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Maybe we should have waited. Somewhere, in a handbook for brides, it’s probably written that you should take everything slowly: choosing the wedding venue, carefully planning the party, making sure everything will be perfect.

Ares and I, however, do not dream of perfection. We want something real.

Our love is not a flowery path, lined with impeccable flowerbeds and exquisite landscaping.

It is bumpy, with several rocks out of place, some trip hazards, and a lot of fights.

Sometimes, his arrogant way of assuming that he can and should decide everything for me makes me want to kill him.

Sometimes, his arrogant way of assuming that he can and should take care of me, protect me, and eventually, cross some boundaries, makes me love him even more.

He's not perfect. I'm not perfect. Still, we were made for each other.

I've decided on a wedding on our island—yes, he says it's ours, and I won't argue. I’ve learned to pick my battles.

I didn't want anything big, just the people who were by my side at the worst moments of my career. The friends that life gave me, the family that I never had.

The only family I want, because with each passing day, I've been trying hard to forget about JeAnne.

She made a deal with the prosecutor and got a relatively minor sentence considering the number of crimes she’d committed: twenty years with the possibility of parole in ten.

I don't care whether she stays behind bars forever or gets out tomorrow, because for me, she doesn't exist anymore.

There's something I remembered the other day, something I only told Ares. In researching my past, I learned that I was never registered, but I don't remember ever being called by any name other than . I asked Ares to have the lawyer visit her and ask her if I had another first name, even if it was never registered.

Her response was that she’d always called me by the same name as her boss's daughter because she thought we looked alike. Even without registration, I was already .

When the lawyer told us what he had discovered, Ares and I came to the same conclusion: from the beginning, she was in cahoots with Edgar Hazen. Perhaps the exchange was even her idea.

We will never know, and now, it doesn't make any difference anymore.

I hear a knock on the door, and I smile before it opens, because I know who it is. My friends and the kids just left, so it could only be Hades.

"Ready?"

I nod, go over to where he is, and hug him. He goes rigid, and my heart cracks with sadness for my brother-in-law who doesn't allow himself to “feel.”

"I will never understand why you chose me to walk you down the aisle, ."

"Because when I needed you, along with your brother, you were my hero, Hades."

After the episode on the Kostanidis Group rooftop, which resulted in Elmer's death, Hades and I became close. At my insistence, of course.

I've noticed that even when he’s with his family, he seems lonely, and I know too much about loneliness to ignore his.

"You are ours to protect," he says.

"And to love?"

He doesn't answer me. He offers his arm and leaves the suite with me, heading to the altar set up on the beach, to hand me over to his brother.

I see Ares approaching, and as always happens, my heart skips a beat. The certainty that within a few minutes my “forever” will begin leaves my body shaking in anticipation.

Before my fiancé reaches us, Hades bends down and says, "I'm not capable of loving, ."

"You are wrong. You have a lot of love inside you, and one day, a lucky person will receive it."

He doesn't answer. With his usual serious face, he kisses my forehead and hands me over to his brother.

"Ready to be my owner?" I joke, because it costs nothing to tease my bossy Greek.

But Ares, being who he is, doesn't let it go. "Ready to make my ownership official. You were always mine."