This Life, I Won’t Be His Bride

“Then it’s settled. The wedding will take place next Monday.”

My grandfather’s voice carried across the room, warm with satisfaction.

Around him, glasses rose. Men who controlled half the ports, unions, and construction contracts in New York offered their congratulations.

I barely heard them.

Dominic Moretti stood behind his father, his jaw tight. He looked like a man who had fought until there was nothing left to say.

Then his eyes met mine.

Whatever exhaustion I saw there hardened into contempt.

A moment ago, those same eyes had been closing in the snow.

I could still feel his coat around me. His arms holding me against his chest, even after he no longer had the strength to lift his head.

“You’re freezing. Stop talking.”

His breath had brushed my forehead.

“If we get another life, Emilia… let me go.”

I blinked.

The snow was gone. So was the blood soaking through his shirt.

Dominic was alive.

I looked away before he could see my eyes fill.

He crossed the room and stopped beside me, close enough to look attentive to anyone watching.

“You got what you wanted,” he said under his breath. “Try not to look so pleased about it.”

There were shadows beneath his eyes. His collar sat crooked beneath his jacket.

I remembered this evening.

By then, he had already postponed our wedding three times.

The first time, Angela had just been diagnosed.

We had been engaged for almost a year.

He called when he worked late. Remembered how I took my coffee. Once, after a family dinner, he had kissed me beside his car and told me he was looking forward to having a home that was ours.

I had never doubted that he loved me.

The night Angela called, I was waiting at his penthouse with dinner and a cake I’d baked for him.

As the sole heiress to the Bellini family, I’d never baked a cake before, but I wanted to make one myself for our anniversary.

The candles burned down. The food went cold.

His apology arrived after two in the morning.

Angela’s sick. I’m sorry. I’ll explain tomorrow.

Then she needed specialists in Boston.

Dominic went with her.

When I finally reached him, I could hear hospital announcements in the background.

“I can’t leave her here alone, Emilia.”

“What about the wedding?”

A pause.

“Let’s wait until she’s stable. We have time.”

I said yes.

The second time, her treatment changed.

I said yes again.

By the third postponement, our invitations had gone out, relatives had booked flights, and the women at every family gathering had stopped bothering to lower their voices.

Apparently, the Moretti heir kept postponing his wedding to stay by another woman’s hospital bed.

I never repeated that to him.

But the marriage involved more than us.

They two families would not accept being embarrassed indefinitely.

After the third postponement, my grandfather called Dominic’s father.

That morning, Dominic returned to New York.

I was in the breakfast room when he found me. His travel bag was still in his hand.

“You had my father order me home?”

I set down my coffee.

“No. I didn’t know he’d called you.”

“He sent two men to the hospital to put me on the plane.”

“Dominic, I had nothing to do with that.”

He dropped the bag beside the door.

“Of course you didn’t.”

The quiet disbelief hurt more than shouting would have.

“I’ve been told the wedding is happening next Monday whether I like it or not. Are you happy now?”

“I told Grandpa I was willing to wait.”

“After what happened last time, you really expect me to believe that?”

I knew what he meant.

Three weeks earlier, I had attended his mother’s birthday dinner without him.

Someone asked whether I should bother having my wedding dress altered.

“By the time he gets around to marrying you, sweetheart, it might be out of style.”

Several people laughed.

I excused myself before they could see me cry.

By morning, his father had ordered him to return from the hospital.

Dominic blamed me.

“You made sure my father heard all that gossip, didn’t you? How many people do you need speaking for you?”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t believe a word I said.

“I’m not refusing to marry you. I’m asking for time. Angela’s running out of it.”

Then he picked up his bag and walked out.

That evening, he argued with his father and my grandfather behind closed doors.

It changed nothing.

Now I was standing in that same room again, listening to the same congratulations.

Next Monday.

I knew exactly what would happen.

Angela would be taken into intensive care that morning.

That evening, I would walk toward Dominic through a rooftop ballroom filled with white roses, beneath a ceiling of lights chosen to look like stars.

My grandfather would put my hand in his.

Dominic’s phone would vibrate inside his jacket.

He would read the message while the officiant spoke.

Then came the question.

“Dominic, do you take Emilia to be your wife?”

He would reach for the microphone.

I remembered the sudden silence. His bloodshot eyes. The way he looked at me as though I had personally dragged Angela into that hospital bed.

“Emilia,” he said, “this isn’t the wedding I wanted.”

Three hundred guests heard him.

I still married him.

For five years afterward, I kept trying to prove I hadn’t stolen anything from him.

Five years of waiting outside closed doors, defending him to my family, and telling myself grief needed time.

Until that mountain road.

Until he died holding me.

Something sharp pressed into my palm.

I looked down.

I was gripping the little box containing our wedding bands.

Across the room, my grandfather beckoned me toward him. Someone tapped a spoon against a champagne flute.

I loosened my fingers and slipped the box into my purse.

Then I walked over and took the microphone.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s been a change of plans.”

Dominic looked up.

“Our wedding is canceled.”