My hand paused on the folder.
“And him?”
Marco looked at my father.
“The debt remains.”
Robert made a strangled sound.
I hated that sound because despite everything, it still reached the part of me that remembered learning to ride a bicycle while he ran behind me with one hand on the seat.
The father who packed my lunches.
The father who sat through every terrible school concert as though I were performing at Carnegie Hall.
People did not become strangers all at once.
Sometimes they broke your trust while still wearing the face you loved.
I sat again.
Robert looked hopeful.
“Don’t,” I told him.
“I’m not doing this for you.”
I opened the contract to the first page.
Marco’s eyebrows lifted.
“If I’m even considering this,” I said, “we rewrite it.”
Robert exhaled.
Marco did not.
“What do you want changed?”
“My passport stays with me.”
“Agreed.”
“I keep my university enrollment.
If I have to finish the semester remotely, you pay whatever costs your arrangement creates.”
“Agreed.”
“My father receives proof that the debt is extinguished, but he receives no money from you.”
Robert blinked.
Marco nodded.
“Agreed.”
“And you never lend him another euro.”
Robert opened his mouth.
I looked at him.
He closed it.
Marco’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
Was that amusement?
“One more thing,” I said.
“Go on.”
“If I sign, you don’t get to use the debt to make me grateful.
You don’t get to remind me what you paid.
And you don’t get to confuse a legal arrangement with ownership.”
Marco held my gaze.
“Agreed.”
By sunrise, an attorney had revised the document.
I read every page.
Twice.
Three days later, I married Marco Bellandi in a small civil ceremony in Rome.
There was no white dress.
No flowers.
No music.
I wore a navy dress someone had brought to the house after asking for my measurements.
Marco wore a dark suit.
Robert stood ten feet away, looking as though he wanted to apologize but knew no collection of words could repair what he had done.
The clerk asked for our signatures.
Marco signed first.
Then he handed me the pen.
“You can still walk away,” he said quietly.
