Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 13

Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 13

The new annulment hearing unfolded in a packed courtroom, every seat filled by reporters who could smell the biggest story of the decade.

Alessio’s careful silence had become a national spectacle, and now there was nowhere left to hide.

My father, Salvatore Greco, sat with Alessio’s legal team.

He looked diminished—grayer, thinner, his bravado gutted by the public exposure of what he’d traded his daughter into.

He didn’t meet my eyes.

Not once.

Alessio sat beside him, radiating contempt, certain his money still meant something in a room that had stopped being his to buy.

The judge—a sharp-eyed woman in her sixties, hand-picked after the recusal precisely because she couldn’t be touched—called the proceedings to order.

Salvatore’s attorney rose first, arguing that Lorenzo had been incapacitated at the time of the marriage, that the union was a contract and not a real one, that the bride was an opportunist.

Then Lorenzo’s counsel rose and laid the truth on the bench.

The toxicology reports.

The forged documents.

The federal indictment now hanging over Alessio Conti’s head.

And the security footage Ottavia’s team had failed to erase—footage of her standing over Lorenzo’s drugged body, on the phone, saying: “Increase the dose.

He twitched during the board playback.

If he surfaces, we lose everything.”

The courtroom gasped.

Then Lorenzo took the stand.

He walked to it unaided—no hesitation, no tremor.

He sat, adjusted the microphone, and looked directly at the judge.

“Four years ago, my stepmother began sedating me to simulate a vegetative state, in partnership with Alessio Conti, so they could steal my family’s holdings.

During that time, I was fully conscious.

I heard every conversation.

Every lie.

Every plan.” His voice was steady, resonant, nothing like the rasp of three weeks ago.

“I consented to this marriage.

Not at the ceremony—I couldn’t speak then.

But from the moment Adriana Greco walked into my room, read my scans, and recognized that I was a prisoner instead of a corpse, I chose her.

She is the reason I’m alive.

She is the reason I’m standing here.”

He turned to look at me, in front of the judge, the cameras, the watching world.

“This marriage is real.

She is my wife.

And no filing from the men who sold me—and who put a price on her life—will change that.”

The courtroom erupted.

Salvatore went scarlet.

Alessio grabbed his attorney’s arm, hissing.

The gavel cracked.

“Order!”

When silence returned, Salvatore’s attorney rose, rattled.

“Mr. Vitale—isn’t it true you’d never met Miss Greco before your recovery?

That this was purely financial?”

“I’d never met her in person.

But I knew exactly who she was.”

“How?”

“Because two years ago, she kept a man alive on a kitchen table with her bare hands and a sewing kit when no hospital would touch him.

The men in my world talk.

Her name reached me through a frightened nurse who smuggled me my own file.” His eyes found mine.

“When she walked into my room, I recognized her within sixty seconds—not her face, but her method.

The order of her examination.

The questions she asked.

She wasn’t a caretaker waiting for me to die.

She was a doctor who refused to let me.

The first person in four years who looked at me and saw someone worth saving.”

The courtroom was absolutely still.

The judge removed her glasses, cleaned them, set them back.

“I’ve heard enough.

The petition for annulment is denied.

The marriage stands.” She turned to Salvatore’s table.

“And I’d advise the petitioner to seek his own counsel regarding the sale of his daughter into a marriage arrangement.

This court takes a very dim view of such practices.

The prosecutor’s office may take an even dimmer one.”

The gavel fell.

Lorenzo returned to my side.

Under the table, his hand found mine.

I gripped it—hard.

“You knew about the kitchen table,” I murmured.

“All of it.” His thumb brushed my knuckles.

“You’re not the family disappointment, Adriana.

You never were.

You’re the best thing any of them ever had—and they were too small to see it.”

As the courtroom emptied, Alessio intercepted us in the corridor, his face twisted with barely contained fury.

“This isn’t over.

The feds have nothing without—”

“They have Ottavia,” Lorenzo said quietly.

“She signed her cooperation agreement an hour ago.

She’s giving them everything.

Every account.

Every shipment.

Every order you ever gave.” He adjusted his cuff.

“You spent four years feeding off my family, Alessio.

Now you get to watch your own swallow you whole.”

Alessio’s face drained of all color.

“Have a good afternoon,” Lorenzo said.

He placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me toward the exit.

Behind us, Alessio Conti stood frozen in the marble corridor, watching his empire begin to crack.

Four days until the inheritance locked.

Four days until Lorenzo’s world was finally, fully his.

But as we stepped into the sunlight, my phone buzzed one last time.

An unknown number.

“Ottavia says congratulations.

She also says to ask Lorenzo what’s buried under the old chapel on the east grounds.

You both missed something.”

My blood ran cold.