22. Massimo
MASSIMO
I drove to the dig without telling anyone where I was going.
The road out to that forgotten corner of the estate had always been rutted, even when I used to visit. I'd forgotten how long the drive was. Olive trees lined both sides, their branches making shadows across the windshield. I gripped the wheel tighter than I needed to.
I'd come out here with one purpose. Fill in the site. Bury whatever Laney had been working on for the last ten years and be done with it. It would take a day, maybe two if I hired the right crew. Then it would be over. The dig would disappear and one more piece of this whole mess would be handled.
That was the plan. That was what I'd told myself on the drive out.
When I pulled up to the site, the only car there was a rusted Fiat that looked like it had been driven through a war. A girl stood at the edge of the trench with a trowel in one hand and a clipboard in the other. She glanced up at me, squinted, and went back to whatever she was writing.
I got out. God, it was hot. The sun hit the back of my neck and I was already sweating through my shirt. I'd worn the wrong clothes for this, dress shoes and slacks like I was heading to the office. Like an idiot.
The girl didn't look up again. She was young, maybe twenty-five, with her hair tied back in a braid and dirt smudged across her forearm. She wore jeans and boots that had seen better days.
I walked over to the trench. It was deeper than I remembered, maybe eight feet down, with careful grid lines marked in string and small flags stuck in the dirt at intervals.
I stared at it and felt something tighten in my chest. This was what Laney had been doing for years.
This was what I'd stopped coming out to see.
Fill it in. That was why I was here. Just fill it in and walk away.
But I couldn't move. I stood there looking at those careful grid lines, those little flags, and I knew I couldn't do it. Not without understanding what I'd be burying.
"Can I help you?" The girl's voice was flat. Not rude, just busy.
I opened my mouth and almost gave her my name. Almost. Then I realized I couldn't do that. If she knew who I was, she'd call Laney. Or someone would. I declined with a gesture. "I'm here to help with the site."
She looked me up and down, taking in the dress shoes, the pressed slacks, the watch on my wrist that probably cost more than her car. "You're here to help."
"Yes."
"Uh-huh." She turned back to the trench. "Well, we're not hiring. And even if we were, you don't look like you've ever held a shovel in your life."
My jaw tightened. I wasn't used to people talking to me like that. "I can handle it."
"Sure you can." She made a note on her clipboard. "Look, I don't know who sent you, but this isn't a place where you just show up and start digging. This is a professional excavation. We have protocols."
I wanted to tell her it was my family's land. That I had every right to be here. That I could shut down the whole dig with one phone call. Instead I said, "What protocols?"
She sighed and put the clipboard down. "First, you need to understand what we're doing here.
This isn't a construction site. Every layer matters.
Every piece of pottery, every bit of bone, every scrap of fabric tells us something.
You don't just come in and start moving dirt around like you're digging a ditch. "
"I understand that."
"Do you?" She crossed her arms. "Because the last thing I need is someone destroying three months of work because they don't know the difference between a trowel and a goddamn shovel."
I could feel my patience fraying. But she was right. I didn't know the difference. I'd never paid attention when Laney tried to explain her work. I'd nodded and patted her hand and thought about board meetings, about deals, about keeping the family happy. God, what had I been thinking?
"Teach me," I said.
She blinked. "What?"
"Teach me what I need to know. I'll do whatever you tell me to do."
She studied me for a long moment, her head tilted to one side. "Why?"
I couldn't answer that. Not honestly. So I just looked at her and waited.
"Jesus," she muttered. She picked up a second trowel from a bucket near her feet and held it out to me. "Fine. But you do exactly what I say. You don't improvise. You don't decide you know better. And if you screw up, I'm kicking you out. Clear?"
"Clear."
"What's your name?"
I hesitated. "Marco."
"Okay, Marco. I'm Chiara." She pointed at the trench.
"We're working the north corner today. There's a layer of fill we need to remove before we can get to the stratum below.
It's slow work. You're going to use this to scrape, not dig.
Small movements. You're looking for anything that doesn't belong—pottery, metal, bone.
If you find something, you stop and you call me.
You don't pull it out yourself. Got it?"
"Got it."
She led me to the edge of the trench and showed me how to lower myself down without disturbing the walls. My dress shoes slipped on the first step and I nearly fell. She grabbed my arm and steadied me, her grip surprisingly strong.
"Told you," she said. "Wrong shoes."
I didn't answer. I just got myself down into the trench and took the trowel she handed me.
The work was harder than it looked. I thought I'd just scrape away the dirt and be done with it.
But every time I moved too fast, Chiara snapped at me.
"Slower. Smaller. You're not clearing a parking lot, you're uncovering history.
" My wrist started to ache after ten minutes.
After twenty, my shoulders burned. I was bent over, crouched in a position that made my lower back scream, and the sun beat down on me like I was being punished.
Chiara worked beside me, her movements smooth and practiced. She didn't seem to feel the heat or the strain. She just kept scraping, pausing every few minutes to brush the dirt away with a soft brush and examine what was underneath.
I wanted to stop. God, I wanted to stop. My hands were blistered and my back felt like it was going to snap in half. It was humiliating. I was a Lombardo. I ran boardrooms. I negotiated deals worth millions. And I couldn't even scrape dirt without feeling like I was going to collapse.
But I didn't stop. I kept going. Because this was what Laney had been doing for years. Because I needed to understand. Because I'd failed her in every way that mattered and this was the only thing I could think to do.
