Chapter 151

Chapter 151

Gabriel’s POV
Dinner ended in laughter and cookie crumbs, with Aurora wiping the tablecloth in that mock indignation she used when she was actually delighted that her house smelled like family again.
I waited for everyone to get up from the table. For Mom to drag Doña Marta and Ana into the kitchen for the ritual of coffee. For Gabriela and Alejandra to start their usual argument over who washed and who dried. For Dad and Andrés to disappear into the study with Mateo to talk about whatever it was three powerful men talked about when they were alone with whiskey.
I waited for the exact moment.
“Lucía.”
“What?”
“Do you want to take a walk?”
“Now?”
“My mother’s garden is beautiful at night. The lights Alejandra put up for Gabriela’s wedding are still hanging from the trees. No one took them down.”
“Gabriel, it’s nine at night and it’s cold.”
“I’ll lend you my jacket.”
I draped it over her shoulders before she could say no. It swallowed her whole. The sleeves covered her hands. She looked ridiculous and perfect at the same time.
We stepped out through the side door that led to the garden.
Matías was upstairs, asleep in the crib Aurora had bought and installed in the room she was already calling my grandson’s room, as if it had existed for years instead of three days. Doña Marta had offered to watch him while we walked. Aurora had offered too. And Ana. And Gabriela. And probably Gael, if anyone had asked him—though he would never admit it.
The garden was exactly as I’d described it.
The lights from Gabriela’s interrupted wedding still hung between the branches of the old oak. Small. Golden. Turning on automatically at dusk because no one had disconnected the timer. They lit the stone path, the hedges, the bench where Gabriela and Alejandro had kissed for the first time.
Lucía walked slowly, taking it all in.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Mom designed it years ago. The oak is over a hundred years old. When we were kids, Gabriela and I used to hide there when Dad yelled. We both fit inside the hollow between the roots.”
“Gabriel.”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For bringing me here. For including me. For not hating me for hiding your son from you for eleven months.”
“Lucía, we already talked about that.”
“I know. But I needed to say it again—out here, where there are no monitors or nurses or sirens. Just you and me and this garden. Thank you, Gabriel. For coming to find me. For not giving up.”
She stopped beneath the oak. The lights fell across her face, illuminating eyes that shone with something that wasn’t tears. Something closer to peace than pain.
“Lucía.”
“What?”
“Stay here for a second. Don’t move.”
“What for?”
“Just stay.”
I walked three steps to the right, where the stone path curved out of sight from the kitchen windows. I crouched to tie a shoe that wasn’t untied. Lucía frowned at me with that I don’t understand what you’re doing expression I knew from the café in Millbrook, back when I tried to be mysterious and she read me in three seconds.
I slipped my hand into the inside pocket of my jacket.
I took out the box.
Small. Dark blue velvet. Worn at the corners from years of being kept. First in my mother’s nightstand drawer. Then in mine. Then in my wallet during the months of my marriage to Victoria, as a reminder that one day I would use it for what it was actually meant for.
I walked the three steps back to Lucía.
And I knelt.
She went completely still.
“Gabriel.”
“Shh.”
“Gabriel, what are you doing?”
“What I’ve wanted to do for a year.”
I opened the box.
The ring was simple. White gold. A small diamond that wouldn’t impress anyone in the circles my family moved in—but it carried more history than any five-carat stone I could buy at Tiffany.
“This ring belonged to my mother. My father gave it to her the day he truly fell in love with her. Not on their wedding day—that was a contract. He gave it to her years later, when he finally understood what it meant to love someone for real. She kept it for decades and gave it to me three years ago. She told me to give it to the woman I chose. Not the one my father chose. Not the one the company chose. The one I chose.”
“Gabriel…”
“I didn’t give it to Victoria. Not even for a second did I consider it. I kept it, waiting. Not knowing who. Not knowing when. Just knowing that someday I would find the right person.”
“Gabriel, I don’t need a ring.”
“I know. You don’t need a ring, or a mansion, or a last name, or anything my family has to offer. But I need to give it to you. I need to put this ring on your finger and know that for the first time in my life I’m doing something because I want to, not because I have to.”
She looked down at me, tears slipping down her cheeks, her hands lost inside the sleeves of my jacket, her face the most beautiful thing I had ever seen—lit by the lights of my sister’s wedding that never happened under this oak, but somehow left the lights burning for this moment.
“Lucía Sandoval. Mother of my son. Woman who crossed a border carrying a newborn to protect him. Woman who worked double shifts to feed him. Woman who hid in three different cities before turning twenty-five. Woman who never asked me for anything except honesty.”
