I spent the rest of the week at the apartment and threw myself back into my original plan for my vacation as if I was not missing Raffa nearly every moment I wasn’t with him.
Even though I had almost nothing to go on, I endeavored to find records of my father and his relatives in the area. I knew his given birth name—Mariano Giovanni—even though he had changed it to John when he moved to America, and I remembered that he once mentioned going to the Uffizi on a school trip from his village, so I knew he had been raised in the countryside close to Florence. I did as much research as I could on online genealogy sites, but there was absolutely nothing linking John Stone to anyone in the country. So I went in person to the state archives office, and then, when that failed, I met with a priest at the Basilica di Santa Croce to ask about getting access to church records, which I had read were much more thorough. Though he was kinder than the official at the state archives, the priest informed me that unless I had a last name, there was almost no way he could help me. Mariano and Giovanni were both incredibly popular names, especially for the generation of men born during my father’s time.
A dead end.
One that didn’t surprise me but still hurt somewhere deep inside, where the longing to truly belong to this magical culture and country throbbed like a beacon.
Still, I found other ways to absorb and assimilate. I took a weeklong language class that I almost forgot I’d signed up to take, each session four hours in the morning and afternoon. It was an immersion class, and I left every day feeling as if my brain was stuffed with Italian cotton, verbs and conjugations coming out my ears. I had a mind for math and patterns, and I made the entire undertaking easier by breaking down conjugations into simple formulas and tessellations. All that work was worth it, because when I met Raffa for dinner after class on Tuesday and again on Thursday, he was shocked by my progress and insisted we spend both meals speaking in Italiano.
Outside of our two dinners, we only found time to take a joint run through the city to the top of Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset. We were both sweating profusely in the thick July heat, my fancy running clothes so saturated from my running the hilly steps that I might have been embarrassed if Raffa hadn’t led me to the stone railing overlooking the city center and wrapped his arms around my waist. He pressed his nose into the hair behind my ear and licked a stripe up my salty neck.
“Divino,” he murmured.
And just like that, I felt somehow radiant.
It was a kind of magic that he had to make me feel like he only saw the best version of me, even when I was at my worst.
There had been live music in the piazza, and artists splashing colors across canvas to replicate the famous view as the sun broke open on the rooftops and spilled rose gold light through the streets.
It was magnificent.
“I saw the real David today,” I told him as we stood looking out over the Arno and the glowing red rooftops.
“And what did you think of Michelangelo’s most famous creation?” he asked, even though he seemed more preoccupied with nibbling on my ear.
“Eh, I think the sight of you naked would be much more appealing,” I admitted.
He laughed softly right into my ear, and it was the loveliest thing I had ever heard.
“I will have to see what your verdict is after you have seen me as David is,” he teased in that smoky voice. “But in case you did not notice in the wine cellar, I am much better endowed than that poor bastardo.”
I laughed so hard one of the tourists beside us glared at me, but Raffa only shot them a glower and made a rude gesture only Italians would understand.
I had planned to go back to his palazzo for dinner, but he got a phone call on our run back into town and reluctantly asked me for a rain check.
As much as I wanted to spend more time with him, his business gave me plenty of time to explore on my own terms. Armed with my new passport and access to my own money again, I set out to enjoy everything Florence had to offer. I ate a sandwich from the famous All’antico Vinaio while I strolled through the Piazza della Signoria to look at the many statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi and concluded that the theme of female rape was a little too dark to be enjoyable. I walked through the leather market and laughed as various shopkeepers hit on me with a kind of irreverent jolliness that was endearing. I finally saw the Duomo in all its splendor, climbing the 463 ridiculously narrow steps to the innermost point of the dome to see the ornate ceiling mural The Last Judgment, painted in the 1500s. It was just as breathtaking as I’d always assumed, and not only because I’d just taken a steep climb.
A few classmates invited me out one night to have dinner at a pizzeria down the road from our little school, and I delighted in talking with people who felt a similar passione Italiana. The people of so few countries spoke Italian, yet our instructor had told us it was the fourth-most-taught language in the world. A German student wanted to learn because she was a fashion addict, a Guyanese couple because they had become passionate about Italian cooking, and an older Scottish man professed he was obsessed with Italian football and wanted to be able to speak the language of the players he spoke about on his podcast.
