Chapter 14 - The Ring in the Library
It was raining again by Friday evening—a heavy, steady Hudson squall that tapped against the leaded windows of the estate library like a handful of dry beans.
Lily was fast asleep in her four-poster bed down the hall, worn out from a frantic afternoon of directing Enzo’s crawling championship across the cream rug.
I was sitting in the leather armchair by the grand stone fireplace, reading a leather-bound folio of nineteenth-century shipping maps, when the library door clicked open.
Vincent walked in.
He wasn't wearing his suit jacket. His black shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the corded muscle and dark ink along his forearms. He wasn't carrying documents, or phones, or keys.
He was holding a small, unadorned black velvet box.
He walked across the Persian rug and stopped right beside my chair.
I looked up, my heart doing that familiar, terrifying double-flip against my ribs. “Vincent?”
He didn't say a word. He simply knelt down on one knee right beside the low wooden footstool, his dark eyes fixing on mine with an absolute, unshakable gravity that made the room feel completely empty of everything else.
“When I found you on the kitchen floor two months ago,” Vincent began, his voice low, steady, and resonant in the quiet room, “I thought you were just another variable in a chaotic house that needed fixing.”
He lifted the lid of the black velvet box.
Inside rested a ring—not the flashing, ostentatious diamonds Cassandra had worn, but a heavy band of platinum set with a single, deep green emerald that caught the firelight like river water under an overpass.
“You didn’t just fix the house, Clara,” Vincent continued, his thumb resting gently against my knuckles as he took my hand. “You brought warmth into a fortress that had been cold for thirty years. You and your fierce, fearless little girl.”
He looked up, meeting my eyes with a raw honesty that stripped away every remaining barrier between us.
“I don’t offer contracts, Clara. And I don’t make arrangements that expire,” he whispered. “Marry me. Stay in this house, at this table, by my side—not as an employee, not as a guest, but as my wife.”
My breath caught. Tears stung the back of my eyes, hot and sudden, washing away every memory of the damp attic, the broken rent notices, and the cold linoleum floor.
“You’re out of your mind, Vincent Moretti,” I managed to whisper through a thick throat.
“Probably,” he agreed, a rare, genuine smile breaking across his face as he slid the heavy platinum and emerald band onto my trembling finger. “Well? What’s your practical view on the matter?”
May you like
I leaned forward, my hands cupping his face, my fingers brushing against the scar along his jaw.
“My practical view,” I whispered against his lips, “is that you never stood a chance.”