“Gabriel…”
“Will you marry me?”
“I already said yes inside.”
“Inside, you said yes surrounded by thirteen people and three babies and your mother-in-law crying. I want to hear it here. Just you and me. No witnesses. No pressure. No my father saying tomorrow is already too late.”
Lucía laughed through her tears.
“Yes, Gabriel.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. A thousand times yes. Even if I don’t need the ring. Even if I don’t need the mansion. Even if I could spend the rest of my life in a two-bedroom apartment in Quebec with our son and be happy. Yes. Because you are my yes. You always have been.”
I slipped the ring onto her finger.
It was slightly loose—Lucía’s fingers were slimmer than my mother’s—but I pushed it gently into place, and she closed her hand so it wouldn’t slip off, looking at me with that smile I had kept in a wrinkled photograph for a year—and now saw under the oak lights.
I stood.
I kissed her.
Slowly. Without urgency. Without the desperation of the ambulance, or the fear of the hospital, or the adrenaline of the basement. Just a slow kiss beneath a hundred-year-old oak in my mother’s garden, while the lights of my sister’s wedding shone on us as if someone had left them there exactly for this.
When we pulled apart, she rested her forehead against mine.
“And the honeymoon?”
“You want a honeymoon?”
“I want a week with you and Matías somewhere where there are no hospitals, no police, no Harringtons—no one.”
“I can arrange that.”
“Where?”
“Surprise.”
“The last time someone surprised me with a trip, I got kidnapped in a small plane.”
“This time I promise the pilot works for us, not for a psychopath with a revenge complex.”
“How romantic, Gabriel.”
“I’m a Moretti. Romance isn’t our strong suit.”
“Liar. You just knelt in a garden with your mother’s ring and lights in the trees. That’s more romantic than anything I’ve read in a novel.”
“Don’t tell my father. His ego doesn’t need more fuel.”
We stayed beneath the oak until the cold overpowered the moment and Lucía started shivering inside my jacket.
We went back inside, hand in hand.

The next morning, we came down to breakfast together.
Lucía wore the ring, her hand curled into a subtle fist so it wouldn’t slip off until we could have it resized.
There was no need to announce anything.
Aurora saw it before Lucía had even finished sitting down.
“GAEL! GAEL, COME HERE!”
“Aurora, it’s seven-thirty in the morning.”
“COME HERE NOW!”
Dad appeared in the dining room doorway, coffee halfway to his lips.
“What happened?”
Aurora pointed at Lucía’s hand.
He looked. Processed. And smiled.
Not the CEO smile. Not the patriarch smile. The smile of a father watching his son finally do something right.
“Well done, son.”
“Thank you, Dad.”
“You gave her your mother’s ring.”
“She gave it to me for that.”
“I know. And I’m glad you used it for what it was meant for. Not like the first time.”
“The first time didn’t exist, Dad.”
“No. It didn’t. But this does.”
Gabriela came running down the stairs when she heard Aurora’s shout. Behind her, Alejandra—Emma in her arms—with the kind of ease that suggested sprinting downstairs with a baby had become an Olympic sport.
“What happened? Why did Mom yell?”
Aurora pointed again.
Gabriela looked. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Maid of honor. I’m the maid of honor. Don’t even argue, Gabriel.”
“I’m the godmother,” Alejandra said immediately.
“You were the godmother at my wedding.”
“And you were my maid of honor. Now we switch.”
“That’s not how it works, Ale.”
“That’s exactly how it works, Gaby.”
“Can they both be godmothers?” Lucía asked, looking at me for help.
“No,” they both said at the same time.
“Yes, they can,” Aurora said. “I had two godmothers at my wedding and nobody died.”
“Mom, your wedding was a disaster,” Gabriela said.
“My wedding was beautiful. What came after was the disaster. The ceremony was perfect.”
“Aurora,” Dad warned.
“What?”
“Let the kids decide.”
“The kids can’t decide anything without me, Gael. They’ve needed me their whole lives to decide.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“See?”
Lucía looked at me with a smile that said your family is completely insane and I love them, and I gave her one back that said welcome to the chaos.
The argument about godmothers lasted through the entire breakfast and was finally settled when Alejandro proposed—leg propped up, bandaged—that both of them be co-godmothers, and that he and Mateo be co-best men, so no one fought and everyone could focus on what mattered: choosing the date.
“The date,” Lucía said, turning to me. “Matías turns one in twelve days.”
