13. Laney
LANEY
I was alone in the gallery when Vittoria found me.
The morning light came in through the tall windows, making the marble floor gleam. I'd been standing there for I don't know how long, looking at nothing. Sofia was with her tutor. Massimo had left for the city offices before I woke. The palazzo felt too big around me.
I'd come to the gallery because it was where nobody ever went.
The portraits on the walls were distant relatives, people who'd been dead for generations, and the furniture was the kind you weren't supposed to sit on.
It was the one room in this entire place where I could be alone without someone appearing to ask me a question I didn't have an answer to.
"Laney."
I turned. Vittoria stood in the doorway, her posture perfect, her hair swept back in a way that made me aware mine was only braided and already coming loose. She looked at me the way someone looks at furniture they're deciding whether to keep.
My stomach tightened. "Vittoria."
She came into the room without waiting for an invitation, her heels clicking on the marble. She walked to the window and looked out at the courtyard below, her shoulders relaxed like she belonged here more than I did.
God, I hated that. The ease of her. The way she moved through this house like it was already hers.
"I wanted to see how you were settling back in," she said eventually. Her tone was light, almost kind. It made my skin crawl. "After your time in Rome."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "I'm fine."
"Are you?" She turned to face me, and her smile was the kind that doesn't reach the eyes. "It must be difficult, coming back to a house that runs so smoothly without you. Costanza managed everything while you were gone. Sofia barely noticed you'd left. The whole family kept right on turning."
My jaw tightened. I could feel the heat rising in my face, the anger coiling in my chest, but I forced myself to breathe through it. She wanted me to lose my temper. She wanted me to snap at her so she could go running to Costanza and say I was unstable, unkind, unfit for this family.
I wouldn't give her that.
"If you came to insult me, you've done it," I said. "Was there something else you needed?"
Vittoria laughed softly, a sound like wind chimes. "You really don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
She tilted her head, studying me like I was something small and pitiful. "How replaceable you've become."
My hands curled into fists at my sides. "What do you want, Vittoria?"
"I want you to understand the truth." She moved closer, and I held my ground even though every instinct told me to step back. "While you were in Rome, playing at being an academic again, Massimo wasn't here alone. You do realize that, don't you?"
A constriction formed in my throat. "Aurelio was ill. The whole family was here helping."
"The whole family," she repeated, and her smile widened. "Yes. We were. All of us. Together. Long dinners. Long evenings after Aurelio went to bed. Massimo needed someone to talk to, and you weren't here."
I stared at her. My pulse kicked up, heat flooding my chest. But I forced myself to stay still, to keep my face blank. Don't react. Don't give her anything.
"You're implying something," I said. "Say it plainly or leave."
"I'm not implying anything." Vittoria's voice was calm, unbothered.
"I'm telling you what happened. Those nights you were in Rome — the dinners, the wine, the long evenings when everyone else had gone to bed — Massimo and I talked.
Really talked. Not the polite nothing you two exchange anymore.
We talked about real things. Things that matter. "
My stomach twisted. "That's not proof of anything."
"Proof." She laughed again, genuine this time. "Oh, Laney. You want proof. How very American of you. As if love — or betrayal — leaves a paper trail you can excavate like one of your Roman ruins."
I wanted to walk away. I wanted to leave the gallery and lock myself somewhere she couldn't follow. But my feet wouldn't move. I was stuck there, listening, hating myself for it.
"Fine," I said, and my voice came out harder than I meant it to. "If you're so certain something happened, prove it."
Vittoria's smile softened into something almost pitying. She reached out like she might touch my arm, and I jerked back before her hand could land. Her fingers fell to her side.
"All right," she said quietly. "I'll tell you three things. Small things. The kind of details only someone truly close to him would know."
I swallowed hard. "Go ahead."
"He sits up at night," she said, and her voice was soft now, almost gentle.
"After you've gone to bed. In your private rooms, in that chair by the window overlooking the courtyard.
He doesn't read. He doesn't work. He just sits there in the dark, staring at nothing, like he's waiting for something that's never going to come. "
My breath caught. I'd seen it once. One night I woke at three in the morning and found him in that chair, staring at nothing.
I'd told myself it was nothing. But hearing Vittoria describe it now — the image she painted — Massimo in the dark, sitting alone, unreachable — it shook me in a way that made my chest ache.
"That doesn't mean anything," I said, but my voice sounded thin.
"Doesn't it?" Vittoria's eyes stayed on mine. "I think it means he's unhappy. I think it means he's been unhappy for a long time, and you haven't noticed."
The words hit like a slap. I wanted to argue, to tell her she was wrong, but I couldn't. Because she wasn't. I hadn't noticed. I'd been so wrapped up in my own misery that I'd never stopped to wonder if Massimo felt the same way.
Like an idiot, I flushed all the way to my hairline.
"There's more," Vittoria said, watching me carefully. "He went to your dig while you were in Rome."
The floor seemed to tilt under me. "What?"
"The excavation," she said. "That trench on the family's estate.
The one nobody ever visits. The one the family laughs about behind your back.
" Her voice was careful, like she was handling something fragile.
"He went out there. Spent hours in that pit you've been working for years.
Hours crouched low over the trenches. You know how that work affects him — the way it always does.
His back seized. The same way it did years ago when he used to visit. "
The hurt she described — I knew that hurt.
