Page 372 of Marcello

145

Laura

Marcello asked me when I wanted to get married.

Marcello…

I still found it difficult getting used to calling him that.

But since ‘Romeo’ was the name Cesare Caproni had given him, I never wanted to call him that again.

Without her Romeo, ‘Giulietta’ ceased to exist…

And I was simply Laura again.

It was a tradeoff I happily made.

Anyway, Marcello asked when I wanted to get married.

My answer: as soon as humanly possible!

So we got married the next week.

It was a small wedding at City Hall –

If you can call getting married at the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence since Michelangelo’s time, a ‘small wedding.’

I was in awe. I’d seen pictures of the castle and its gigantic tower online –

But I’d never imagined it could be so amazing.

Actually, for someone who’d been raised in a medieval prison, everything in Florence was amazing.

Marcello’s mother and step-father were there, along with Gemma and her family, and Edoardo and his wife.

Marcello’s father, who had offered him up as a sacrifice to Fausto Rosolini?

Not invited.

To be honest, we needed a little help from some ‘friends’ to get married.

I had no official government ID. No driver’s license, no birth certificate, no passport. As far as the government was concerned, I had never existed.

And as you can imagine, getting married in one of the most famous buildings in all of Florence was nearly impossible on short notice. Even though it just meant appearing before a judge in a courtroom, people had to book it six months in advance –

Unless you had connections.

I contacted Roberto Rosolini using the number on the card he had given me.

He made a few calls on my behalf –

And in three days’ time, I had a passport.

Four days after that, I was standing before a judge saying I do.

It was the happiest moment of my entire life.

We had our reception at his mother’s house. She and Gemma fixed a wonderful dinner of delicious Tuscan dishes.