“I know.”
“What if we get married that day?”
The entire table fell silent.
“On the baby’s birthday?” Mom asked.
“The day my son turns one is the most important day of my life,” Lucía said. “And marrying Gabriel will be the second most important. I want them to be the same. I want every year, when we celebrate Matías’s birthday, we also celebrate the anniversary of our family. Everything together. The same day. So we never forget that the three of us started at the same time.”
Mom started crying again.
Doña Marta started crying too—the two grandmothers had already developed a synchronized crying system with Swiss-watch precision.
Dad raised his coffee cup.
“Then in twelve days. And this time, Gabriel—” he looked at me with that Moretti intensity that no longer intimidated, only strengthened—“take care of this wife. Because this one is the right one. And if you lose her, I won’t be able to help you find her again. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear, Dad.”
“Good. Aurora, how long do you need to organize a wedding and a birthday in twelve days?”
“Gael, I organized your company during a financial crisis in six hours. Are you seriously asking if I can organize a wedding in twelve days?”
“Forgive the question.”
“Forgiven. Now everyone out of my kitchen. I have calls to make. Gabriela, you handle the flowers. Alejandra, the music. Mateo, the catering—your mother makes the best tiramisu in the hemisphere and I need it for dessert. Doña Marta, you help me with the decorations—you have exquisite taste for centerpieces. And Ana, your cookies will be party favors. Any objections?”
No one objected.
No one ever objected to Aurora Moretti in operational mode.
I left the dining room with Matías in my arms. I had picked him up from his crib before coming down to breakfast and hadn’t let go of him all morning.
I couldn’t. Not yet.
Every time I held him, it felt like I was making up a second of the eleven months I had missed—and I needed millions more seconds to even begin to feel caught up.
Matías looked at me with that serious expression he wore when evaluating something new.
He still didn’t know I was his father.
He still looked at me like a kind stranger who held him carefully and smelled different from his mother—but who, for some reason, was always there.
But he was getting used to me.
Every day he settled a little faster in my arms. Every day he looked at me a second longer before turning his attention elsewhere. Every day he gripped my finger a little tighter, as if deciding whether this new man was trustworthy or not.
I carried him out to the garden.
We sat on the bench beneath the oak where I had proposed to his mother the night before.
I settled him on my lap, facing the lights that still hung from the branches—now turned off in the daylight.
“Matías.”
He looked at me.
“I’m going to marry your mom in twelve days. The same day you turn one. And you’re going to have a huge cake you probably won’t be able to eat because you don’t have all your teeth yet—but your grandmother Aurora is going to buy it anyway, because she’s incapable of doing anything small.”
Matías grabbed my index finger with his fist.
“And you’re going to have uncles fighting over who gets to be best man, and aunts fighting over who gets to be godmother, and a grandfather who’s spent six months learning not to be an idiot, and a grandmother who cries every time she looks at you because she says you have my eyes.”
He squeezed tighter.
“And you’re going to have a father. One who showed up late. Who missed everything important in your first year. Who wasn’t there for your first smile, or your first tooth, or the nights your mother fell asleep sitting up in a rocking chair holding you at three in the morning. But who’s here now. And who’s going to be here tomorrow. And every day after that. Until you get tired of me. And probably even after that, because Morettis are stubborn and we don’t leave easily.”
Matías looked at me with that serious, tight-jawed expression everyone said was just like mine.
And then he did something he had never done before.
He let go of my finger. Lifted both hands.
And grabbed my face.
Small, warm palms against my cheeks. Tiny fingers brushing the stubble I hadn’t shaved in three days. Dark eyes locked onto mine with an intensity no eleven-month-old should have—but this one did, because he was my son, and Morettis are born intense.
He stayed like that for five seconds.
Then he let go, grabbed his plush penguin again, and went back to chewing its flipper like nothing had happened.
But something had happened.
Something without a name, without medical explanation, without logic of any kind.
My son had just touched my face for the first time.
And in that moment, I knew—with the same certainty as my own name—that everything that had happened over the past year… Victoria. The marriage. The hacking. The basement. The bullet. The hospitals…
All of it.
All of it had been the longest, most painful road in the world just to bring me here—to this bench, beneath this oak, with this child in my arms, holding my face as if he needed to make sure I was real.
And I was.
Finally, I was real.
Twelve days.
Twelve days until the wedding. Until my son’s first birthday.
Twelve days to begin the life I should have started a year ago.
And this time, no one was going to take it from me.