Nine Times Too Late

On the day of my wedding, my fiance, Don James Colombo, left me at the altar again.

"Angelina is in the ICU," he said. "The ceremony will have to wait."

It was the ninth time he had abandoned me for his terminally ill childhood sweetheart.

The first time, she had run away from home, and he could not rest easy. "Angelina is missing, yet you want me to stand here toasting at the wedding? Don't be so selfish, Leticia."

The third time, he said Angelina was in a terrible state and threatening to take her own life — he had to go comfort her.

By the eighth time, James had stopped explaining and simply had the butler notify me the wedding was off.

For him, postponing a wedding was nothing. For me, the Buono Principessa left standing in a chapel, it meant ridicule and one hundred lashes from my furious father.

The lashes split open my skin and left me running a fever that would not break.

James would hold me afterward, apologize helplessly, and promise he would make it up to me after we married.

He promised nine times.

He kept none of them.

So when he left me again for Angelina, I did not cry or make a scene. I packed my bags alone and in silence.

It would be the last time he ever postponed our wedding.

One month later, he would never be able to find me again.

Leticia's POV

James Colombo canceled our wedding again.

After he rushed out, the guests looked at me with the kind of pity people reserve for a woman who has become public entertainment. I stood at the entrance of the estate in a wedding gown that had taken three months to stitch by hand, smiling at every guest as they left.

"It is all right," I said again and again. "Something important came up."

No one believed me.

The Principessa of the Buono family had been abandoned at the altar by the same man for the ninth time, yet I was still making excuses for him.

When the last guest was gone, I sat alone in the empty hall. The train of my gown spread across the marble floor like a flower already beginning to die.

This time, I did not cry.

I went back to the villa and quietly packed my bags.

James came home deep into the night. When he opened the door, his suit still carried the sharp smell of hospital disinfectant.

He paused, then hurried toward me. "I swear this is the last time, Leticia. You know Angelina is seriously ill. She needed me."

I smiled calmly. "I know."

He froze for a moment, as if he had expected tears, accusations, some familiar collapse he knew how to soothe.

"You could have stayed at the hospital with her," I said, turning my back to him. "Can you help me? The zipper is in the back. I cannot reach it."

"Of course." James stepped closer and