I truly believed that the ability to speak other languages was an attainable superpower. The first time I had an entire conversation with a shopkeeper in Italian without them switching over to English, I bought myself a gelato in triumph.
The only blight on my week, other than not seeing Raffa daily, was the fact that my father was entirely too nosy about my experience and upset about my lack of communication.
“How is France?” he asked me Friday afternoon over the phone. “You should video call us in front of the Eiffel Tower one day. Your mother would love that.”
“I’m trying to save on data,” I explained, but there was an ever-growing knot of toxicity in my gut each time I lied to him. “But how are you and Mom doing? Enough about me and my adventures.”
“Enough about them? You’ve barely told us anything.”
I could hear the frustration in his voice and the underlying edge of worry. I knew it was hard for them to give me this space, that they had tried to discourage me in every way they knew how—no financial support, emotional manipulation, incentivizing a summer off in Michigan by promising to rent a cabin on Gun Lake—but I knew it all came from love and loss. They had come close to losing me so many times when we were struggling to figure out my diagnoses and when my left kidney started failing, only to lose their other daughter when I was finally in a stable place. It was the kind of thing that changed a person fundamentally, and the tectonic plates in the foundation of our family had been shifting uneasily ever since.
“I told you I’ve made friends with people in my language class,” I repeated, keeping my calm even though I wanted to end the conversation and go back to my fantasy life. “About Greta and Fergus and Bibi and her husband, Ramesh. I told you that I love the food and the history, and I’ve already been to all the museums. What else do you want to know, Dad?”
He made a frustrated sound before silence fell, as heavy and smothering as a thick blanket.
“I miss you and Mom,” I told him honestly, letting the emotion that had simmered on low in my belly all day long surge painfully to the surface. “I miss you both so much that I try not to think about it because it makes me want to cry.”
His breath whooshed out in stark relief. “We miss you, Jinx. I’m having trouble sleeping wondering what could happen to you over there.”
“I am in France, not Syria. I got really sick from the plane, but I’m fine, Dad. Truly, I am happier than I’ve been in . . .” I couldn’t say “my entire life” because it felt mean somehow, so instead I said, “A long time. I feel like I was always meant to do this.”
I knew I was. Meant to be in this country, in this city. It filled something that had been vacant in my chest since childhood, a sense of belonging amid the summer-toned buildings with streets named romantic things like Via dell’Inferno and the wine windows where you could pass money through a small slot and receive a glass of wine to drink while you strolled. It was vibrant and loud and filled with so much history and culture I could live there forever and never know it all.
And it felt like home in a way that Ann Arbor just never had.
But how could I explain that to my father when he would have a heart attack knowing I’d even set foot in Italy?
“Dad,” I ventured carefully. “You know, you’ve never told me why you left Italy and renounced your citizenship.”
Silence.
“Dad?”
“Why are you asking about this right now?” he asked, weary and annoyed. “I have to be at work soon. I should let you go.”
“No, Dad, please. I’m asking because I’ve wondered all my life what could have driven you away from your home.”
Another pause, the edges of this one so sharp it felt like teeth at my throat.
“I suppose I could ask you the same thing,” he said finally, each word a bullet shot through the phone line. “Have a good day, Guinevere.”
I stayed frozen with my phone to my ear for five minutes before I could unfreeze my muscles enough to set it down. The small pile of postcards I’d started collecting from my explorations caught my eye, and I pulled them apart with my fingertip to stare at the images: Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Pitti Palace, Michelangelo’s slightly underwhelming David.
I flipped that card over with my fingernail to read what I had written that day.
Gemma,
Even in the tomblike hush of the museum, I know you would have burst out laughing seeing David in real life. He is just a boy, curly haired and slim, with fabulous definition because Michelangelo is a genius, but still, just a boy. And yet people come from all over the world to see him. After seeing so much of the art this city has to offer, I think I will stick to my appreciation of its food, architecture, and living—and much more handsome—men.
