Chapter 29 The Final Yes

Chapter 29 The Final Yes

Vicenzo was leaning against a pillar with the posture of someone bored, but the fists clenched at his sides told a different story. His fingers were white. He knew it, and he didn’t unclasp his hands because unclasping them would mean admitting he was making an effort to stay where he was.

Enrico was leaning toward Giulia in a way Vicenzo knew very well, because it was the same way he himself used when he wanted a woman to pay attention only to him. Giulia was listening with that smile she wore in public, the smile that never reached her eyes but that most people never realize is false. Vicenzo noticed. That didn’t help at all.

He told himself he was angry because Enrico was his rival, because that man had no business standing that close to his fiancée, because it was a matter of position and message and everything tied to that fake alliance. He told himself that with reasonable conviction for almost two minutes. Then he stopped trying, because what was twisting inside his chest had nothing to do with strategy.

Jealousy. It was jealousy, simple and unacceptable.

And the fury that came right after wasn’t directed at Enrico. It was directed at himself, with a clarity that hurt in a different way. How did he dare? How did he allow himself to feel anything other than rage when he looked at her? Giulia was Luca’s killer. She was the end of his brother condensed into the shape of a woman in a long dress smiling at another man. Rage was the only feeling he had the right to carry when it came to her, and yet there he was, fingers white from the force of his grip, his chest tight for a reason he could barely even name.

Vicenzo pushed himself away from the pillar.

He crossed the hall without apparent haste, but with a direction that left no doubt to anyone paying attention. People moved aside instinctively, without him needing to ask or even look at them. He reached Giulia just as Enrico stepped away and before she had time to notice his approach and prepare any reaction.

“Time to go.”

He said it near her ear, almost too low to hear, and in the next second he grabbed her, throwing her over his shoulder with a naturalness that didn’t match anything happening inside him. The hall reacted immediately—applause and whistles and someone shouting something in Italian that made at least half the guests laugh.

Giulia waved at the cousin who shouted her name. She laughed at the right moment. She kept the smile with a consistency that was almost impressive, considering that inside she was mentally rehearsing every insult she knew and a few she was inventing on the spot. But what occupied more space in her thoughts wasn’t the anger. It was the calculation. She had hit Valentina that night. She had raised her hand against the woman Vicenzo truly loved, his real love, the person who existed in his heart before Giulia entered the equation as a piece in an agreement. And she knew, with the coldness of someone raised to read consequences before they arrived, that it would have a price. She didn’t yet know what form it would take, but she knew it was coming.

When Vicenzo slowed near the door, she understood something had changed before even looking.

She lifted her head and saw. Her father was there with the face he wore when he was holding too many things inside. And beside him, occupying the center of the space with the ease of someone who had always occupied the center of spaces, stood Don Vittorio, his cane resting beside him, his body upright, his eyes fixed on Vicenzo as if Giulia over his shoulder were a secondary detail he had already registered and filed away.

“How rude.” Her grandfather’s voice came out like that, low and weighted, as if the weight of the words replaced volume. “You’re not going to let her say goodbye to her family?”

Giulia didn’t need to see Vicenzo’s face to know what was happening inside him. The hand holding her tightened, his fingers pressing with a force different from before, more controlled and therefore heavier. The muscles of the chest where part of her weight rested became rigid in a way she recognized as restraint, not fear. And her grandfather she knew in a way that went beyond analysis; she knew him by the rhythm of his breathing, by the angle of his shoulders, by the silence he was using at that moment. Don Vittorio was ready. Not positioned, not cautious. Ready.
Vicenzo let out a laugh that held no joy, only the shape of one.

“Nervous, Don Vittorio?” The lightness in his voice was calculated down to the last syllable. “Afraid I might kill your granddaughter?”

Don Vittorio heard what was beneath the sentence, because he was the kind of man who always heard what was beneath sentences. His eyes didn’t change. Neither did his body. Only his left foot moved, one step forward, slow and completely deliberate.

Don Vittorio opened his mouth, and what came out was not the controlled voice from before.

“Metti mia nipote a terra. Adesso.” Put my granddaughter down. Now. The accent swallowed the consonants, crushed the vowels, turning each word into an order that was no longer trying to disguise itself as a question. It was the Italian he used when he had stopped caring about appearances. “Ho detto adesso.” I said now.

The men with him reacted almost before he finished speaking. Their hands moved to their waists in a motion so synchronized it looked rehearsed—and maybe it was, because it came from years of instinct trained at Don Vittorio’s side.

But as if by magic, Rafael appeared. And with him came others, positioning themselves behind Vicenzo with their hands at their waists as well, their faces expressionless, their bodies communicating everything that needed to be communicated without a single word being spoken. The message was simple and left no room for interpretation: Vicenzo would not fight that war alone, and he certainly wouldn’t walk out of it defeated.

The hall had fallen silent in a different way. Not the silence of people watching something beautiful.

Giulia felt the shift in the air before she calculated anything. She saw her grandfather’s men, saw Rafael, saw what it would mean if someone blinked at the wrong moment, and she made the decision before thinking twice.

“Grandpa.” Her voice came out light, with the tone she used when she needed people to believe everything was fine. “Vicenzo is just acting like a groom eager for the honeymoon.” She let a smile slip into her voice. “Don’t make things harder.”

Don Vittorio turned his eyes to her. Then he spoke in Italian, fast and low and ugly, curses she understood perfectly but had pretended not to understand since she was twelve because it was more convenient that way. When he finished, he took a deep breath and looked at her in the way she had known since childhood—the look he used when asking a question he truly wanted answered.

“I will ask one last time.” His voice had returned to control, but the accent was still thick, still heavy with everything he no longer had the energy to hide. “Are you sure about what you’re doing? Are you really going to stay with him?”

Giulia took a deep breath.

She didn’t look at Vicenzo. She didn’t need to. She looked straight at her grandfather, at the eyes that had known her face since the first day, and said with a clarity that left no room for doubt:

“Yes. I will.”

Vicenzo didn’t wait any longer. He let out a short, mocking laugh aimed at Don Vittorio, like a period at the end of a discussion he considered finished, and started walking.

Don Vittorio remained still. Defeated in a way that was not physical, which was worse than physical. Furious in a way that had nowhere to go at that moment. He watched his granddaughter disappear through the door over the shoulder of the man he never would have chosen for her, and he did nothing, because Giulia had spoken, and Don Vittorio—despite everything he was and everything he carried—still respected her word.

He let them pass.