Didn't care who saw. Didn't care about the cameras flashing. Didn't care about anything except the fact that we were both here and this was real.
"We won," he said against my hair. His voice was wrecked. "We fucking won."
"You get to stay." My voice broke. "You get to come home with me. Actually come home. Not prison. Home."
His arms tightened. I felt him shaking. Or maybe that was me. Maybe it was both of us.
"I thought I'd lost you," Matteo whispered. "The whole time the jury was out. The whole time they were reading the verdict. I kept waiting for them to say guilty on something that mattered. Something that would take me away from you."
"But they didn't. You're here. You're staying here."
We held each other while the courtroom gradually emptied. While Diana handled the media scrum outside. While the prosecutors packed their boxes with methodical precision that spoke of people trying to process unexpected defeat. While reality slowly, impossibly sank in.
This was real. We had a future. Not decades of prison visits and letters and phone calls limited to fifteen minutes. An actual future together.
Sandro appeared beside us. His hand on Matteo's shoulder. "Let's go home."
That night, Inferno celebrated.
The club was closed to the public. Just the four partners and their inner circle. Champagne flowed freely. Relief was palpable in the air like a physical presence everyone could feel but no one could quite believe.
The partners sat together at their usual table in the VIP section. All four still in the suits they'd worn to court. None of them had gone home to change. Like they needed to stay together. Process this as a unit.
They were all still in shock. Moving through celebration like they were underwater. Smiling and drinking but with a distance that said their minds were elsewhere.
I understood. They'd spent months genuinely believing they were going to prison. Thought their lives were over. Even winning didn't erase that trauma immediately.
Emilio sat close to Sandro. So close their shoulders touched. He held a champagne glass but hadn't drunk from it. His eyes were wet with unshed tears he was trying to hide.
I watched them and understood immediately.
Emilio had the same conversations with Sandro that I'd had with Matteo. The same promises to wait. The same planning for decades of separation. The same fear of losing the person who mattered most to federal prosecutors and overwhelming evidence.
And now they didn't have to. None of us did.
Sandro raised his glass. His hand was steady but his voice wasn't quite. "To Diana Martinez. To reasonable doubt. To getting to keep our lives."
We all drank. But I could see the trauma underneath the celebration. The residual fear that someone would burst through the door and say it was all a mistake. That the verdict had been read wrong. That they were actually convicted and this was just a beautiful hallucination before federal marshals took them away.
"You okay?" I asked Matteo quietly.
"I don't know." His hand shook slightly around his glass. "I keep waiting for someone to say it was a mistake. That we're actually convicted and this is just... I don't know. A dream. Something my brain invented to cope with the reality of losing everything."
"It's real. You're here. You're staying here. The verdict was not guilty on everything that mattered."
"We have a future." He said it like he was testing the words. Seeing if they sounded real when spoken aloud. "An actual future. Not prison. Not decades apart. Not you waiting while I rot in federal custody. Just... us."
"Just us," I confirmed. Kissed him right there at the table. "We get to have this. We get to keep each other."
Across the table, Luca laughed—slightly manic, stress releasing. "I thought we were done. I genuinely thought Walsh had us. That evidence was solid."
"It was solid," Elio said. His usual composure was cracked. Vulnerability showing through. "If the jury had believed Vincent completely instead of questioning his credibility... if they hadn't found reasonable doubt in the surveillance warrants..."
"But they did," Sandro cut in. His voice was firm. Anchoring. The kingmaker taking control even in the midst of his own trauma. "They had reasonable doubt. Diana gave them that doubt. And we won. That's what matters."
They drank to that. To winning. To Diana's brilliant defense. To reasonable doubt saving them from life sentences.
But I could see it would take time for the fear to fully leave them. Months of thinking you're about to lose everything doesn't disappear because of one verdict. The trauma lingers even in victory.