Xoxo,
Jinx
The postcards were new. But I had started writing to Gemma the day after my parents told me she was dead, and I wasn’t sure I would ever stop. She had emailed me throughout her own travels through Europe, and I still had the message she’d sent the day before she died.
Just as she had been in real life, writing to her was a direct link to my sanity. She was still my cheerleader, urging me to experience life, to make mistakes and get messy because even when it hurt, you had a good story to tell.
And Gemma had been a masterful storyteller.
Which was what made her such a fucking good liar.
It hurt to know I was channeling that part of her along with her more admirable characteristics, but I was ruthlessly unable to give up on this dream.
Especially when it now included Raffaele Romano.
There was a quote by the Italian poet and translator Petrarch that I had written into every journal I had kept for the last few years: “The more we live, the more constellations we discover.”
The more I grew to know Florence and Raffa, the more questions I had about each and the farther down this path I felt compelled to travel.
I wasn’t sure anything could stop and make me turn back now.
A horn honking outside my window drew my attention away from the postcards. I checked my phone screen and winced because I’d had a short run after my last day of language class, and I needed a shower before I could get ready for the charity event at Pitti Palace with Raffa that evening.
Another honk, this one a long, obnoxious blare.
I stopped halfway to the bathroom, something drawing me toward one of the big windows so I could lean out and look at the street.
Laughter frothed over when I saw Raffa’s Bugatti out front, illegally parked in a way that took up almost the entire narrow street. He had his suited forearms crossed over the roof of the car as if he had been waiting for me for ages, and he checked his watch dramatically at the sight of me.
“About time,” he called up to me, amusement tamped down in his tone. “Vieni, Cenerentola! Your carriage awaits.”
I laughed again. “If I’m Cinderella, does that make you Prince Charming?”
“Mmm,” he pretended to muse, uncaring of the two cars piling up behind him and the small crowd of people watching our interaction. “In that case, perhaps it is better to say that you are Kore and I am Pluto.”
“I like that more,” I agreed, crossing my arms over the wrought iron railing of the Juliet balcony. “I don’t suppose you have any pomegranate we could have for dessert?”
His grin creased the tanned skin beside his eyes and mouth, those uncharacteristically sharp canines flashing in the sunlight, his hair as darkly bronze as that of a sculpture of the god of the underworld excavated from the past.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I was currently living in the most beautiful place in the world, so that was saying a lot.
“I think something could be arranged,” he said. “Now, come. We do not have much time before we have to arrive.”
“Clearly, I am not ready,” I told him, gesturing to my damp tank top and running shorts.
Carmine had showed up with most of my things the day after I’d moved into the apartment, though I noticed not everything had made its way from Raffa’s house. It was hard not to hope that it was because he still expected me to spend a lot more time there.
“No, but you cannot prepare properly here. Just take your phone and come, cerbiatta.”
“Bossy,” I called as I turned into the room to grab my things.
“I am a god,” he retorted, making me snort.
When I met him at the car, there was a backup five cars deep behind him, and someone at the end of the line was yelling obscenities at him in Italian.
“Let’s go,” I said, opening the door to slip inside.
But Raffa was suddenly there, pressing me into the door so that it closed again. He spun me by the hip to face him and then slid one hand under my hair to cup the back of my skull and the other to lift my leg up around his hip. Again, I was balanced only by his grace, wrapped like a vine around him.
I didn’t complain even though we were in public, watched by those drug-dealing teens who had actually been quite sweet to me, and yelled at by angry drivers. It all faded away the moment his hands were on me. All I could see were those pale-brown eyes, luminous as sunlight trapped in amber.
“Is that how you are going to greet your consort, Kore?” he asked me, the words winding around me, another form of bondage.
“Kore was a virgin maiden stolen from a field of flowers by Pluto,” I reminded him. “If you want me to greet you like that, I think a slap might be more appropriate.”
His chuckle was all smoke. “Proserpina, then. How would she greet her husband?”
