Chapter 9 - THE FIRST THING HE ASKED
Two years after our first date, Luca asked if I wanted to move in.
Not:
I bought a house.
Not:
Your lease is inconvenient.
He asked at breakfast.
“Would you want to live together?”
I put down coffee.
“Eventually.”
He nodded.
No pitch.
Good.
Three months later I brought it up.
“My lease ends in June.”
Luca looked up.
“Okay.”
“That was an opening.”
“Oh.”
I laughed.
Growth had made him cautious enough to become occasionally stupid.
“I want to move in.”
His face changed.
“Here?”
“No, Luca. With Marcus.”
He glared.
I laughed.
“Yes. Here.”
---
His townhouse still felt like him.
Dark wood.
Perfect lines.
Too little color.
I brought:
Books.
Plants.
Yellow kitchen towels.
The tulip vase from reception.
He stared at towels.
“Those are aggressive.”
“They’re fabric.”
“Bright fabric.”
“You survived federal court.”
“Barely.”
We compromised on nothing.
The towels stayed.
---
Moving in exposed security questions.
Luca had cameras.
Outside.
Entry.
Garage.
Hallway near front door.
None in living spaces.
He showed me the system before I moved.
“Admin access?”
“Me and licensed security vendor.”
“I want my own login.”
“Yes.”
“No hidden tracking on my car.”
His face tightened.
“Never.”
“No checking my location through phone unless I share.”
“Yes.”
“Emergency?”
“Call emergency services. Ask you if possible.”
Good.
We wrote it down.
Not contract.
House rules.
Maybe overkill.
Fine.
History deserves overkill.
---
I made mistakes too.
One evening Luca came home late without answering texts.
His phone battery had died.
My body remembered the elevator, trials, threats.
I called Gideon.
“Where is he?”
Gideon paused.
“Do you want me to locate him?”
The question stopped me.
Old me would have said yes.
I breathed.
“No.”
I called Luca’s office reception instead.
He had left twenty minutes earlier.
Then he arrived.
I was angry.
Not because crime.
Because fear.
“You could have borrowed a phone.”
“Yes.”
“I thought something happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
Then he looked at Gideon’s missed call on my phone.
“Did you ask him to track me?”
“No.”
Good.
Power can tempt frightened people from either side.
I learned too.
---
Luca proposed the next spring.
Not in a restaurant.
Not an elevator.
Not Castellani property.
We were in my kitchen? Our kitchen. Better rooftop deck.
On the roof deck after dinner.
No photographers.
No family.
He held a ring.
“Before I ask, I need to know something.”
I crossed my arms.
“That sounds ominous.”
“Do you want marriage?”
Good.
Category before person.
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Probably.”
He glared.
I laughed.
“Yes.”
Then he knelt.
I stared.
“You do realize I already answered.”
“I had a plan.”
“Control issue.”
“Audrey.”
“Proceed.”
He laughed.
Then:
“Will you marry me?”
I looked at the man who once told me I was not going to a wedding in a red dress while still capable of stopping me.
Now he waited on a roof while I teased him.
“Yes.”
His eyes closed.
Then:
“Current answer?”
I kissed him.
That was answer enough.
---
The prenup took four months.
Of course.
Separate property.
Shared home.
No automatic role for me in Castellani entities.
No employment tie.
No board seat by marriage.
No trust provisions based on children.
Children?
We had not decided.
Good.
The document did not decide for us.
Independent lawyers.
Luca complained.
I told him:
“Boring paperwork saved me from becoming a fake severance scandal.”
He signed every page after reading it.
Twice.
Growth.
---
The wedding planning triggered the red dress.
Rachel came over with wine and opened my closet.
There it was.
Silk.
Untouched for years.
“You kept it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I like it.”
Good enough.
She held it up.
“Rehearsal dinner?”
My stomach tightened.
Not fear exactly.
Memory.
Elevator.
Speaker.
Leverage.
I said:
“No.”
Rachel nodded.
Put it back.
No:
reclaim it.
Good.
---
A month later, I opened the closet alone.
Touched the dress.
Tried it on.
Still fit mostly.
A little tighter at hips.
I looked in mirror.
Not the receptionist.
Not the leverage file.
Not the woman someone photographed entering a wedding.
Just me.
I wore it downstairs.
Luca was reading on sofa.
He looked up.
Stopped breathing.
Exactly as satisfying as I hoped.
“That,” he said slowly, “is quite a dress.”
I smiled.
“Thank you.”
