My Mafia Husband Only Fucks Virgins. So I Married The Don. Chapter 13
Her Own Mountain
The wedding is the next morning.
No cathedral. No thousand-person guest list. No press.
An arch of white roses on white sand. Marco as the witness. A priest flown in overnight from the old country. The staff standing at a respectful distance, hands clasped, eyes wet.
I wear an ivory silk slip dress. No veil. No train.
Dante wears black.
He watches me walk barefoot across the sand toward him, and his eyes — the eyes that have watched men die and empires fall without blinking — get wet.
The priest starts to speak.
I stop him with a hand.
I look at Dante.
“For eight years I thought happiness was finding a mountain to lean on.”
My voice doesn’t shake.
“It took losing everything to figure out — real happiness is being the mountain.”
Dante takes my hand. Turns it over. Kisses the inside of my wrist where the pulse beats.
He doesn’t do vows. He doesn’t do speeches.
He leans in, lips at my ear, voice so low only I can hear:
“Then let me be the sea at the foot of your mountain.”
My tears fall.
Not from pain.
For the first time in my life — from being fully, completely, cleanly seen.
He slides the ring onto my finger. I slide one onto his.
The priest says the words. Marco whistles once, low, satisfied.
I am Elena Salvatore.
—
At that same moment, five thousand miles away, in the visitation room of Blackgate Federal Penitentiary:
A television is bolted high on the wall. The financial news is running on mute.
A stock photo of a beach flashes on screen. Two figures kissing at sunset.
The headline scrolls across the bottom:
DON DANTE SALVATORE WEDS ELENA RICCI — THE EAST COAST’S NEW POWER COUPLE.
Lorenzo Moretti stands up so fast he flips the metal table.
His eyes lock on the screen. Bloodshot. Wet. Bulging.
“No—”
His voice cracks.
“No. No, no, no—”
He lunges at the reinforced glass. His forehead cracks against it once. Twice.
“ELENA!”
He screams her name at the television. His voice is raw. Not a man’s voice. Something else.
“YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME! YOU SAID YOU COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT ME! YOU—”
Two guards slam him to the concrete. He fights them with everything he has left, which isn’t much. His cheek grinds into the floor. From the ground, he can still see the TV.
He can see her laughing.
He can see the diamond catching the sun.
He can see Dante’s hand at the small of her back — the hand that broke his wrist without effort — settling her against him like she was always meant to be there.
Lorenzo Moretti breaks.
He sobs the way he’s never let himself sob before. Ugly. High. Broken. Everything eight years of arrogance built, splitting open in a prison visitation room in front of nobody who cares.
He’ll cry like this for years.
Nobody will listen.
—
The island is silver under the moon.
I sit on the sand with my back against Dante’s chest. The dress is somewhere behind us. One of his shirts is buttoned wrong down my body. His arms are around me. Warm. Solid.
The stars over the water are ridiculous. Too many. Too bright.
“It’s over.”
He kisses the top of my head.
“All of it. It’s done.”
I look at the ring on my finger. Then at the woman I see reflected in the black water below.
She doesn’t look tired. She doesn’t look hungry. She doesn’t even look like a queen.
She looks like a woman who owns herself.
I turn in his arms. Kiss him slow.
“No, Dante.”
I smile against his mouth.
“It’s just starting.”
His eyes catch the moonlight.
And for the first time in a long time — maybe ever — Dante Salvatore laughs like a man who has everything to lose.
And isn’t afraid of a single second of it.