Chapter 7 - The Second Life of Nicholas Moretti
One week later, Nicholas brought me back to Bellavue.
The restaurant where we first met.
The private dining room was empty.
No guards.
No Moretti captains.
No dangerous men conducting quiet business over expensive wine.
Just Nicholas.
And me.
I stopped near the doorway.
“What is this?”
“Dinner.”
“You rented the whole room?”
“Yes.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“I panicked.”
“You?”
“Don't spread it around.”
A waiter approached carrying champagne.
I immediately smiled.
Nicholas noticed.
“You remember.”
“How could I forget?”
The waiter placed the tray down.
Nicholas picked up two glasses.
Then deliberately tilted one toward me.
I grabbed it.
“Easy.”
He smiled.
“That makes two of us.”
For a moment, we were back there.
I was twenty-four.
Broke.
Overworked.
Terrified I had just spilled champagne on a stranger.
And Nicholas was the dangerous man whose hand had closed around my elbow before I understood what his name meant in Chicago.
Except now I understood everything.
The good.
The bad.
The secrets.
The cost.
Nicholas set his glass down.
“I need to tell you something.”
“If you're dying again, I'm leaving.”
“I'm not.”
“Good.”
He reached into his jacket.
I stared at him.
“Nicholas.”
He removed my wedding ring.
The original one.
The ring I had taken off after seeing him alive.
“I found this upstairs.”
“I know where you found it.”
“I've been staring at it for three months.”
He placed it on the table between us.
“I’m not asking you to forget what I did.”
I said nothing.
“I'm not asking you to pretend those six months didn't happen.”
“Good.”
“And I'm not asking you to become the wife you were before.”
I looked at him.
“Then what are you asking?”
Nicholas took a breath.
“For the chance to become your husband again.”
No speech.
No dramatic promises.
Just that.
I picked up the ring.
“You know something?”
“What?”
“I hated you at that cemetery.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to hit you again.”
“I also know.”
“I still might occasionally.”
“That seems unfair.”
“You faked your death.”
“Fair.”
I smiled.
Then slipped the ring onto my finger.
Nicholas stared at it.
“Is that a yes?”
“It's a probationary yes.”
“How long is probation?”
“Possibly forty years.”
“I can work with that.”
He stood.
I looked at him suspiciously.
“What now?”
“There's someone outside.”
“Nicholas.”
“It's fine.”
The doors opened.
Marco entered.
Behind him came Nicholas’s mother, two cousins, and several people who had been part of our lives before everything fell apart.
His mother walked straight toward him.
Nicholas stepped backward.
“Ma.”
She lifted her handbag.
“Don't.”
I laughed.
She hugged him instead.
Then she hugged me.
“Thank you for taking him back.”
“I haven't completely.”
“Smart girl.”
Nicholas sighed.
“I'm standing here.”
“We know,” his mother said. “That's the problem.”
The room erupted in laughter.
Later, after everyone left, Nicholas and I walked outside.
Chicago glittered beneath a clear night sky.
He put his coat around my shoulders.
I leaned against him.
“You know what I told your grave every Sunday?” I asked.
“What?”
“That I didn't know how to live without you.”
His arm tightened around me.
“And now?”
I looked at him.
“Now I know I can.”
Something flickered across his face.
I touched his cheek.
“That matters, Nicholas.”
“I know.”
“Because I'm not staying because I need you.”
He nodded.
“I'm staying because I choose you.”
He kissed my forehead.
“I can live with that.”
Six months earlier, Nicholas Moretti had disappeared in fire and left me with a grave containing nothing but dirt.
For half a year, I believed my marriage had ended beneath a black marble stone.
I was wrong.
Our first marriage had ended there.
The one built around Nicholas protecting me by keeping secrets.
The one where he decided what I could know.
The one where loving a powerful man meant accepting locked doors and unanswered questions.
We didn't bring that marriage back.
We built another one.
Nicholas never returned to the criminal empire Victor had nearly destroyed. He kept the legitimate businesses, rebuilt relationships with his family, and discovered that normal life was much harder for him than running Chicago ever had been.
He burned pasta.
He hated grocery stores.
He once called Marco because he couldn't understand our new washing machine.
And every Sunday morning, he made coffee.
One rainy Sunday the following spring, I found him standing at the kitchen window.
“What?” I asked.
“It's raining.”
“So?”
He looked at me.
“Cemetery weather.”
I threw a dish towel at him.
He caught it.
“Too soon?”
“Much too soon.”
He smiled.
I walked over and wrapped my arms around him.
His heartbeat was steady beneath my cheek.
Real.
Alive.
Mine only because he chose me too.
Nicholas kissed my hair.
“Come home,” he whispered.
I smiled against his chest.
This time, the words didn't hurt.
Because I finally understood something.
Home had never been the Moretti mansion.
It wasn't Chicago.
It wasn't a grave, a name, or the life we had before.
Home was the place where there were no more lies between us.
I looked up at the husband I had buried.
May you like
“I already am.”
THE END
