Chapter 10 - The Family We Chose
The wedding took place beneath old oak trees behind Roman’s house.
Not the estate where armed guards once searched every car.
Not the fortress Sebastian’s threats had created.
Home.
The place had changed.
Security cameras remained because Marcus would probably install cameras inside heaven if given permission.
But the walls felt different.
The silence felt different.
Children ran across the lawn.
Music drifted from the terrace.
LaRue staff carried trays of champagne and food.
Mrs. Alvarez cried before the ceremony even started.
“I’m not crying,” she insisted.
“You are holding three tissues.”
“Allergies.”
“In April?”
“Very aggressive pollen.”
Luca stood beside Roman.
Marcus stood on his other side.
Both wore dark suits.
Neither carried visible weapons.
I had checked.
Roman waited beneath the oak tree.
For once, no controlled expression.
No intimidating calm.
He looked terrified.
I loved him for it.
Leo walked beside me.
Halfway down the aisle, he whispered, “Roman looks like he might throw up.”
“Leo.”
“What?”
I tried not to laugh.
Roman heard him.
“So did everyone else.
Luca started laughing first.
The tension broke.
Roman shook his head.
When I reached him, he took my hand.
“You look…”
He stopped.
“Use words,” I whispered.
“I had a speech again.”
“And?”
“Gone.”
I smiled.
“Consistent.”
The ceremony was simple.
No dramatic promises about perfect lives.
We had seen enough to know perfection was useless.
Roman spoke first.
“Natalie, the first thing you ever did for me was ignore what I wanted.”
Everyone laughed.
“You found me bleeding in an alley and refused to leave. I thought that meant you were reckless.”
“Correct,” Marcus muttered.
More laughter.
Roman continued.
“I later realized you simply understood something I didn’t.”
His eyes held mine.
“That a life matters before you know what it can give you.”
My throat tightened.
“You saved me when I had money, power, and every reason to believe those things made me strong.”
He paused.
“But you taught me strength was something else.”
“What?” Leo whispered loudly.
Roman smiled.
“Choosing what is right when doing wrong would be easier.”
Leo nodded as though evaluating.
Roman continued.
“I cannot promise you a life without trouble.”
“Good,” I whispered.
“I can promise you will never face it alone.”
Tears filled my eyes.
My vows were less elegant.
“I had planned something beautiful.”
Roman smiled.
“Same problem?”
“Completely gone.”
Everyone laughed.
I took a breath.
“When I found you in that alley, I thought you were the most stubborn man I had ever met.”
“You still think that.”
“Yes.”
I smiled.
“I was terrified of your world. Then I realized you were terrified of it too.”
Roman’s eyes changed.
“You spent years believing the name DeLuca decided who you had to be.”
I squeezed his hand.
“It didn’t.”
My voice shook.
“You decided.”
Luca looked away, wiping his eyes.
“And every day since then, you kept deciding.”
I looked toward Leo.
“You chose my son.”
Back to Roman.
“You chose your brother.”
Toward Marcus.
“You chose your friends.”
Then finally at the people gathered around us.
“You chose truth even when it cost you nearly everything.”
I smiled through tears.
“So I choose you.”
Roman kissed me before the officiant technically gave permission.
Nobody complained.
Especially not me.
At the reception, Leo ate three pieces of cake.
Roman pretended not to notice.
Luca gave a speech containing several stories Roman wanted legally suppressed.
Marcus danced with Mrs. Alvarez.
I took photographic evidence for future blackmail.
For one evening, nobody talked about Sebastian.
Nobody talked about trials.
Nobody talked about blood.
My father’s photograph sat quietly on a table beside Roman’s mother’s and father’s.
History remained.
It simply no longer controlled us.
Months passed.
Then years.
LaRue expanded.
Not aggressively.
Carefully.
I became CEO of the employee-owned restaurant group.
Every location offered healthcare.
Paid parental leave.
Emergency assistance for employees.
The first time someone told me those programs were too expensive, I remembered standing in a kitchen begging David Keller not to fire me because my son needed antibiotics.
