21. Laney
LANEY
My phone rang before breakfast.
I startled, spilling coffee over the edge of my cup and onto the counter in a spreading puddle.
Sofia was still asleep in the bedroom, her breathing soft and even through the half-open door.
The display showed Rosaria's name. I answered before the second ring, already feeling my pulse kick up in my throat.
"Rosaria?"
"Laney, cara." Her voice was tight, careful, like she was picking each word before she said it. "I wanted to call before you heard it somewhere else. Aurelio has taken a turn for the worse."
The apartment went quiet around me. Everything — the traffic noise from the street, the hum of the refrigerator, the sound of my own breathing — all of it faded into nothing. I set the cup down too hard on the counter. Coffee sloshed over the rim again. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that the doctors won't leave and Costanza is sleeping in a chair beside his bed.
" She breathed out slowly, and I could picture her standing somewhere in the palazzo with her hand pressed to her forehead the way she did when she was trying not to cry.
"It's happening, Laney. Soon. Maybe days. "
God, what had I gotten myself into? I wasn't part of that family anymore.
I'd walked away. I'd taken Sofia and left, and I shouldn't be getting this call like I was still someone who mattered to them.
But my hands were shaking anyway, gripping the edge of the counter to steady myself. "Thank you for telling me."
"There's something else." Rosaria paused, and the silence stretched out long enough that I knew whatever came next wasn't going to be simple. "The man outside your building is gone."
I blinked. Frowned. Tried to make sense of what she was saying. "Gone?"
"Yes. I checked with someone who would know. He's been pulled off. You don't have a shadow anymore, cara."
I didn't know what to say to that. I'd gotten used to him being there — the man who stood across the street and watched my door like I was worth keeping an eye on, like I was still someone the family needed to track.
Now he was gone and I didn't know if that was better or worse, if it meant I was free or if it meant they'd decided I wasn't worth the effort anymore.
"Did Massimo?—"
"I don't know who gave the order," Rosaria said, cutting me off gently but firmly. "I only know he's not there. I thought you'd want to know."
The relief and the confusion came at the same time, tangled up so tightly I couldn't tell which was louder or which I was supposed to feel. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose. "Okay. Thank you."
"One more thing." Her tone shifted again, went careful in a way that made my stomach drop and made me brace for whatever was coming. "Massimo went to the dig. Alone."
Everything in me went still.
He went to the dig. Massimo. To my dig.
He hadn't been out there in years — not since Sofia's sixth birthday when I still believed he might actually care about the work I was doing.
The image of him standing there among the trenches and the soil layers and the markers made my chest tighten in a way I absolutely did not want to examine.
I realized I was holding my breath and forced myself to let it out.
"Why?" The word came out sharper than I meant it to, almost a demand.
"I don't know, cara."
"Rosaria, come on?—"
"I really don't." She sounded sorry about it, genuinely sorry, but she wasn't giving me anything else. "I only know he went. But I thought you should hear it from me."
I wanted to ask more. I wanted to demand she tell me what he was doing, why now, what it meant that he'd gone to the one place that had always been mine and mine alone. But Rosaria wasn't going to tell me, and pushing wouldn't change that. I felt like an idiot for even wanting to know.
"Thank you," I said again, because I didn't know what else to say.
"Take care of yourself, Laney. And that beautiful girl. You're doing the right thing."
The line went dead before I could ask her what she meant by that.
I stood there with the phone still pressed to my ear like an idiot, staring at nothing.
The coffee had gone cold in the cup. Outside the window, Rome was waking up — the sounds of traffic and footsteps and someone shouting in rapid Italian in the street below.
Scooters and car horns and the rattle of a shop gate being pulled open.
It all felt very far away, like I was watching it through glass.
He went to the dig.
I set the phone down and wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold even though the apartment wasn't. My stomach was in knots.
I told myself it didn't matter. Whatever he was doing out there, it wasn't my business anymore.
He'd made his choice. He married Vittoria, stood up in front of the Church and made vows to her, and I'd sent him away when he came to Rome. That was supposed to be the end of it.
But God, I wanted to know why he went.
I wanted to call him. The need sat under my ribs like something alive, pushing at me.
I wanted to hear his voice and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing at my site after all these years of pretending it didn't exist. I wanted him to tell me it mattered.
That I mattered. That he'd finally figured out what he'd buried under all those years of silence and his mother's poison.
I wanted him to not be his family. I wanted him to be the man I married instead of the man he'd become.
My hand was on the phone again before I even realized I'd moved. I stared at the screen, at the call log with Rosaria's name still at the top. One button and I could pull up Massimo's number. One call and I could ask him myself.
Don't.
I shoved the phone away hard enough that it skidded across the counter and I had to grab it before it went over the edge. A shake ran through my hands. I turned back to the window and focused on breathing — in and out, slow and steady, like that would somehow fix the mess inside my chest.
The pregnancy made everything worse. Every emotion felt like it was happening right under my skin, sharp and immediate and impossible to ignore or push down the way I used to.
I was crying before I could stop myself, silent and furious and completely ridiculous, tears running hot down my face while Rome woke up outside and didn't care.
He went to the dig and I wasn't allowed to care. That was the reality. That was what I'd chosen when I walked away.
