Chapter 27
ALESSIA
I’m excited to go to Florence—not only because Alba is there and Toni is on her way, but because I haven’t seen my husband in over two weeks, and I miss him more than I’ve allowed myself to admit.
On the phone, I’ve been careful and polite.
Not because I don’t care—but because I care too much, and distance feels safer than hope.
Now, I’m thrilled and anxious in equal measure, my pulse skittering with anticipation as the city draws closer.
I text him to let him know I’m coming. He responds with a thumbs-up emoji.
I stare at the screen.
What does that mean?
Never in my life have I analyzed a response like this. Not texts, not pauses, not silences. And yet here I am—a woman on the brink of thirty—reduced to reading emotional tea leaves like a teenager plucking petals from a daisy.
Does he love me.
Does he love me not.
I lock my phone and drop it into my bag, exhaling sharply.
By the time I reach the Palazzo, Florence is wrapped in an early-evening gold that pours across the rooftops and settles into every crease of stone, making arches and columns glow.
It’s late October, and the air is cool, tinged with the spicy, clove-like scent of dianthus flowers that are often used as border plants in Florence’s historic gardens as they bloom until the first frost.
I tell myself I’m here for Alba. I’m here for Toni, who is right now speeding up from Milan in her Maserati MC20 Cielo with the top down and a playlist of ’80s hits blasting.
I’m here for the promise of sisterhood and laughter. I remind myself that tonight doesn’t have to revolve around barrel inventories or balance sheets or the steady, watchful eyes of the wine gods.
None of that explains the hitch in my breath when Nico opens the door of his apartment even before I knock.
He stands in the threshold, silhouetted by the fading light.
For a beat, I don’t move.
He looks…relieved?
Not in a wary or doubtful way, but as if I’ve just stepped out of a dream he wasn’t sure was real. His brows lift, and color spikes in his cheeks.
Then he moves.
Fast.
His arms circle me, pressing me against a broad chest I’ve missed more than I knew. My cheek rests against the soft wool of his jacket, his pulse throbbing under my skin.
His hand threads into my hair, fingertips curling at the nape of my neck as though confirming I’m not a mirage.
“Cara,” he breathes—his voice low, rough, a confession in itself.
The kiss that follows is fierce and immediate.
It’s warm and uncompromising, a slow burn of longing that erases distance, dissolves silence, blurs every ache we’ve kept locked away.
For a few reckless seconds, I forget there’s been a break at all.
Unanswered questions vanish.
Careful phone calls and lonely nights spent staring at my phone—they all fall behind the velvet curtain of this kiss.
This is Nico—my husband—the man who still looks at me like I’m his best-kept secret, like I’m oxygen.
When we finally part, the corridor’s marble floors shine underfoot, and his forehead rests against mine, breath mingling.
“I was expecting you in an hour,” he whispers.
“I left early,” I say lightly, even though my heart is hammering, even though the truth is I rushed out because I wanted to see him. “Alba is already here. Toni is on her way.”
He smiles, a slow curve that softens the sharp planes of his face. “You’re all welcome to stay here.”
I can’t help a little laugh. “Please. Alba’s apartment has a private cinema—and a popcorn machine. You can’t beat that.”
He laughs, too, low and genuine, and the sound bounces off frescoed arches. “No, I can’t. But I’m very happy to have you sleep with me tonight…and every night if possible.”
I blush as his words bloom hope and love inside of me.
I’m in love with my husband. Madly. Deeply. Irretrievably.
Nico takes hold of my suitcase and steps aside. I cross the threshold and step into his space for the first time.
His apartment feels nothing like the warm woods and soft linens of my home in Pietra Alta.
The walls are the color of storm clouds, hung with massive abstract canvases—stark black slashes, violent flashes of crimson, shapes that feel more like screams than pictures.
Sculptures of dark metal rise from the floor like silent sentinels. The furniture is a study in angle and edge—polished steel frames, unyielding leather, glass surfaces that catch the light in cold glints.
It’s beautiful, and…severe.
This space looks exactly like the man Nico used to be. But he’s changed. I‘ve seen that transformation for myself.
“You hate it.” He misreads my stillness.
“I don’t.” It’s the truth.
“Really?”
I smile. “Really.” My fingers brushing the back of a leather sofa, tracing its unbroken line. “It’s…intense.”
He hums, amused. “That’s polite.”
I turn fully to take it in—the stark ceiling-to-floor windows, the high-contrast palette, the sense that everything here was chosen to provoke a reaction. “Do you think my house is too soft?”
He pauses, then answers slowly, “Before? I probably would have.”
My heart skips. “Before?”
His gaze holds mine, steady. “Before you filled my life with your warmth and generosity.”
Everything inside of me, and I mean everything, sings with pleasure. How did I, plain old Alessia get this man to say such things to me?
He steps closer and brushes his lips against mine.
“I mistook hardness for strength, minimalism for depth. I thought this”—he looks around his living room—"was what I liked.” He pushes my hair off my face, and his eyes tell me so much about how he feels, even if I’m too afraid to believe what I can see.
“But, now, I know what I like and that is walking into your home and feeling held.”
A gentle squeeze of longing tightens behind my ribs.
“I like the softness and warmth,” he continues, voice softer. “Windows flung open to the breeze, books piled everywhere, your unreasonable number of throws. I like how your place smells like wood and wine—and like you.”
I swallow, tasting the truth in his words. “Are you going soft on me, Mister ex-Playboy?”