His eyes moved over me.
Then back to my face.
No:
Who will see you?
Instead:
“Are we going somewhere?”
“No.”
He looked confused.
“I wanted to see how it felt.”
“And?”
I thought.
“Like fabric.”
His expression softened.
Good.
Then:
“Do you want me to tell you what it does to me?”
I laughed.
“Maybe later.”
“Cruel.”
I walked past him.
He did not touch.
Then I turned.
“Luca.”
“Yes?”
“Current answer is yes.”
He stood.
Slowly.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
No camera.
No threat.
No stopping between floors.
Just a red dress in our living room.
Ordinary enough to heal something.
---
We did not wear it to rehearsal dinner.
Too obvious.
I wore green.
Rachel complained.
The red dress stayed home.
That mattered too.
Reclaiming a thing does not require putting it on display.
Sometimes it means knowing you could.
Wedding planning created one final argument about security.
Luca wanted two private protection teams.
I wanted the venue’s normal licensed staff.
He said:
“My name creates risk.”
“True.”
“Domenico still has people who hate me.”
“Also true.”
“So two teams.”
“No.”
He stared.
“This is not jealousy.”
“I know.”
“Then why no?”
“Because I don’t want our wedding to feel like a summit between hostile governments.”
He almost smiled.
“I have attended those.”
“Of course you have.”
We compromised the way adults are supposed to when neither person gets to declare victory.
One outside licensed team coordinated with Lakefront security.
No armed relatives.
No former Castellani enforcement men.
No hidden surveillance beyond venue policy.
Guest list handled by my operations staff, not Luca’s family office.
He accepted.
Then two days later I discovered he had quietly asked Gideon to review the parking-garage plan.
I called him.
“Luca.”
Silence.
“That tone is hostile.”
“Did you ask Gideon to review Lakefront parking?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
There.
He did not try to explain it away.
“I told myself infrastructure was different from personal security.”
“And?”
“It was still part of the event you asked me not to manage.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What happens now?”
“I tell Gideon to stop and disclose what he reviewed to your venue security lead.”
“Good.”
He sighed.
“I hate that word.”
“Excellent.”
The incident was small enough that years earlier Luca would not have considered it a mistake.
That was why it mattered.
Change is not proven only by refusing crimes.
Sometimes it is proven by noticing when a harmless-looking shortcut still belongs to the old habit.
---
The guest list became another exercise in choice.
Luca had business relationships stretching across half of Chicago.
He could have filled three ballrooms with people who would attend because saying no to a Castellani invitation felt unwise.
We invited none of them for that reason.
“Will some be offended?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Will it hurt business?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you care?”
He thought.
“Less than I used to.”
Good.
Elena chose her own table.
Aria refused a head-table seat and said CEOs deserved dinner without symbolism.
Marcus requested a seat “outside Luca’s glare radius.”
Rachel handled flowers.
No one used the wedding to announce a merger, settle a board fight, or prove a family alliance.
It was astonishing how much planning was required to make an event mean only what the two people getting married wanted it to mean.
---
Three nights before the ceremony, I found Luca reading the final seating chart.
“You moved Marcus.”
“He asked.”
“Where?”
“Closer to the bar.”
“Reasonable.”
He looked up.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes.”
“About me?”
“Partly.”
He nodded.
No offense.
“About what?”
“That marriage makes people lazy about asking.”
His expression changed.
He knew exactly what I meant.
Keys.
Calendars.
Bodies.
Money.
Plans.
All the things people begin to assume because a legal word has been spoken.
“I don’t want that,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“So we keep asking.”
“Yes.”
He smiled faintly.
“Current answer?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Current answer is that you need to stop using the phrase like branding.”
“No.”
“See? Marriage already ruined you.”
He laughed.
Then closed the seating chart.
No more planning that night.
We ordered takeout and watched a terrible movie.
The wedding could wait.
Ordinary life was the thing we were actually choosing.
Before bed, Luca asked whether I wanted the bedroom door locked.
“Why?”
“Because Rachel is staying in the guest room and has no respect for privacy.”
From down the hall Rachel shouted:
“I CAN HEAR YOU.”
I laughed.
“Lock it.”
He did.
Not every closed door was a threat.
Sometimes it was just a boundary chosen from the inside.
The next morning Rachel left before breakfast and stole two lemon cookies from the counter.
Luca watched her go.
“Should I report that?”
“No.”
“Growth.”
May you like
“Barely.”
No investigation followed. Breakfast continued.
