddings.
Gianni glances at Spackman and nods; Spackman returns the nod. It’s such a small, simple gesture, but in it is the weight of their history, the danger they’ve faced together, and Gianni’s respect for his friend’s loyalty that never once wavered, even when the empire was on the verge of crumbling.
Spackman didn't run. He's standing right where he belongs.
Rudi’s already crying in the front row. She looks like a dream in her navy dress with a corsage that Patrick helped pick out—the one he pointed to at the florist and said was the “most beautiful.”
Marco is beside her, kicking his light-up sneakers against the chair legs, looking adorable in his little tux.
And I’m sure he’s already thinking about the sleepover with Patrick tonight.
Nina’s there too, holding a tissue box, a stoic look on her face as if she’s there at the ready to offer one to anyone who’s even thinking of crying.
The music starts. Something simple—a single guitar, acoustic.
Patrick goes first, walking between the chairs with dragon dangling from his hands underneath the ring pillow.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit that Gianni had made to match his own, and he walks with totally adorable solemnity, as if he understands that this is all very important but he doesn’t quite understand why.
His red curls are combed flat and look ready to spring out into their usual shape at any moment.
He reaches Gianni. Holds up the pillow.
"Don't drop it, Dad," he whispers in the way four-year-olds whisper—which is to say, at a volume that carries to every person on the rooftop.
Gianni crouches and takes the pillow. His expression, warm but disbelieving, the look he always gets when Patrick calls him Dad. He hasn’t gotten used to it yet, like it’s a gift he doesn’t feel he deserves.
He has. No doubt in my mind that he has.
"I won't drop it, buddy," Gianni says. "I promise."
Patrick nods, satisfied, and takes his seat in the front row beside Rudi, who pulls him onto her lap and buries her face in his curls.
Kylie squeezes my hand and passes me my bouquet. Her glasses are fogging again.
"Go," she says. "Before I short-circuit."
I walk. But not down the aisle—because there is no aisle.
Only a path. It’s thirty feet of candlelight and faces, the solo classical guitarist now playing Canon in D.
I walk slowly, and not just because I want to savor the moment—walking with all eyes on you when you’re eight-months pregnant is…
trickier than I would’ve guessed. Last thing I want to do during my own wedding is to topple over in front of everyone.
The strangest thing happens as I walk—my life plays before my eyes. I think of the broken home I grew up in, the horrible marriage to a monster. I think about Patrick’s birth, and I think about my flight from Lance. It all plays, and at first I’m confused.
And then I’m not, because everything that’s happened to me, good and bad, has led me to this perfect moment.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi," he says.
The officiant speaks. I hear the words—love, commitment, the joining of two lives—but mostly I just look at him.
"Do you, Violet, take this man—"
"I do."
I say it before he finishes the sentence. The officiant blinks. Gianni's mouth curves—just barely, just at the corner, the almost-smile I fell in love with the first time I saw it through the glass of an office door.
"Do you, Gianni, take this woman—"
“I do.”
The rings go on. His hand is steady for this part. He slides the band onto my finger, next to the emerald, and I slide his onto his—simple, white gold, a match to mine.
"You may kiss the bride."
He kisses me gently, because we're in front of thirty people and my son and his best man and God and the Manhattan skyline.
"Can we eat cake now?" Patrick says.
The rooftop erupts.
The reception is small—dinner at a long table under string lights, wine and laughter and Spackman giving a toast that consists of exactly four sentences and makes Gianni look at the ceiling for a very long time.
Kylie's toast is longer, funnier, and includes a reference to the emailed manuscript that makes me want to crawl under the table.
Patrick falls asleep in Rudi's lap with a fork in one hand and Dragon in the other.
Before all of that—before the toasts and the cake and the dancing that consists mostly of Gianni holding me and swaying because neither of us knows how to dance—there's a moment.
He and I are on the balcony—just us. The reception is setting up behind us, and we realize together we have about thirty seconds of privacy before all eyes are on us again.
Then I feel the baby kick.
I’ve felt it before, with this little one and with Patrick. But Gianni hasn’t. Weird timing—he seems to never be around when she’s—I somehow know she’s a she even though we’re keeping it a surprise—treating my kidneys like soccer balls. But he’s here now.
“Feel this.”
I grab his hand and yank it so hard I nearly pull the huge man off his feet. I place his palm on my belly. His hand stills and his eyes widen. Raw, unguarded wonder forms on his face as he feels his child move for the first time.
It’s so beautiful I nearly cry.
"That's her," I say.
"That's her," he repeats. Barely a whisper.
We stand with his hand on my stomach, the baby kicking against his palm, the city sprawling below us in a carpet of light that stretches to the horizon.
I think about the book. It's being submitted to publishers next week—Gianni's attorney connected me with a literary agent who read the first three chapters and called me back within an hour.
I think about the nursery we're building in the room next to Patrick's—pale yellow walls, a crib Gianni spent three hours assembling with Spackman while Patrick supervised.
I think about kindergarten in the fall, and Patrick's new backpack, and the fact that he asked if Gianni could walk him to school on the first day.
I think about the first chapter. The forty-second floor. A woman with thick glasses and red bangs and a manuscript she never meant anyone to see, standing in front of a man who read her secrets and wanted to know more.
And I smile. Because I'm Violet Russo, and I'm not hiding anymore.