He married Vittoria. He stood there in front of the Church and he made that choice, made those vows, and it didn't matter that he came to Rome afterward.
He'd promised me he would never become this.
He promised, and then he did it anyway, just like all of them do — they say one thing and do another when the family calls and their mother pulls the strings.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, angry at myself for crying over him. Sofia would be awake soon and I couldn't let her see me like this, a complete mess over a man who'd chosen someone else.
The phone rang again.
I grabbed it without looking, thinking it was Rosaria calling back with something else she'd remembered. "Hello?"
"Laney, hey." Nate's voice was easy and familiar and completely American, so out of place in the middle of everything spinning through my head that I almost laughed. "Sorry, is this a bad time?"
I took a breath and tried to sound normal, like I hadn't just been crying. "No. No, it's fine. What's up?"
"Weird thing happened and I figured I should give you a heads-up.
" He laughed a little, uncertain. "Some guy showed up at the site asking questions about me.
Not about the work, not about the university, about me specifically.
Where I'm from, how long I've been in Italy, what my plans are, whether I'm planning to stay or go back to the States. "
My chest went tight. The cold feeling that had been sitting in my stomach spread out through my whole body. "What did he look like?"
"Uh, older guy, maybe fifties? Suit, nice shoes, the kind that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
Spoke Italian like a local but he had this way of standing that made everyone nervous, you know?
Like he was used to people doing exactly what he said without question.
" Nate paused. "One of the students said he had the look of someone connected.
I figured I should tell you in case it's related to everything going on with you. "
It wasn't the man from my door. I knew that immediately, with absolute certainty.
That man had stood across the street in an expensive jacket, smoking with bored patience, the kind Massimo's family sent when they wanted someone reminded of their place.
This was someone else. Someone asking different questions.
"Did he say what he wanted?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"No. Just asked his questions, wrote down the answers in a little notebook, and left. Didn't introduce himself, didn't explain why he was asking. But Laney, if this is going to be a problem for the site or for my work here?—"
"It won't be." I said it too fast, trying to convince myself as much as him. "I'll handle it. I promise."
"You sure? Because I don't want to get dragged into something I don't understand."
"I'm sure." I wasn't sure of anything, not one single thing, but I couldn't drag Nate into this mess any more than he already was. "Thanks for telling me, though. I mean it."
"Anytime." He was quiet for a moment. "Hey, you doing okay over there? You sound..."
The question hit me sideways, unexpected. I looked around the small apartment — the spilled coffee on the counter, the city outside the window, Sofia asleep in the other room, the life I was trying to build that kept getting interrupted.
"I'm fine," I said, and it was such an obvious lie that I almost laughed.
"Yeah, okay, sure you are." But he said it gently, like he knew better than to push. "Call me if you need anything, all right? I'm serious."
"I will. Thank you, Nate."
I hung up and set the phone on the counter.
A stranger asking after Nate. Questions about his plans, his history, whether he was staying in Italy.
Not the same man who'd been watching my building, which meant someone else was interested now.
Someone else wanted to know about the people in my life, and I didn't know who or why or what they were planning to do with the information.
God, I was in over my head. Completely. I'd thought leaving would make this simpler, that distance would put an end to the schemes and the watching, but it hadn't. If anything, it was getting worse.
The apartment was too quiet now that Nate had hung up. I wanted to pace but there wasn't enough room. I wanted to scream but Sofia was sleeping and Rome didn't care about my problems. I wanted Massimo, and hating myself for it didn't make it any less true or any easier to ignore.
He went to the dig. He pulled the man off my door. Someone was asking after Nate. He was doing something, making moves I didn't understand, and I didn't know what any of it meant or whether I was supposed to read anything into it or whether it even mattered in the end.
Because he still married her. That was the fact I couldn't get past, the thing that made everything else meaningless.
He still stood there and made vows to Vittoria Greco in front of God and his family and everyone who mattered in his world, and I was still the wife he'd buried under their silence and their schemes and ten years of wanting to be seen.
I pressed my hands flat against the counter and made myself breathe. In and out. Slow. Like a normal person who wasn't falling apart.
I wasn't going to call him. The decision settled in my chest, heavy and certain.
I wasn't going to ask why he went to the dig or what he was looking for.
I wasn't going to ask about the man or about Nate or about any of it.
I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I still cared, that I still wanted him, that some stupid part of me was still hoping he'd figure out how to choose me over them.
He made his choice when he married Vittoria. I'd told him to let them end it, to let the annulment go through. He stood up and said vows and became exactly what he'd promised me he'd never become.
That was my answer. That was all the answer I needed.
The sun was coming up properly now, spilling gold light across the kitchen floor and turning the spilled coffee into a dark stain I was going to have to clean up.
I had work to do today. Papers to review, notes to organize.
I had a whole life here in Rome that didn't include Massimo or his family or their schemes.
I just had to figure out how to actually live it instead of waiting for the phone to ring.
My phone sat on the counter where I'd shoved it, silent now and somehow accusing. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. One call. That's all it would take. One call and I could hear his voice and maybe — maybe — understand what he was doing, why he went, what any of it meant.
Don't ask him. Do not ask him.
I set the phone down, screen-side down so I wouldn't be tempted to look at it.
I wasn't calling. I wasn't asking. I wasn't giving him one more piece of myself to bury.
I was done.