“We can afford it,” I said.
And somehow, we always could.
Roman rebuilt too.
His construction company focused on affordable housing and rehabilitation projects.
Reporters initially called it reputation management.
Roman did not argue.
“Maybe some of it is,” he told me.
“At least you admit it.”
“I have learned public relations from you.”
“That is unfortunate.”
Over time, people stopped seeing him only as his father’s son.
Not everyone forgave.
Some never would.
Roman learned to accept that.
Accountability did not guarantee affection.
He could do better without demanding applause for it.
That was perhaps the greatest difference between the man I found in the alley and the man he became.
Luca married two years later.
Marcus complained through the entire bachelor party planning process and cried during the ceremony.
Again, I obtained evidence.
Mrs. Alvarez moved into a small house near ours after finally retiring.
She refused every offer of financial help until Roman convinced her that the house legally belonged to a trust and he needed “someone responsible to occupy it.”
She knew he was lying.
She moved anyway.
Leo grew.
At eight, he wanted to become a veterinarian.
At nine, an astronaut.
At ten, a chef.
At eleven, he decided all adults were embarrassing.
Roman took this personally.
One evening, Leo came home from school angry.
A classmate had told him Roman was a criminal.
Leo punched him.
I was horrified.
Roman was quiet.
After dinner, he sat with Leo outside.
I watched through the window.
“What he said was partly true,” Roman told him.
Leo stared.
“You were a criminal?”
“I broke laws.”
“But you’re good.”
“Those things are not as simple as movies make them.”
Leo frowned.
Roman continued.
“I made choices I regret.”
“Did you hurt people?”
Roman did not lie.
“Yes.”
Leo looked devastated.
My heart hurt watching.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes I convinced myself bad choices were necessary.”
“Were they?”
“Some.”
Roman paused.
“Most weren’t.”
Leo kicked the grass.
“So that kid was right.”
“He was right about something I did.”
Roman touched Leo’s shoulder.
“He doesn’t get to decide everything I am.”
Leo looked at him.
“Can I still punch him?”
“No.”
“Mom said that too.”
“Your mother is annoyingly wise.”
“I heard that,” I called.
Roman smiled.
That conversation mattered.
Not because Roman defended himself.
Because he didn’t.
He taught Leo what nobody had taught him.
A person could be accountable for yesterday without surrendering tomorrow.
On the tenth anniversary of my father’s disappearance, I visited his grave.
Roman came.
So did Leo.
I placed fresh flowers beside the stone.
For years, there had been no body.
After Sebastian’s trial, investigators finally located my father’s remains beneath an abandoned industrial site.
Bringing him home had been one of the hardest days of my life.
But at least now he had a place.
Daniel Brooks.
Beloved Husband.
Beloved Father.
He Chose the Truth.
Leo traced the letters.
“I wish I met him.”
“Me too.”
Roman stood quietly beside me.
I took his hand.
My father had saved Roman long before I ever did.
Not physically.
But by leaving behind proof that told a frightened nineteen-year-old something he would need years later.
You are not your father.
You get to choose.
Sometimes I wondered whether my father imagined any of this.
Me.
Roman.
Leo.
The strange family built from the wreckage of secrets.
Probably not.
Life rarely follows plans cleanly enough for that.
Five years after the wedding, LaRue celebrated its anniversary under employee ownership.
The restaurant closed for the evening.
Staff brought families.
Music played.
Tables filled the dining room.
I stood near the kitchen entrance where David Keller had fired me years earlier.
Roman walked beside me.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m remembering.”
“The blood?”
“The firing.”
“You should have let me fire him dramatically.”
“You practically did.”
“I could have been more theatrical.”
“You asked who owned the restaurant.”
Roman smiled.
“That was a good line.”
“It was obnoxious.”
“Effective.”
Leo ran past carrying a plate of desserts.
“Only one!” I called.
“That is one plate!”
Roman nodded approvingly.
“Strong argument.”
“You are not helping.”
“I rarely do.”
I looked at him.