I'd seen it happen in the early years, seen him try to straighten and have to stop, one hand pressed to his spine.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Massimo hadn't been to the dig in years.
Years. He never asked about my work. He patted my hand when I tried to tell him, kissed my forehead and changed the subject like I was a child talking about make-believe.
"I don't believe you," I managed.
"I was the one who tended him afterward," Vittoria continued, and there was something almost gentle in her tone now.
"He came back to the palazzo exhausted. Covered in dust. And I helped him.
I sat with him and tended the hurt. Brought him water and stayed with him while he tried to make sense of whatever he'd been looking for out there. "
My hands trembled. I shoved them behind my back, pressed my palms together hard enough that my knuckles hurt. "Why would he go there?"
"I think you know why." She paused, watching me. "He was looking for you, Laney. The version of you he used to know. The one who smiled at him. Before everything became so distant between you."
The words landed in my chest like stones. I felt them settle there, heavy and cold.
"He didn't tell you he went to the dig, did he?" Vittoria's voice was quiet. "Because he didn't trust you with it. Because the two of you don't talk about real things anymore."
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to call her a liar, to shove her out of the gallery. But I couldn't. Because the image she'd given me — Massimo at my dig, alone, searching through the dirt for something he'd lost — it wouldn't leave my head.
And worse, I believed it.
"There's one more thing," Vittoria said.
I didn't want to hear it. God, I didn't want to hear it. But I stood there anyway, rooted to the marble floor, waiting for the final blow.
"He has a scar," she said. "An old one, from when he was young. Before he became the man the family needed him to be. It's on his ribs, just below his heart. Small, maybe two inches long. You'd only see it if you were close enough to touch him."
A tightness seized my chest. I knew Massimo's body.
I knew every line of him, every mark. And yes, there was a scar there, faint and old, silvered with time.
I'd traced it with my fingers more times than I could count.
I'd asked him about it once, years ago, and he'd brushed the question aside with a smile and changed the subject.
I'd assumed it was something from childhood, something that didn't matter enough to press.
"He told me the story," Vittoria said, and her voice was almost a whisper now. "Late one night, when we were alone. He told me how it happened." She paused. "He trusted me with it, Laney. With the part of himself he never shows anyone. Not his family. Not even you."
I looked at her, and I could see it in her eyes — the certainty, the satisfaction.
She knew I'd believe this. She knew it would cut deeper than anything else she could say.
Because it was true. Massimo had never told me that story.
He'd never let me in that far. And now Vittoria was standing here, telling me she had something I didn't.
"You're lying," I said, but the words sounded hollow.
"Am I?" Vittoria's expression didn't change. "Ask yourself, Laney. When was the last time he told you something real? When was the last time he let you see him the way I have? When was the last time you had a conversation that wasn't about Sofia or the family or what time he'd be home for dinner?"
I wanted to hit her. I wanted to cry. I wanted to crumble right there on the floor and let the weight of it crush me. But I couldn't. Not in front of her. Not when she was watching me like a scientist watching a reaction she'd predicted.
I forced myself to take a breath. Then another. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs, but I made my face go blank. I pulled every scrap of control I had left and wrapped it around me like armor.
"None of that proves anything," I said.
Vittoria smiled. It was the saddest, most knowing smile I'd ever seen. "I'm not trying to prove anything, Laney. I'm just telling you what I know. What I've seen. What he's given me." She paused. "What you do with that information is your choice."
She turned to leave, and I should have let her go. I should have stayed silent. But the words came out anyway, sharp and cold.
"Get out."
She paused at the door, glancing back. For a moment I thought I saw something like regret in her eyes, but it was gone before I could be sure. "I'm sorry, Laney. Truly. I know this isn't easy to hear."
"Get out," I repeated, and this time my voice didn't shake.
Vittoria nodded once, a small dip of her head that might have been respect or pity or victory. Then she left, her heels clicking down the hall until the sound faded into nothing.
I stood there in the gallery, the sunlight still pouring in through the windows, the portraits of dead Lombardos staring down at me. The palazzo was still too big, still too quiet. My hands trembled. My throat was still tight. I felt like I was going to be sick.
I told myself she was lying. I told myself Vittoria was a manipulative, jealous woman who wanted what I had and would say anything to take it from me.
I told myself that Massimo loved me, that last night had meant something, that the way he'd reached for me in the dark was proof we were going to be okay.
But I couldn't stop seeing it. Massimo in that chair by the window, alone in the dark. Massimo at my dig, standing in the trench I'd spent years excavating, searching for the woman I used to be. Massimo with Vittoria, late at night, trusting her with pieces of himself he'd never given me.
God, what if it was true?
I pressed my hand to my stomach, trying to steady myself.
The intimacy last night — I'd thought it was a turning point.
I'd thought maybe we were finding our way back to each other.
But what if it wasn't that at all? What if it was guilt?
What if he'd reached for me because of what he'd done with her?
No. No, I wasn't going to do this. I wasn't going to stand here and fall apart over things Vittoria claimed without any real evidence.
She wanted me to believe there'd been an affair.
She wanted me to doubt my husband, to poison my own marriage from the inside out so she could step in and take my place.
I wouldn't give her that satisfaction.
But even as I thought it, even as I tried to pull myself together and walk out of the gallery with my head high, I felt the truth settling into my bones like cold water.
I believed her.