An hour passed. Maybe two. I lost track. My shirt was soaked through and my hands were shaking. The trowel felt like it weighed fifty pounds. Every scrape sent fire up my arm and into my shoulder. My knees ached from crouching. My throat was dry as sand.
Chiara glanced over at me once. I could see her taking in the sweat soaking through my shirt, the way my hands shook a little when I lifted the trowel. She didn't say anything. Just went back to her work.
I didn't complain. Didn't ask for a break. Didn't quit. I just kept scraping, one small movement at a time, until the sun started to dip and the shadows grew long across the trench.
By the time Chiara finally stood up and stretched, I could barely move. My hands were raw and my back felt like someone had beaten it with a pipe. Chiara climbed out of the trench and held out a hand to help me up. I took it because I didn't have a choice.
"You did okay," she said. "For a guy in dress shoes."
I nodded. I didn't trust myself to speak.
"You coming back tomorrow?"
"Yes."
She raised an eyebrow. "Really."
"Really."
"Huh." She picked up her clipboard and made another note. "Bring better shoes. And gloves. Your hands are a mess."
I looked down at my palms. They were blistered and bleeding in a couple of places. I hadn't even noticed. "Okay."
"See you tomorrow, Marco."
I watched her walk to her car and drive off, dust kicking up behind her. Then I walked to the dig house and sat there until it was dark, too tired to drive home.
The next morning I came back. I'd bought work boots and gloves at a store on the way, cheap ones that the clerk had looked surprised to see me buying. My hands were so stiff I could barely grip the steering wheel.
Chiara was already there when I pulled up. She looked at my boots and gloves and nodded once. "Better."
"Thanks."
"Let's get to work."
We went down into the trench again and I took up the trowel.
My whole body protested. Every muscle I'd used yesterday screamed at me to stop.
The blisters on my palms burned even through the gloves.
But I didn't quit. I just started scraping, one small movement at a time, while Chiara worked beside me.
She didn't talk much. Just corrected me when I went too fast or used the wrong angle. After a while she stopped correcting me as often. I was learning. Slowly, badly, but learning.
Around midday she climbed out of the trench and came back with two bottles of water. She handed me one without a word. I drank half of it in one go.
"You're doing better," she said.
"Thanks."
"Still don't know why you're here, though."
I didn't answer. Just drank more water and wiped the sweat off my face.
She shrugged. "None of my business, I guess."
We worked until the sun started to dip again. Then Chiara called it and we climbed out. My body felt like it had been run over. But I'd made it through another day.
"Same time tomorrow?" Chiara asked.
"Yeah."
She nodded and left. I stood there for a minute, looking at the trench, at the careful work Laney had been doing for years. Then I walked to the dig house.
The dig house was small, just one room with a table, a couple of chairs, and shelves lined with boxes and files.
Laney's handwriting was everywhere. Labels on the boxes, notes pinned to a corkboard, diagrams spread across the table.
I stood in the doorway and felt like I'd walked into a part of her life I'd never been allowed to see.
I sat down at the table and pulled one of the files toward me.
It was a report on pottery fragments, dated three years ago.
Laney's notes were meticulous, each piece cataloged and cross-referenced with maps of the site.
She'd drawn diagrams in the margins, little sketches of how the pieces might fit together.
I flipped through the pages, my hands leaving dirt smudges on the paper.
There were reports on soil composition, on the layers of fill, on coins and metal fragments.
There was a family tree, hand-drawn, tracing the Lombardo name back through centuries.
She'd marked certain branches with question marks, others with exclamation points.
She was looking for something. A connection. Proof.
I pulled another file toward me. This one had photographs, black and white images of fragments laid out on a table. Laney had labeled each one in her neat handwriting. Ceramic, first century BCE. Possible villa foundation. Compare to Pompeii samples.
Another file. More notes. More diagrams. She'd been building a case, piece by piece, year by year. Tracing the family line back through history, through the fall of Rome, through the Republic, all the way back to the beginning.
I read until my eyes burned and my head ached. And then I saw it. A note in the margin of a diagram, written in Laney's careful script: If this is the villa foundation, then the family line doesn't just go back to the Roman era. It goes back to the Republic. Not just old money. Old power.
I stared at the words. She wasn't just digging up pottery. She was digging up proof that the Lombardo name had weight, had history, had legitimacy that went back two thousand years. She was giving the family something they couldn't buy and didn't deserve. And they'd laughed at her for it.
God. I'd laughed at her for it.
I'd patted her hand and smiled and thought about business while she tried to tell me what she'd found. I'd let Costanza dismiss her work as a silly American playing at history. I'd let the whole family treat her like a joke while she was uncovering the very foundation of our name.
My phone rang and I almost didn't answer it. Then I saw the name on the screen. Costanza.
I picked up. "Yes."
"Where are you?" Her voice was sharp, impatient.
"Out."
"Don't be evasive with me, Massimo. I know you're at that ridiculous dig. I want you to stop this nonsense and fill in the site. Today."
I looked down at the file in front of me, at Laney's handwriting, at the proof she'd been building for years. "No."
There was a pause. "Excuse me?"
"No. I'm not filling in the site."
"Massimo, you will do as I say. This has gone on long enough. That woman is not coming back and her little hobby needs to end. Fill in the site and be done with it."
I felt something settle in my chest. Something cold and certain. "I said no."
"Massimo—"
I ended the call. My hand was shaking. I put the phone down on the table and stared at it, half-expecting it to ring again. It didn't.
I sat there in the dig house as the sun set and the light faded, surrounded by my wife's work, and I didn't move.