Page 199 of Yearn

“Not as much fun as reading about Diego, but I tried.” A tiny smile tugging at her mouth as she headed away. “Okay. I will go and make sure the chef and staff are finished.”

The doorbell chimed—an actual chime that echoed through three floors—and I rushed to answer it before Matilda could turn around.

"Don't even think about it! You’re already doing so much!" I called over my shoulder. "I can answer my own door."

She chuckled. "As you wish, Mrs. Castellano."

I blinked.

Mrs. Castellano.

The new last name still felt surreal—like I'd borrowed someone else's life and forgotten to give it back.

Three months ago, I'd been drowning in legal paperwork and fear.

Now I wore a wedding ring that cost more than my old house.

Everything had happened so fast it still made my head spin.

Scott's arrest.

The cocaine.

His unregistered gun.

The bribes his shady lawyer had tried to pay to make evidence disappear.

And then—the final nail in his coffin—his mistress Genny coming forward with a domestic violence charge that revealed Scott had been on probation the entire time he'd forced his way back into my house.

When the cops arrested him, they realized that he'd spectacularly violated that probation.

The judge had thrown the book at him.

Five years.

Federal charges stacking on state charges like a nightmare Jenga tower of his own making.

And Dominic's legal team?

They'd moved through the system like hungry sharks through bloody water. My divorce that should have taken a year was finalized indays—a speed I was certain had cost Dominic more money than I wanted to think about.

After the divorce was final. . .I should have waited.

Should have taken time to breathe, to process, to make sure I wasn't just running from one man into the arms of another.

But when we’d gone back to my old house to get my stuff and Dominic got down on one knee in the kitchen—the same kitchen where he'd made me pancakes, fucked me hard, and called me Mommy—he looked at me like I was his entire world and I couldn't imagine saying anything but yes.

Sometimes I woke up and half expected to still be in that old house, bills stacked on the counter, and fear of Scott showing up to bother me. The speed of it all—the collapse, the rescue, the wedding—had left my heart sprinting to catch up with my body.

Dominic called it fate.

I called it whiplash.

Maybe it was both.

The wedding had been small.

Quick.