Page 60 of My Wedding Mafia Style

I squeeze his hand.

“I’m all right.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m standing in a room with your sisters, my mother, a dress worth more than my first car, and flowers that have employees. No sane person would be sure.”

His laugh is low and soft through the door. “Lucia.”

My heart lifts.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I’m sure.”

A pause.

Then his voice lowers. “I love you.”

The room behind me goes suspiciously silent.

I close my eyes, smiling so hard it almost hurts. “I love you too.”

Bianca sniffles.

Isabella whispers, “I’m fine.”

“You are crying into the steamer mitt,” Adriana says.

“It needed moisture.”

Luca lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles through the narrow gap. “I’ll see you at the end of the aisle.”

“You’d better.”

“I waited nine months. I can manage ten more minutes.”

“That sounded patient.”

“I’m growing.”

“Complicated, isn’t it?”

“Worth it,” he says.

Then he releases my hand, and the door closes between us.

For a moment, I stand there, palm tingling, heart full.

Bianca exhales. “That was disgustingly romantic.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m very proud.”

The next ten minutes pass in a blur of final touches. My veil is pinned. My bouquet is placed in my hands. My mother kisses my cheek. Bianca cries openly now, which she denies while actively crying. Isabella tells me that if I trip, she will create a diversion. Adriana promises that no diversion will be necessary because she has already checked the aisle runner twice.

Then Nonna appears. No one heard the door open. No one ever does with her.

She stands in the doorway wearing deep navy silk, pearls at her throat, silver hair swept back, eyes sharp and shining. The room stills around her in the old way, the Moretti way, the way everyone has when Nonna enters and the air rearranges itself out of respect.

She looks at me for a long moment. Then she smiles.