Chapter 10 - THE VENUE THAT BELONGED TO US
The following October—exactly one year after the tragic afternoon at the Westfield Estate—Ethan and I held our wedding.
There were no seventy high-society guests invited to impress corporate partners. There were no press teams, no silver-sequined gowns, no dramatic entrances, and no prenuptial agreements written on cream-colored paper.
We held the ceremony at the historic Georgetown townhouse where Ethan had proposed—the very building whose 140-year-old staircase we had saved together.
The courtyard was decorated with simple autumn flowers, oak leaves, and soft amber fairy lights floating in the cool evening breeze.
Sixty guests were present—true friends, my restoration team, Ethan’s family, Detective Lin, Marcus Vance, and my father, who walked me down the aisle wearing a simple, perfectly fitted black suit.
I wore a magnificent, hand-tailored ivory gown with long lace sleeves and a cathedral-length veil—a gown I had chosen myself, paid for with my own money, designed by a local seamstress who understood that beauty didn't need to cost twenty-eight thousand dollars to be perfect.
As Harper handed my hand over to Ethan at the bottom of the historic wooden staircase, he leaned in and whispered, "Be happy, sweetheart. You’ve earned every second of it."
Ethan took my hand. His fingers were warm, steady, and strong.
He looked down at me in my wedding dress, his gray eyes shining with an emotion so deep and unreserved that every lingering shadow of my past vanished into the light of that room.
"You look breathtaking, Ariana," Ethan whispered.
"I feel safe," I replied softly.
"You are safe," Ethan swore, his voice resonant and true. "Forever."
The vows were simple, spoken from the heart without scripts or cameras.
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When the minister pronounced us husband and wife, Ethan didn't just kiss me—he pulled me into an embrace that held all the devotion, protection, and fierce love he had shown every single day since the moment he walked into my dusty construction site with two cups of coffee.
The guests erupted into joy, the string quartet playing a bright, triumphant melody that echoed up the grand wooden staircase and through the high plaster ceilings of the building we had restored together.
