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I threw the box and the card into the fire.
This was mafia life. No rest for the wicked and all that shit. Both Gia and I had our eyes wide open, and we’d face whatever challenges came our way together. I’d keep her hands clean, though. I’d keep her pure and carry all the weight. All the blood.
I understood Salvatore for the first time in my life, then. I understood his decision to leave and respected it.28GiaDominic thought I didn’t know about Angus Scava’s release. He thought I didn’t know Victor’s disappearance most likely meant his death. I would let him believe it for now. This day was too important to spoil with talk of the Scavas. I was going to marry the man I loved. A savage beast of a man who’d been through hell and walked out on top of his world. I don’t think he realized how lonely it would be at the top, not until he stood in his father’s shoes.
But together, we weren’t lonely. We fit perfectly, Dominic and I. It was almost as though we were the last two pieces in a puzzle, lost for years and found under the dusty couch. And once linked together, the empty space was filled and everything was complete as if it had never been empty at all.
When I was a little girl, I believed in fairy tales. Not the ones Disney tells. No, I believed the real ones. The scary ones. The ones where not everyone got to meet their prince in shining armor or got their happily-ever-after. I learned too young how fucked up life could be, how pain and suffering and death lurked behind every smile. But I never stopped believing in the power of love, and I always loved the beasts more than I did the princes.
Dominic was my beast. And somehow, I was his princess.
I stood along with Effie at the entrance of the ancient, tiny chapel where we’d be wed. I wore the antique-lace wedding dress passed down from my grandmother, clutching roses so red they almost appeared black. Two men opened the doors, and the small gathering stood. The scent of incense and time poured from the open doors.
I met Dominic’s gaze through the net of my veil, and my heart thudded against my chest. For a moment, I wished I had accepted Salvatore’s proposal to walk me down the aisle, because suddenly my knees grew weak, and I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me the distance between us.
But then Dominic smiled, and I saw how that dimple softened his face, giving him a younger appearance, an innocent one. An angel of death. That’s how I’d seen him at the cabin, where he’d been sent to break me. Now I knew it was true. He was my angel of death. But he would slay all my enemies, and he would protect and love me.
The organ began to play the wedding march: a heavy, dark gothic piece I’d chosen. One Dominic had raised his eyebrows at but accepted without question. Effie walked ahead of me scattering bloodred rose petals in her wake. I took my first step, standing taller as I did, meeting every eye in the church, knowing that even though Dominic and I may never be accepted by some, it wouldn’t matter, not anymore. We only needed each other.
Dominic took the last steps to meet me, and with his arm around my waist, he led me to the altar. We stood before the priest. The music stopped playing, and he began the service. I didn’t hear much of what he said. I couldn’t stop looking at Dominic, and he seemed unable to take his gaze from me.
I realized then I was wrong when I thought the love I’d find would be an ugly and twisted thing. I realized that love itself would bend any ugliness into its own—sometimes strange—sort of beauty.
Because it had been in those darkest moments that love had crept in and tethered us together, tighter than any chains could.
It had been in that darkness that beauty seemed to want to find us most.
I’d always preferred night to day, and I’d never been afraid of the dark. And as Dominic and I stood hand in hand, promising ourselves to each other, I knew this was exactly where I belonged, where we both belonged. We’d come from ugliness. Suffering had put us on the road to our destiny. But Dominic had been wrong about one thing. Even in our world, our love would last forever. He and I, we would make our own happily-ever-after.The End
