Chapter 18 - One Year Later
The wedding was small.
Dominic suggested sixty guests.
I suggested twenty.
Daniel suggested zero because he still enjoyed irritating Dominic.
We settled on thirty-eight.
The ceremony took place in the garden behind our house.
Roses surrounded the chairs.
White for my mother.
Deep red for Elena.
Leo attended.
Evelyn cried before I did.
Anthony couldn't attend, but he sent a letter.
Marco sent nothing.
That was okay.
Healing didn't require everyone to return.
Dominic wore a dark suit.
Not black.
He said black reminded him of funerals and board meetings.
I wore a simple ivory dress.
When I reached him, he looked at me as though every other person had disappeared.
“You came,” he whispered.
I almost laughed.
“Were you worried?”
“I've learned never to assume.”
“Good answer.”
Daniel performed the role of giving me away only after I threatened to replace him with Evelyn.
When the officiant asked if Dominic accepted me as his wife, he said:
“Yes.”
Then added:
“Absolutely.”
The officiant smiled.
When he asked me, I waited.
Dominic immediately whispered:
“Don't.”
Everyone laughed.
“Yes.”
The reception ended before midnight.
No security incidents.
No gunshots.
No betrayals.
No mysterious doctors.
It was the most beautifully boring evening of our lives.
Six months later, the clinic expanded.
A second location opened across town.
Dominic helped secure grants but remained carefully separated from financial control.
“Still don't trust me?” he teased.
“With money? Yes.”
“With what, then?”
“Interior decorating.”
He looked offended.
“You chose gray walls.”
“They're elegant.”
“They look like a parking garage.”
Marriage suited him better than power ever had.
He still carried pieces of the past.
We both did.
Vincent remained incarcerated.
Dominic refused every request from journalists seeking interviews about him.
Then one day he received a letter.
From Vincent.
He stared at the envelope for a long time.
“Going to open it?”
“No.”
“What will you do?”
He walked to the shredder.
Destroyed it unopened.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Don't you want to know what he said?”
Dominic looked at me.
“For most of my life, Vincent decided what I thought about. I'm finished giving him time.”
That might have been the moment I realized he was truly free.
My own freedom took longer.
The trial documents involving Rebecca’s death had been difficult to read.
Every detail reopened old grief.
Daniel and I visited her grave together.
For years, I had talked to the stone.
That day, I mostly listened to the wind.
“I found out what happened,” I finally said.
Daniel stood beside me.
“I thought knowing would make everything better.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“But I’m glad we know.”
“Yeah.”
I placed flowers near the marker.
“She'd like the clinic.”
“She'd complain about your filing system.”
“That too.”
When I returned home, Dominic was cooking.
The kitchen smelled wonderful.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Actually?”
I smiled.
“Actually.”
He handed me a spoon.
“Try this.”
I did.
“Too salty.”
His face fell.
I laughed.
“Kidding.”
“You are becoming cruel.”
“You're a terrible influence.”
He kissed my forehead.
Later that night, rain began falling.
The same hard mountain rain that had followed me to the Rossi estate nearly three years earlier.
I stood by our bedroom window.
Dominic came behind me.
“What?”
“I was thinking about the first night.”
“You were rude.”
“You told me no.”
“You told me to get out.”
“And instead of obeying, you insulted my medical judgment.”
“It was poor.”
“I was dying.”
“Exactly.”
He smiled.
“Would you do it again?”
“Take the job?”
“Yes.”
I thought about it.
The fear.
The blood.
The grief.
The danger.
Everything we had lost.
Everything we found.
“I’d charge more.”
He laughed.
Then his hands rested lightly around my waist.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Nora.”
“Yes.”
“Would you?”
I turned toward him.
“I don't know.”
That surprised him.
“I don't think people are supposed to want the worst things in their lives repeated just because something good came afterward.”
His expression softened.
“No.”
“I wouldn't choose your shooting. Or our mothers dying. Or Vincent.”
I touched his face.
“But if you're asking whether I would choose you now?”
He waited.
“Yes.”
Every time.
Our life wasn't perfect.
The past hadn't vanished.
But perfection had never saved either of us.
People had.
Truth had.
Choice had.
And the strange courage of staying when staying was right—and leaving behind what had never deserved us.
One afternoon the following spring, I came home early.
Dominic was sitting on the porch.
He held something in his hand.
A medical bill.
I smiled.
“What?”
“You remember your eviction notice?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I found it in one of your old boxes.”
“Oh.”
He handed it to me.
The amount I had once believed would ruin my life.
It looked almost absurd now.
“I nearly didn't take your job,” I said.
“Why?”
“Your lawyer sounded creepy.”
“He was.”
“My car barely made it.”
“I remember.”
“I was terrified.”
“You didn't look terrified.”
“I was.”
Dominic looked toward the garden.
“And yet you walked inside.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I smiled.
“Rent was due Monday.”
He laughed.
A simple financial disaster had pushed me through a door I would never otherwise have opened.
But money had only brought me there.
Everything afterward had been a choice.
May you like
Especially staying.
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