A corner of his mouth quirks up. “I’m a one-woman man, cara.”
And he’s mine. Isn’t that what he’s saying?
Without thinking, I step into his arms. He folds around me—chin resting on my head, arms settling as though this is where they’ve always belonged. In the hush that follows, the Palazzo fades.
There is only us.
Maybe, I think more optimistically than I have in the past couple of weeks, we can find our way back to each other—even if the path is steeper than either of us imagined.
Alba is in loungewear…made by Gucci.
Cashmere pants and blouse. She brings with her the clean, sharp tang of her favorite Guerlain perfume softened by a whisper of vanilla.
Toni, who lets Alba shop for her because she doesn’t care, is in a chocolate maxi dress. “It comes with an inbuilt bra,” Alba announces, “Which is the best part about it.”
I wear my usual, comfortable old jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’m so glad harvest is over and you can take a break.” Toni fills our glasses with Franciacorta.
We’re in Alba’s apartment at the Palazzo. Toni and I always stay here when we’re in Florence—neither of us has ever bothered to claim space of our own here.
Toni because she’s accustomed to orbiting between her sisters, and me because my home has always been Pietra Alta. Florence has never asked me to belong to it.
Alba, on the other hand, has made herself entirely at home.
She designed the apartment with intention.
Three bedrooms, a generous office, and a full theatre room—larger even than Nico’s space downstairs. Alba loves movies almost as much as she loves Valentino, and judging by the investments hanging in her closets, that love runs deep.
The staff has already lit the fireplace, flames licking softly against marble, and we’re stretched out on an overstuffed velvet sofa that swallows you whole.
This is, after all, the theatre of an Italian woman with refined tastes and a designer habit—there is no room here for ugly home-theatre excesses.
No cup holders
No plastic trays.
Just crystal champagne flutes balanced elegantly in hand, as God—and good design—intended.
“So, what are we starting with?” Toni asks, leaning her head against Alba’s shoulder as she reaches into the bowl of popcorn.
This isn’t microwave popcorn—nothing in Alba’s kitchen ever is. It’s been freshly popped in Alba’s popcorn machine, lavishly buttered, salted just right, and finished with truffle because restraint is apparently optional in this family.
“Bringing Up Baby,” Alba tells us.
The projector hums and flings a ragged beam of light onto the far wall.
Cary Grant’s perfectly knotted ties and Katherine Hepburn’s fearless laughter flickers to life.
“This is a masterclass in chemistry,” Alba observes.
Toni snorts. “This is a masterclass in chaos,” she counters, tossing a kernel across the room.
“Why don’t they ever just talk to each other?” Toni groans as Grant and Hepburn whirl through another misunderstanding.
Alba rolls her eyes. “Because then there’d be no movie.”
I grin, heart light. “And yet,” I point out, “they still fall in love.”
We decide finger food is the only reasonable choice for dinner, which—unsurprisingly—means pizza.
I order mine plain Margherita. Tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella never does you wrong.
Alba goes for diavola, extra nduja, unapologetically spicy. Toni, gets what she always does, pizza bianca—olive oil, garlic, and a creamy ricotta cheese sprinkled with shaved black truffles, which are in season right now and have come fresh from Piedmont.
As we steal each other’s slices of pizza, we watch Notorious.
Cary Grant again, and this time with Ingrid Bergman, wrapped in shadows and cigarette smoke, her eyes luminous as moonlight.
“Oh, but when he says he loves her.” Toni sniffles at the end when Devlin steals the love of his life away from Claude Rains’s Alexander Sebastian’s Nazi grasp.
We open a bottle of Alighieri Amaro to go with the tiramisu and start Casablanca, because any black-and-white movie marathon is incomplete without it.
“Or are you not that kind of woman?” Alba speaks along with Bogart.
“I know people always talk about the 'of all the gin joints' blah blah as being the great line, but for me, it’s always the last one,” Toni says sleepily.
“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” I declare in my best Bogie impression.
“Exactly.”
Toni’s head drifts into my lap; her hair fans out like spun silk.
Alba’s feet, clad in Chanel slippers, rest against mine.
The popcorn bowl sits forgotten, tiny white moons scattered across the rug.
In the dim glow of the projector, I glance at their profiles: Toni’s sharp cheekbones, Alba’s steady calm, and I realize how rare this tableau has become.
“I wish we did this more,” I murmur, voice hushed against the pulse of the film.
“We will,” Alba replies without hesitation, her tone forging an unbreakable promise. “We just…need to be in the same city more often.”
Toni lifts her head, a sleepy grin tugging at her lips. “Promise?”
“Promise.” I stroke her hair.
The adventures of a woman, during World War II, who doesn’t know which man she loves become the background as Toni sleeps and Alba asks me how I’m doing.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly.
“You want to talk about it?” Alba asks carefully.
I shake my head. “It’s about Nico and…Papà and….”
“You’re not ready,” Alba murmurs.
I nod. “I’m not ready.”
“Where are you sleeping tonight?” Alba asks.
I chuckle. “With Nico.”
“So, you’ve made some decisions at least,” she teases.
I let out a long breath. “It’s confusing. I’m in love with my husband and I’m scared that he’s never going to see me as I see him. He’s never going to want what I want.”
“Which is what?”
I let out a sad laugh. ”Everything. Love. Loyalty. Family. Children.”
“And you don’t think he can give you that?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Alessia, have faith, I think Nico will surprise you.”