Gray eyes.
Same as the alley.
Different man.
Or maybe not entirely different.
Maybe the man had always been there beneath everything his father taught him.
Roman followed my gaze toward the restaurant entrance.
Outside, rain had begun.
Soft at first.
Then heavier.
He smiled.
“Appropriate.”
“What?”
“The rain.”
I laughed.
“Don’t get nostalgic. That was one of the worst nights of my life.”
“It worked out well for me.”
“You got stabbed.”
“And met you.”
“That is disgustingly romantic.”
“I have changed.”
“Apparently.”
We walked outside beneath the awning.
Chicago glowed in the rain.
Traffic reflected across wet pavement.
For a moment, I could almost see myself years earlier.
Twenty-eight.
Exhausted.
Terrified.
Running toward work with twelve dollars in my wallet and a sick child waiting at home.
I had thought my life was one missed paycheck away from collapse.
Maybe it was.
Then someone gasped in an alley.
And I stopped.
Roman slipped his hand into mine.
“Do you ever regret it?”
“What?”
“Stopping.”
I thought about everything that followed.
Fear.
Loss.
Courtrooms.
Prison visits.
Gunshots.
Secrets.
Then I thought of Leo laughing upstairs with Luca’s children.
Mrs. Alvarez arguing with Marcus.
My employees owning part of the restaurant where I once begged not to be fired.
Roman standing alive beside me.
“No.”
He looked surprised.
“Not even for a second?”
“Oh, I regret several individual moments.”
“That sounds more accurate.”
“But stopping?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Roman kissed my forehead.
A car slowed near the curb.
A young delivery driver stepped out.
He stumbled.
Boxes fell.
Without thinking, I moved.
Roman caught my hand.
I stared at him.
“What?”
He sighed.
“You’re going to help him.”
“Obviously.”
“It is pouring.”
“He dropped everything.”
Roman looked toward the sky.
Then toward me.
“Some things never change.”
We ran into the rain together.
Years later, when people asked how Roman DeLuca and I met, there were several answers we could give.
The safe answer was that we met through work.
The romantic answer was that fate put us in the same alley.
Leo’s favorite answer was that his mother found a dangerous billionaire bleeding in the rain and bossed him back to life.
But the truth was simpler.
A man was dying.
I stopped.
I did not know his name.
I did not know he was wealthy.
I did not know people feared him.
I did not know saving him would expose the truth about my father, destroy a criminal empire, reunite two brothers, put powerful men in prison, and eventually give my son the family I had stopped believing we would ever have.
I knew only one thing.
Leaving him there would have been wrong.
That single decision cost me the job I thought I could not survive without.
Then it gave me a life I never imagined asking for.
That night, after the anniversary party, Roman and I stood in Leo’s bedroom doorway.
He was almost twelve now.
Too old for dinosaur blankets.
Too young to admit he still kept the original toy dinosaur from the night Sebastian kidnapped him.
Roman noticed it on the shelf.
“He kept it.”
“Of course.”
“Thought he was too cool.”
“He is.”
Roman smiled.
We walked toward our room.
Halfway down the hall, he stopped.
“What?”
“I forgot something.”
“What?”
He kissed me.
Slowly.
Warmly.
The house was quiet around us.
Safe.
Our home.
When he pulled away, I smiled.
“What was that for?”
Roman’s gray eyes softened.
“For not walking away.”
I touched his face.
“Still paying that debt?”
“Forever.”
I laughed.
“No.”
“No?”
“Debt was paid years ago.”
“When?”
I looked toward Leo’s room.
Then at the photographs covering the hallway walls.
Our wedding.
Luca.
Marcus.
Mrs. Alvarez.
My father.
Roman’s mother.
The family we lost.
The family we found.
“The day you understood none of this was about owing me.”
Roman smiled.
“You’re right.”
“Obviously.”
“Still difficult.”
“Still alive.”
He kissed me again.
Outside, rain tapped gently against the windows.
But it no longer smelled like failure.
May you like
It smelled like the beginning of everything.
The End.
