My hands trembled, heart in shards, tears threatening to spill as I stood there drowning in humiliation. Vittorio Moretti, Damiano's father, the retired Don, was furious. At them, not me. He silenced the room with a single look, the rosary bead beneath his thumb going absolutely still, and comforted me. He promised he'd deal with his son. He urged me to leave, to escape this mess and let him handle it.
But just as I turned to go, Damiano's older brother, Dante Moretti, stepped toward me.
He was dressed in a charcoal suit cut so precisely it looked like armor, tall, handsome, those ocean-blue eyes piercing right through me. He looked like something carved from the old country, the kind of man other men stepped aside for without being asked. I froze as he reached out his hand, my breath catching.
"I won't let you be shamed like this, Serafina," he said. "Marry me."
Gasps echoed through the cathedral. My eyes widened, stunned.
"I've loved you in secret, Sera," he confessed. "And I swear, I'll take care of you and love you for the rest of my life."
That day, I became his wife. The Donna of the Moretti Family.