“Where am I?” I asked the four walls, only then gathering the fact that someone had laid me in a small bunk against a wall.
“In our school’s nurse’s office.” This came from the nun I’d met earlier. “How are you feeling?”
I felt woozy but decided saying so would serve no purpose. My nose itched and when I lifted my right hand to scratch it, something pulled. Someone had placed an IV in my arm. “What’s in this?”
“Saline,” the nun answered matter-of-factly. “For your blood loss. Without a proper scan, I can’t tell you if you have any internal bleeding that could prove detrimental, but I did suture up the part of your external wounds that had ripped back open.” She lifted my shirt and the loosened flap of my pants. “No blood is soaking through, so that’s a good sign.”
“How long have I been out?”
“An hour.” The nun bustled about, pouring a glass of water from a cooler in the corner. “Drink this. You need to take in more fluids.”
“Have you seen anyone? Is there word about my wife?”My wife.It was the first time I’d spoken those words out loud, and my chest hitched as I realized they weren’t even accurate. Lucia hadn’t been given the opportunity to become my wife, and if fucking Gianni had his way, she might never be.
Kindly, the nun placed a hand on my knee. “No one has been by, but this office is pretty far removed from the chapel. Stay here and rest, and I’ll go see if I can track anyone down.” I attempted to get up and leave with her, almost tumbling over in the process. She pushed me back down as if I were a toddler. I felt so weak I might as well have been. “Mr. Cavetti. I must ask you again. Stay here and rest. If you don’t, I won’t feel comfortable leaving you.”
“I don’t know if she’s dead or alive,” I told her, shocked to hear my voice break. Emotion welled without my permission as I regarded the nun with wet eyes.
“I cannot, in good conscience, go check if I think you’ll get up and hurt yourself. I want to discover the news that you seek, but I need you to promise me to be a better patient. Will you stay put for me?”
“I will,” I said, not meaning it. How could I remain here out of the loop while Lucia’s life was in jeopardy?
This time, though, I waited until the hushed sounds of the nun’s soft-soled shoes became silent. Then, planting my feet carefully, I stood. Wheeling the metal pole with the saline solution with me, I crossed the little room. I’d just made it far enough to lean on the doorjamb of the nurse’s office when I heard a commotion.
Disregarding the nun’s advice, I hurried toward the noise. I caught sight of Marcello in one of the corridors leading from the chapel, and his face lit up. Then, he turned from me and waved at someone I couldn’t see.
“Lucia,” Marcello said, and my heart pounded like a wild beast’s. “He’s here.”
A second later myfarfallamaterialized beside my brother, a smiling expression of relief wreathing her face. She rushed toward me, and I stumbled forward, meeting her. “Oh my God, Romeo,” she whispered in my ear. “Are you okay?”
I felt this bizarre impulse to laugh at the irony of her question, especially since much of her elegant wedding gown had been splattered with blood. “I’ll live. What I need to know is if Gianni hurt you.”
“I’m all right.” She peered at my IV stand, but it was her side of the story I needed to hear.
“Tell me what happened.”
She did. The entire sordid tale. The limo. The drugs. The gun killing the driver on the bridge. Marcello’s arrival and Gianni’s subsequent death. By the time she finished, my befuddled thoughts had cleared. The brother who had betrayed me was truly gone now, and my only regret about that was that I hadn’t been able to exact vengeance upon him myself.
“I was so terrified that he’d hurt the baby, and that he might’ve killed you,” she confided in me then, and I scrutinized that tiny waist of hers.
“He can’t hurt you or our baby ever again.” Good riddance. “And we are still getting married today. I want to pledge to be with you for ever more,farfalla. I need for you to be my wife because I’m going to spend the rest of my life taking care of you and our child. That’s more crucial than anything to me. Having you by my side is the only thing that matters. I love you,” my voice sounded raw to my own ears, but I didn’t care.
I kissed her then, memorizing how the brilliant blue of her eyes reminded me of calmness and serenity. Her arms went around my shoulders, warming me and comforting me from the inside out. Her presence provided me with the strength I needed to go on. After the necessity of caressing my lips to hers lessened, we gently broke apart, Lucia squinting up at me. “Did you just say that you loved me?”
“Yes,” I said, my tone firm. I’d never meant anything more. Then, she surprised me by pressing her cool palms to my cheeks. Her thumbs caressed the skin below my eyes and removed the droplets of moisture that had drifted there.
“I love you, Romeo. I don’t know if anyone is still here, but I’d like to marry you, either way.” Then, for the first time ever,shekissedme. I felt her offering like balm, and it provided me an anchor to affix myself to. Her eyes filled and overflowed, her tears rolling downwards to splash on my chin and neck. I felt them like a baptism and just like that, I was reborn.
With myfarfalla’sassistance, I staggered to my father. He ordered everyone into their places again, and though perhaps only a fraction of the witnesses remained, we went forward. I made note of who those attendees were, wanting to remember the rare few who’d offered my family—and Lucia and I—their respect and loyalty.
Without bothering with the pomp and ceremony of having her twin sisters or my bride again traverse the aisle, we all simply stood up there at the altar together, Chiara, Alessandra, Marcello, Savio, Lucia and I. Someone must have told the priest about what had transpired because while I kept an eye on any motion that occurred in the chapel, he began our vows without any apparent qualms.
When he started to recite the traditional vows, his vestments of cream and metallic gold glinting marginally beside us, Lucia and I held each other’s hands, our gazes locked. My bride read hers—something Gianni had waved off during his disastrous hijacking of our wedding earlier—and then, I read mine, infusing into them everything I felt for her.
“I, Romeo Cavetti, take you, Lucia Bonifacio, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, no matter what challenges may face us or what blessings may be bestowed upon us. I will love, honor, and cherish you all the days of my life and beyond.”
We then exchanged rings, rings I felt surprised Marcello and Chiara still had possession of, and recited the ritualistic phrases everyone knew.
“With this ring, I thee wed.”
