Chapter 4 - “No.”
He stopped.
“We are not living inside every terrible thing that might happen.”
He lowered his eyes.
“You taught me that.”
“No. I kept repeating it until you finally listened.”
“That sounds more accurate.”
She touched his face.
“You get to be happy.”
Dante kissed her palm.
Months later, he took Scarlett back to Michael’s grave.
This time Dante carried the ultrasound photograph.
He stood quietly before the stone.
“I’m going to have another child,” he said.
The words nearly failed him.
Scarlett stood behind him.
“A daughter.”
He glanced at Scarlett.
“She insists it is a daughter.”
“I have a feeling.”
“You have no evidence.”
“I have maternal intuition.”
“You have internet search history.”
Scarlett smiled.
Dante turned back toward Michael’s grave.
“I wish you were here.”
That sentence no longer destroyed him.
It hurt.
But grief and joy had finally learned to occupy the same body.
In May, Dante took Scarlett to dinner.
Not Vita Vecchia.
Not one of his properties.
A quiet restaurant overlooking Lake Michigan.
After dessert, he placed a small box on the table.
Scarlett stared.
“Dante.”
“Yes.”
“If you give me a ten-carat diamond, I will throw it in the lake.”
“It is not ten.”
“Eight?”
“No.”
“Six?”
“Scarlett.”
She opened it.
The ring was elegant.
Simple.
An antique diamond in a thin platinum setting.
Scarlett looked up.
“My grandmother’s,” Dante said. “My father gave it back to me after my mother died.”
Scarlett’s expression softened.
Dante did not kneel.
Not yet.
First he said, “I need you to understand something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I spent most of my life believing love was ownership.”
Scarlett stayed quiet.
“If I protected someone, I controlled the danger around them. If I provided for them, I made decisions for them. If I loved them, I thought that gave me the right to choose what was best.”
He took her hand.
“You taught me that loving someone means allowing them to remain entirely themselves, even when it terrifies you.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I am still not very good at it.”
“You’re improving.”
“I intend to continue.”
Then Dante Moretti lowered himself onto one knee.
Several diners noticed.
A waiter stopped moving.
Scarlett covered her mouth.
“I am not asking you to disappear into my life,” Dante said. “I am asking whether I can build the rest of mine beside yours.”
She was crying before he finished.
“Yes.”
“You should consider—”
“Yes, Dante.”
“You haven’t heard the complete—”
She pulled him upward and kissed him.
The restaurant applauded.
Dante hated public attention.
For once, he tolerated it.
They married in October.
Small.
Scarlett refused a ballroom.
Dante refused a courthouse.
They compromised on an old lakeside inn in Wisconsin surrounded by maple trees turning red and gold.
Rosa cried through the ceremony.
Marcus stood beside Dante.
Before Scarlett walked down the aisle, Marcus adjusted Dante’s tie.
“You nervous?”
“No.”
“You look nervous.”
“I am reconsidering your employment.”
Marcus smiled.
“Michael would have loved this.”
Dante looked at him.
The words hurt.
But they did not break him.
“Yes,” Dante said.
“He would.”
Scarlett walked toward him alone.
She had told Dante weeks earlier that nobody would give her away.
“I belong to myself,” she said. “I’m choosing to walk toward you.”
Dante loved her even more for it.
When she reached him, he whispered, “You are four minutes late.”
“You counted?”
“Of course.”
Scarlett smiled.
“Still controlling.”
“Recovering.”
Their daughter was born the following February.
Charlotte Rose Moretti arrived screaming with a full head of dark hair.
When the nurse placed her in Dante’s arms, he stopped speaking.
Scarlett watched from the hospital bed.
Dante looked terrified.
Overwhelmed.
Older and younger at the same time.
Charlotte opened one tiny fist against his chest.
Dante’s face crumpled.
“Hello,” he whispered.
Scarlett began crying.
Dante looked toward her.
“Thank you.”
She smiled.
“You helped.”
“That is not what I mean.”
“I know.”
He sat beside her with Charlotte between them.
Outside the window, snow was falling over Chicago.
A city still loud.
Still imperfect.
Still filled with shadows Dante could never completely erase.
But his house was no longer silent.
His life no longer ended at the edge of his grief.
Months later, Rosa placed a framed photograph behind the bar at Vita Vecchia.
It showed Dante holding Charlotte while Scarlett stood beside him laughing.
Beneath the photograph sat an old wineglass stained permanently pink around the base.
Dante noticed it during dinner one Thursday.
“What is that?”
Rosa shrugged.
“History.”
Scarlett grinned.
Dante looked at the glass.
A year and a half earlier, he had walked into this restaurant believing the most important parts of his life were already behind him.
He had thought grief had taken his ability to want anything again.
He had been wrong.
He had not needed a woman to prove he was still a man.
He had needed someone brave enough to remind him that being alive meant risking joy after loss.
Scarlett slipped her hand into his.
“What are you thinking about?”
Dante looked at her.
Then at Charlotte asleep in a carrier beside the booth.
Then at the old wineglass.
“That I should have ordered white wine.”
Scarlett laughed so loudly Rosa shouted from the kitchen.
Dante smiled.
May you like
And this time, he did not try to hide it.
THE END
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