Chapter 24 NICO
NICO
The wedding happens faster than anyone expects.
It surprises people, but not for the reasons they think.
Some assume it is impulse. That I woke up one morning and decided to marry Izzy immediately after everything that happened at the docks.
That is not the truth. I am not an impulsive man.
My life has been built on patience, calculation, and knowing exactly when to act.
But war teaches a man something important about time. And that is, when the moment comes, you do not hesitate.
So, we do not plan for months. There are no magazines, no reporters, no cathedral full of strangers pretending to care about love when they really want scandal.
We marry within the week. Midnight, at Notte Bianca, with the people who matter.
That is enough.
When I step into the restaurant that night, the room looks familiar and entirely different at the same time. Candles line the tables. Soft music drifts through the space. The windows reflect the dark water outside, and the lights glow warmly against the polished wood floors.
For years this place was simply neutral territory. A restaurant where the Dons met to conduct business, argue, negotiate, and occasionally threaten each other over expensive wine.
Now I know it is more than that.
This is where everything began anew.
Where a waitress with sharp eyes and a stubborn mouth first walked past my table pretending not to remember the spark between us.
I see her now at the far end of the room.
Izzy.
My queen.
Izzy does not look like the kind of bride the world usually celebrates.
There is nothing fragile about her. She stands with her shoulders straight and her chin lifted, laughing softly with Savannah while Erin adjusts something in her hair.
The dress she chose is simple but elegant, white silk that falls cleanly to the floor and moves gently when she turns.
It softens her sharp edges without diminishing them.
Her dark hair falls over her shoulders in loose waves, and when she looks up and catches me watching her, her smile shifts slightly—less playful, more intimate.
It is a look meant only for me.
Across the room, the other Dons are already gathered near the front. Matteo notices me first and shakes his head with a faint smirk. “Took you long enough,” he says.
“You’re early,” I reply.
Riccardo leans back against the table behind him. “He’s been pacing for ten minutes.”
“I do not pace.”
“You absolutely pace,” Giovanni says dryly. “Don’t worry. The bride won’t toss Rose along with the bouquet.”
“Keep making jokes, Gallo, and I’ll see you in the parking lot after the service.”
I shake my head, but my mouth can’t stop twitching.
Friendship isn’t something that happens naturally in the life of Dons. But tonight, I am proud to call these people my friends.
Luca claps a hand on my shoulder as I step into the circle. “You ready for this?”
I glance across the room again. Izzy is looking at me now, her eyes bright with something that is half disbelief and half joy. Even after everything we have been through, she still looks surprised that this is real.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
Now I am.
We don’t bother with the organ. Or the aisle. Or even chairs. Everyone here is on the same level, standing either with the bride or the groom, but all in a semicircle around us. The Dons, the bridesmaids—and Noah.
He insisted on wearing a tiny suit for the occasion.
He looks like a miniature businessman who wandered into the wrong meeting.
At the moment he is standing beside Izzy with impressive determination, but I can see the battle he is fighting with sleep.
His head tilts against her hip for a moment before he straightens again.
“I’m not tired,” he whispers stubbornly.
Izzy brushes his hair back. “You’re falling asleep standing up.”
“I’m fine.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them again. Closes them.
I feel something unfamiliar tug at the edges of my composure.
Amusement. Pride. Something dangerously close to tenderness.
Leone notices and nudges me with his elbow. “You’re smiling.”
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I will shoot you.”
“You can’t shoot the officiant,” he replies smugly, holding up his phone. “The internet gave me power.”
“What the internet giveth, I can easily taketh away,” I remind him with a smile.
“Right.” Leone steps forward and clears his throat loudly. “Alright. Let’s do this before the kid faceplants.”
Laughter ripples through the room as Izzy walks toward me. When she reaches my side, I take her hands. Her fingers are warm and trembling slightly. I notice that immediately, and the tremor does something unexpected inside my chest.
Leone gestures impatiently. “Your vows, Romeo.”
I ignore him. My eyes focus on Izzy. My queen. The woman who changed my life.
And suddenly, no one exists in the room but us.
“Notte Bianca,” I begin slowly, my voice steady in the quiet room, “means white night.”
Her brows lift slightly as she listens.
“In Italy, a notte bianca is a sleepless night. Shops remain open, the streets fill with people, and everything that normally happens during the day happens under the moon instead.”
I pause. I’m a man of action, not words. Writing down these vows was hard enough. Remembering them is harder still.
But Izzy is worth it. For her, I will become a man of words just this once.
“It is the one night when light and dark stop fighting each other. They mix together. They become indistinguishable.”
Her eyes begin to glisten.
“For most of my life,” I continue, “I believed darkness defined me. My work, my responsibilities, the world I inherited. A man raised the way I was does not expect redemption. Survival is often the most we can ask from life.”
My thumb brushes lightly over her knuckles.
“You did not try to change that world. You did not demand that I abandon it.”
Her breath trembles slightly now.
“You accepted it,” I say quietly. “And you brought your own light into it. You made the night beautiful.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
“I spent most of my life believing kings stand alone,” I continue. “Now I know better. I am no longer alone, and I owe that miracle to you.”
I lift her hand slightly.
“My queen.”
Then I kiss it.
“Wow,” Leone mutters. “Way to break protocol.”
The room erupts in snorts again.
Izzy laughs softly through her tears. “How in the hell am I supposed to top that?”
The bridesmaids giggle.
But then Izzy takes a breath and turns serious again. “I didn’t expect this,” she says, and the honesty in her voice goes straight through me. “Fairytale love doesn’t happen to girls like me. Girls who grow up worrying about rent and overtime shifts.”
She glances at the other women standing nearby. Erin squeezes Luca’s hand. Savannah leans into Riccardo. Rose and Amber exchange knowing smiles with their men.
“But I’ve seen it happen four times now,” Izzy says. “And in our case… twice. Once seven years ago, and once now.”
Her fingers tighten around mine.
“They say lightning doesn’t strike twice,” she continues softly. “But sometimes it does.”
Her eyes shine as she studies me.
“You’re the kind of dad Noah waited for his whole life. The kind of husband I never dared to imagine. The kind of king who makes a girl like me feel like a queen.”
My chest clenches hard.
“I love you,” she says simply. “I’ve always loved you. And after seven years apart, I don’t want to spend another second of my life without you.”
She squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.
Leone wipes imaginary tears from his eyes. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard since I got certified online.”
Laughter fills the room.
He raises his phone with exaggerated dignity. “By the authority vested in me by a very legitimate website, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may—”
I do not wait for permission.
I pull Izzy into my arms and kiss her.
Cheers erupt around us. Applause, laughter, someone whistling loudly from the back of the room. When we finally break apart, I feel her laugh against my chest.
“Bouquet toss!” the bridesmaids start chanting. “Bouquet toss!”
Izzy laughs. She theatrically turns her back to the room and gives the bridesmaids and flower girls just enough time to get in position, then obliges.
The bouquet sails through the air and lands squarely in the hands of a stunned woman near the back.
Crystal. One of the flower girls, and also Izzy’s cousin.
She stares down at the flowers like they might explode. “Oh my God,” she says with an unmistakable teenager cadence. “No way. Take this back. I’m not ready to get married!”
The entire room bursts into laughter.
I watch the scene unfold and feel something settle quietly inside me.
For most of my life I believed peace was temporary, something fragile that could be broken at any moment.
But standing here with my wife beside me and my son asleep in a chair nearby, I allow myself—for the first time in many years—to believe that this might be real.
That the dark and the light have finally learned how to coexist.
Like stars in the night sky.