Chapter 2 - Giulietta Had Never Planned to Need Security at Her Wedding
The Marconi men were not bodyguards in the glamorous sense.
They did not follow Giulietta everywhere.
They were corporate security professionals employed by Marconi Protective Services, the risk-management company founded by Giulietta’s grandfather more than forty years earlier.
The Marconis were comfortable.
Influential.
Well connected.
But they were not gangsters, and Giulietta hated whenever anyone treated the surname like something out of a crime movie.
Her family built its reputation protecting hospitals, corporate campuses, event venues, and high-risk executives.
Security was a business.
A heavily regulated one.
Giulietta herself worked nowhere near it.
She was an architect.
She designed public libraries and university buildings and preferred arguing about window placement to hearing her brothers discuss access protocols.
Still, three days before the wedding, her older cousin Luca had quietly asked whether she wanted two security staff at the estate.
“Why would I?”
“Because something about Preston’s family file bothered Dad.”
Giulietta rolled her eyes.
“There is no family file.”
“There is always a family file when you marry someone whose father runs three companies and gets sued twice a year.”
“What bothered him?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
That irritated her.
Giulietta did not want her family investigating her fiancé behind her back.
She called her father immediately.
He apologized.
Then explained.
A routine insurance and event-risk review had flagged an old civil matter involving Warren Hale.
The case was sealed.
No conviction.
No criminal finding.
Just a confidential settlement tied to an incident at a Hale-owned country club nearly twenty years earlier.
Giulietta asked Preston about it.
He laughed.
“My dad’s been sued a hundred times.”
She asked Warren.
He said:
“People smell money.”
That should have bothered her more.
Instead, she let the wedding keep moving.
One concession remained.
Two Marconi security men would stay near the private bridal wing in case family tension escalated.
Giulietta thought it was ridiculous.
Until Preston locked the bedroom door.
May you like
And picked up the golf club.
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