28. Astor
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ASTOR
“ S o, that should be the last of it. The caterers are booked for the rehearsal and the wedding. Your fathers wanted the open bar for the rehearsal and the dinner, are you two ok with that?” I side eye Alessia and she shrugs.
“Sure, Mom,” she tells her.
“Are you two going to take a honeymoon?” Eleanor asks.
“Yes,” I spit out before Alessia can answer, because she’s crazy if she thinks we’re not. I already have a honeymoon in the Maldives planned. She keeps saying it’s not a real wedding or a real marriage, but she’s going to see just how real it is.
“Oh?” Alessia asks, crossing her legs and turning to me.
“Don’t ask, I’m not telling you.” My mother smiles; she’s the only one that knows my plan. She helped plan a lot of it, she knows how hard this is for me. She knows how hurt I was when I lost Alessia the first time. How I spiraled and focused on nothing other than the business. Alessia lets her hand drop and eyes me.
I lean over and whisper to her, “You want me to hold your hand, malyshka ?” I slide my hand into her small one. She squints her eyes at me and I chuckle, leaning back into the chair.
“You two no longer seem to avoid each other,” Ander observes as he and my father join us at the table.
“That’s what you wanted, right?” Alessia spits back at him. She’s been distant from him since we got here. I wish I cared enough, but I don’t. Her being distant from him has made her stick to my side like a thorn and I love it. My father bends down and kisses her cheek.
“We want you happy, Alessia,” her father says, making her scowl.
“Alright, so now that everyone is here, rehearsal will be Friday at 6:00 p.m. Our children requested it be small and intimate, so no more than thirty people. The venue is letting us in at 7:00 a.m. and the wedding will start at 4:00 p.m. sharp. They’ll be married by 4:30 p.m. and the stress we’ve been putting on our sweet Alessia over this wedding will be over,” Eleanor says, patting her hand.
“Woo fucking hoo,” she says and I squeeze her hand. She looks at me and chuckles. “Sorry.”
“Are you two getting excited? Six days left,” my mother says, leaning over the table.
“Mom, it’s a wedding you both forced upon us. How excited do you expect us to be?” She looks down at our conjoined hands and smirks.
“Pretty excited,” she mumbles as the chefs start to drop by food. I look down at our hands and smirk. It feels so natural even though I hate hand holding. She’s the only hand I want to hold. So yes, I guess I am fucking excited.
“Astor said Miles is meeting with his father in a week, that’s the day after the wedding. They’re supposed to leave that night,” Ander tells my father.
“We can leave that morning; she doesn’t know anything about it, so she won’t know it’s delayed,” I tell Ander as he sits in the chair in front of his desk. We’re gathered in his study, discussing how exactly we’re planning to exile Miles and his family out of the mafia. He’s been poking around, looking for information, and is still trying to buy prominent families to be allies with them.
“He’s not going to go out without a fight, Astor. You need to be careful. In his mind, he did nothing wrong,” my father says to me, pouring himself his usual.
“What the fuck do you mean, he did nothing wrong ?”
“He thinks that she was asking for it. That’s what he told his father. He told him that she was sauntering around the house in her bathing suit and that she left the door to her room open.”
I think back to that day and she was in her bathing suit—we all were. We were swimming in her pool while our families had a nightcap after the Fourth of July fireworks. I remember her saying she was going up to her room to change, that she was getting cold and was done swimming. I remember her winking at me when she went up the stairs. Miles was behind me and chuckled, I assumed he knew about us. He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that we’d been all over each other that entire day. He even caught us kissing in the kitchen that morning. When he said he was going to take a leak, I didn’t think anything of it, because I knew I planned on sneaking into Alessia’s room in a few minutes, anyway.
My vision starts to turn red when I think about what happened next.
When I went into the house, I heard a scream and something bang against the wall. I knew it was her, I knew her voice. Our parents were trashed after drinking all day, so I knew they either didn’t hear it or completely ignored it. When I finally got up the stairs, I saw Miles on top of her, pushing his cock inside of her. I lost it, I ripped him off of her and chucked him down the stairs. I remember climbing on top of him and bashing my fist into his face repeatedly. Then I remember my father stopping me once my hands wrapped around his neck.
“Don’t go there, son. Don’t think about that day. You have the chance to make her remember. The way her therapist said. You’re marrying her, even if she never remembers. You still got her back. She came back .”
I slump into the seat in front of Ander and he circles his desk, placing his hand on my knee.
“Look, I know we’ve been at each other the last few weeks, but you know I love you like a son. There is no one else I want my daughter with. That piece of shit may have made her forget what you had before, but he didn’t erase you from her memory. Like your father said, she came back. And every day, I know she’s closer and closer to finding her true self. But Astor, when she figures out that piece of her life that she lost, she’ll need you. She’ll hate me for not telling her. She’ll hate you . But you have to be there, you have to fight for her.”
“I will. You have my word,” I say, looking straight into his eyes.
Once we say I do , that’s it. She’s mine. Forever.