I tipped my chin up just as he curled over me, shielding me from the crowd.
“Like this,” I whispered, before closing my lips over his and sliding my tongue into his mouth.
He tasted like dark chocolate, rich and slightly bitter. I hummed at the flavor and plastered myself even closer to him until I was trying to climb him like a tree.
Finally, he broke away with something that was half chuckle, half moan. “That is exactly how I expect to be greeted from now on, capisci?”
“Pidocchio!” someone yelled from right behind us. “Che cazzo fai?”
Scumbag. What the fuck are you doing?
I jumped, but Raffa was already turning, pressing me back into the car like a human shield. I peeked around his shoulder to see a balding, middle-aged man with hairy knuckles gesture rudely at us.
Seemingly unperturbed, Raffa crossed his arms over his chest and coolly asked, “Ma perche non ti fai i cazzi tuoi?”
Why don’t you mind your own business?
“Jesus, Raffa, let’s just go,” I hissed, tugging on the back of his expensive blazer.
He did not move, not even when the angry man stormed right up to him and drilled a finger into his chest.
“Faccia di merda, vaffanculo!” he shouted, spittle flying as he glared up at the much taller man.
“C’è una signora presente,” Raffa told him calmly, but I could see that somehow he’d grabbed the man’s finger and had twisted it nearly back to his wrist. “Bada a come parli.”
There is a woman present. Watch your mouth.
“Raffa, it’s fine,” I insisted, but broke off when the man spat, “Chi? Quella puttana? La pagherò cinque euro.”
Who? That whore? I’ll give you five euros for her.
I closed my eyes for a second.
Oh no.
I opened them again when Raffa abruptly moved off my body. He had the other man by the throat of his shirt, pushing him a few feet to press against the wall surrounding the Fortezza da Basso. I could see the corner of his mouth moving even though he spoke too quietly for me to hear. Before I could blink, his hand was in the man’s pocket, wrenching out a wallet and then a card from within it. He shook it gently in the man’s purpling face and then pocketed it himself.
He stepped back, and I heard him say, “Capisci, Enrico?”
The man, presumably Enrico, nodded, the color draining from his face as he stared unblinking up at Raffa. “Mi dispiace, signore. Mi dispiace.”
Raffa gently slapped his face. “Ricorda solo quello che ho detto.”
Just remember what I said.
He turned on his heel, waved at the few locals gawking at him, and then whistled as he walked back toward the car. When he caught my eye over the hood, he inclined his head.
“Should we go, then?”
I nodded, struck dumb by the display, and slid bonelessly into the interior.
It was only when we were well on our way to Raffa’s palazzo that I found the words to say, “Well, that was intense.”
Raffa’s mouth was flat, and his hands were white knuckled on the wheel.
He didn’t respond.
“Do you usually deal with conflict like that?” I teased, but the joke fell to the floor of the car in the heavy air.
His fingers squeaked as he curled them tighter around the leather. He flinched just slightly when I gently placed my hand on his tensed thigh.
“Raffa,” I murmured. “Are you okay?”
“What he said to you was not right,” he said through gritted teeth, eyes flashing to mine just long enough for me to see the anger still burning there.
“No,” I agreed. “But I am not a whore, and him saying the words didn’t make me believe them.”
He made a noise of frustration in his throat. “Maybe in the US men do not deal with insults like this, but here? It is the worst insult for a someone to say such things about a man’s mother, sisters, or ragazza.”
“Ragazza,” I repeated, because it could mean “girl,” but in this context it usually meant . . . “Is that what I am, your girl?”
He let out a sharp, almost barking chuckle before most of the tension dissolved in his big frame, his thick musculature no longer like granite beneath my hand. When he reached for my fingers, I offered them to his hold and watched as he placed a kiss in the very center of my palm.
“You are not an idiota, Vera. Do you think I buy new wardrobes and carry sick women to the bathroom if I do not want them to be my girl? If a part of me had not already considered you mine?”
I smiled, because the compliment was so him. Condescending to start, with the sweetest finish tinged in primal possession. It was an addictive cocktail I wanted to drink until the end of time.
