🥂 YOU'RE MINE NOW

Chapter 16 - What We Choose

Eighteen months later, Isabella Santos stepped out of a hospital elevator wearing navy scrubs and Alessandro Romano's old steel watch.

It was too large for her wrist.

She had never resized it.

Some things were meant to remind you they belonged to another life.

"Ms. Santos?"

A new nurse hurried after her.

"The patient in 412 refuses his medication."

"Why?"

"He says the pills are poisoning him."

"Then don't argue about the pills."

The nurse frowned.

"What do I do?"

"Ask what he's afraid will happen if he takes them."

The nurse nodded and hurried away.

Isabella smiled.

Fear rarely disappeared because someone ordered it to.

She had learned that lesson outside nursing school.

At six, Elena waited downstairs in a small blue sedan she insisted on driving herself.

Her memory was better.

Not perfect.

Better.

She lived fifteen minutes from Isabella, volunteered at a library, and had developed a passionate hatred for hospital oatmeal.

Thomas lived three states away.

He had completed gambling treatment and worked at a marina where no one knew the Romano name.

He and Isabella spoke every Sunday.

Some Sundays were easy.

Some weren't.

Forgiveness, she had discovered, was not a door you walked through once.

It was a road.

Bianca now ran the Moretti Foundation openly.

Maya had graduated and still argued that surviving a kidnapping should have counted toward clinical hours.

Marco testified.

So did Matteo.

Matteo accepted a reduced sentence in exchange for years of evidence against Petrov and Voss.

Alessandro wrote every week.

He never asked Isabella to wait.

That was why she did.

His cooperation dismantled the criminal side of Romano Shipping. He forfeited companies, paid heavy penalties, and testified in two federal trials.

The empire his father built did not survive.

Alessandro did.

He spent fourteen months in federal custody and four under home confinement.

Today was the first day he was completely free.

Elena drove Isabella to a small restaurant in Brooklyn.

Not a ballroom.

Not a mansion.

Not anywhere with a terrace.

"You're nervous," Elena said.

"I'm not."

"You tap your thumb when you're nervous."

Isabella stopped tapping.

"I hate that you remember that."

"Some things stay."

A handwritten sign hung in the restaurant window.

CLOSED FOR PRIVATE DINNER.

Isabella opened the door.

Alessandro stood near the back table.

He looked different.

Leaner.

A few more lines around the eyes.

No suit.

Dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

For several seconds, neither moved.

Then he smiled.

The real one.

"Hi."

Eighteen months collapsed.

Isabella crossed the room.

He met her halfway.

No one said anything useful for several minutes.

When she finally stepped back, Alessandro noticed the watch.

"You kept it."

"I planned to sell it."

"Of course."

"Terrible resale market."

"Tragic."

His hand rested lightly at her waist.

Asking.

Still asking.

"How was your first day?" she said.

"Free?"

"Yes."

"Quiet."

"Disappointing?"

"Perfect."

After dinner, they walked three blocks.

At the end of one stood a narrow brownstone under renovation.

A sign hung on the fence.

THE DANIEL & ELENA SANTOS COMMUNITY CLINIC.

Isabella stopped.

"What did you do?"

"Before you get angry, I didn't buy you a clinic."

"Good opening."

"The foundation bought the building."

"What foundation?"

"One with independent directors who enjoy telling me no."

She smiled.

"Bianca?"

"Chairwoman."

The clinic would provide primary care and legal referrals for families affected by trafficking and gambling debt.

Isabella looked at her parents' names.

Her eyes filled.

"You used their names."

"Only with Elena's permission."

"And mine?"

Alessandro winced.

"I may still be learning."

"At least you're consistent."

He reached into his coat.

Isabella raised one finger.

"If that's a ring, put it away."

He froze.

She burst out laughing.

"It is not a ring."

"Good."

He showed her a plain brass house key.

"I bought an apartment."

"Congratulations on adulthood."

"There is an extra room."

"For Pepper?"

"He would claim all rooms."

"True."

Alessandro looked at her.

"No pressure."

"That's new."

"Painfully."

He placed the key in her hand.

"I don't want you to move in tomorrow. I don't want you to give up your apartment. I don't want to decide what happens next."

She studied him.

"Then what do you want?"

"I want to ask if I can be part of it."

No chandeliers.

No ballroom full of stunned guests.

No men watching from a terrace.

Just a Brooklyn sidewalk and traffic moving at the corner.

Isabella remembered the first words he had ever said to her.

You're mine now.

At the time, she thought they were the beginning of captivity.

Instead, they became the beginning of a long argument about what love was not.

Love was not ownership.

It was not rescuing someone and expecting gratitude forever.

It was not protecting people by taking away every choice that frightened you.

And forgiveness did not mean pretending the wound had never happened.

It meant deciding what deserved to grow around the scar.

Isabella closed her fingers around the key.

"I'm not yours."

Alessandro nodded.

"I know."

"I never was."

"I know that too."

She stepped closer.

"But I choose you."

His eyes closed for half a second.

When he opened them, all the old control was gone.

"That's better."

"Much."

She kissed him beneath an ordinary streetlight.

Six months later, Isabella moved into the apartment.

A year after that, Alessandro asked about the ring again.

This time she said yes.

They married in the clinic courtyard with thirty-two guests, no reporters, and one security guard Bianca insisted on hiring because, as she put it, "personal growth is not the same thing as stupidity."

Thomas came.

So did Maya.

Elena danced until her knees hurt.

Alessandro never promised Isabella she would always be safe.

Neither believed in promises no human could keep.

He promised something harder.

That fear would never make her choices for her.

She promised the same.

Years later, when Isabella thought about that glittering ballroom and the frightened waitress she had been, she no longer remembered Alessandro's claim as the most important moment.

The important moment came much later.

It came every morning they woke and chose each other again.