“I like the sound of being yours,” I told him boldly, running my thumb over his bottom lip, loving the contrast of the silk against his stubble, almost a short beard now. “But for the record, I do not need you to protect my honor.”
“For the record,” he countered as we pulled through the automatic gates into the courtyard of the palazzo, “I will protect you from anything that comes for you in any way that it comes.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he placed our joined hands over it. “No, Guinevere. This is the kind of man I am, so this is the kind of man you must accept.” He paused, mouth flatlining. “For at least the next four weeks.”
I stared at him for a long moment, and he let me, his own gaze unwavering on mine. There was a scar on his chin, white beneath the black stubble, that I wanted to trace with my finger, and a cowlick in his wavy hair that constantly caused an errant piece to fall over his forehead in his eyes. Only two weeks of knowing him and I felt as if I had memorized every beautiful aspect of his face, the exact color of those maple-brown eyes and the curve of each thick, slashing brow, the mobility of his smiles and the variation of his glares.
Yet I did not know much beyond the facade.
I did not know what he did for a living, exactly, or where he had grown up. I knew he had sisters and a best friend named Leo, along with a motley crew that seemed to cycle through his palazzo as they pleased, each one a hybrid of friend and employee. I knew he could be cold and domineering but also secretly, achingly generous and kind.
I knew that if I let myself see beyond the beautiful veil of his face, I could fall in love with this man.
Even if what I found was darker than what I’d known.
Hadn’t he called himself Pluto instead of Prince Charming?
Did it matter that the hero who had saved me my first day in Tuscany could be so much more complicated than a two-dimensional stereotype?
There was a huge gap between the hero and the villain, and most people occupied the gray space within.
In fact, I couldn’t delude myself into ignoring how arousing it was to see him stand up for me like that. To know that one insult against my honor could bring him to such violence was almost intoxicating. That he could curb that same tendency with me and be so tender only multiplied its effect.
“Okay,” I said, curling my hand around the sharp edge of his jaw, fingers digging into the hinge to bring him toward me for a kiss. “I can accept it for four weeks or four decades. It actually makes me feel safe.”
When I pulled away from our brief embrace, his eyebrows were raised and his tone wary when he said, “I broke the man’s finger.”
I winced. “I figured by the sound it made. And the angle.”
His eyes were narrowed, and one thigh jittered up and down in an anxious motion. “I threatened him.”
“Yes,” I agreed, wondering why he was pressing on this bruise, thinking it was my wound when it was clear it was his own.
One hand went into his pocket to grab the card he’d stuffed there. He held it up so I could see that it was a driver’s license of one Enrico Tornei.
“I told him I was taking this in case I changed my mind and decided that a broken finger wasn’t enough of a lesson.”
I blinked. “Um, just out of curiosity, what would have made you change your mind?”
Raffa put the license back into his pocket before reaching out to palm my throat, thumb rubbing over my pulse point. I’d never been held like that before. It felt proprietary. A necklace of ownership.
My pulse kicked into a sprint, and my chest tightened.
I liked it.
“Your reaction,” he said. “He is lucky you are made of sunshine. If you had shed one tear or voiced one misgiving, I would be dropping you off and going to pay Signore Tornei a visit.”
“Raffa,” I said, my tone a mangled mess of amusement, exasperation, and a little awe. “You can’t just . . . assault people.”
“I can if they hurt your feelings.”
I shook my head. “Who are you, even?”
Finally, the edge of his firm mouth curved slightly into the little lopsided smile I was growing addicted to, the look of reluctant amusement more attractive than most people’s full-blown grins.
“Raffaele Romano, the god of Firenze’s underworld, remember?”
I laughed, leaning into his grip on my throat in a way that made my nipples hard as I sought his mouth. “All hail Rex Infernus,” I teased.
He frowned, hand shifting so he could lift my chin. “Latin?”
“Another name for Pluto,” I said with a little shrug. “It was always my favorite. It means ‘King Below.’”
“King Below,” he echoed. “Fitting. E stasera sarai la mia regina.”
And tonight, you will be my queen.
