Page 71 of The Honest Affair

Chapter Seventeen

Matthew

Nina was quiet for the entire drive back to Florence. This time, I didn’t press her to talk, sensing she needed a minute to process. It’s not every day you introduce yourself to the daughters of your married former lover. Most people would rather jump off a moving train.

I was proud of her. I was. She looked her mistakes in the eye and took it on the chin like a champ. But I couldn’t lie to myself either. Seeing that farm and the way Nina’s gaze traced lovingly over its worn interior and admittedly picturesque grounds, sick trees and all? Listening to her all but offer to buy the damn place, to keep that part of her life forever? It was hard. More than hard.

I had my own relationship with this country. With Naples, and parts of Rome, where my grandmother was from, and Sicily, where I was stationed. Before today, I’d dreamed countless times of visiting the land of my ancestors with the woman I loved, sharing in its culture and history with her, making the kinds of bonds that last a lifetime, all swimming in what Italians called la dolce vita: the sweet life.

But today made me want to get the hell out of Italy. Take Nina someplace else. But not back to New York either. Somewhere we could start fresh. Where we could maybe lose the ghosts of our pasts and get a real chance at a future together.

Jobs. Family. Secrets. None of that seemed to matter to me anymore. All I wanted was freedom. For her. For me. For us, together.

But here she wanted to anchor herself to those ghosts for Olivia’s sake.

Or maybe her own?

I shook off the idea. It was jealousy, plain and simple. Nothing more.

Still. She was the one who brought up secrets on the way to the farm and asked for mine without offering any of hers. And while I still believed everyone had rights to their own, it did make me wonder what she might be hiding. I wanted to believe the time for secrets between Nina and me had passed, but I wasn’t a fool. I’d hurt her. She had plenty of reason to hold things back.

So it wasn’t a huge surprise when we reached the pensione, and Nina dawdled a minute outside the two rooms we had paid for—one of them still completely unused. Then she asked quietly if she could have some time to herself.

I tipped my head. “You sure, doll? You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want.”

Nina nodded. “I’m sure.”

She fingered the edges of my jacket for a moment like she was considering pulling me close. But then she released them.

Part of me wanted to fight it. Wanted to wrap my arms around her and make her accept that she had a partner whether she wanted one or not. But that’s not partnership. That’s force. I’d decided back in December that I would do whatever I could to show Nina I wasn’t going anywhere. That if she needed a champion, she had me. On her terms, not just mine.

And right now, Nina needed some space. Well, that was all right. I had some questions of my own that needed answering.

“I’m going to walk, then,” I said as I delivered a quick kiss to her cheek. “Stretch my legs. I’ll be back in time for dinner around eight.”

“Don’t hurry,” she answered, then slipped into the room and closed the door.

* * *

“Mattia Zola?”

“Sono io.” I stood from the small chair as the door to the office of Silvana Ruggeri opened.

Ruggeri, a chief prosecutor in Florence, was an attractive, if slightly intimidating woman that reminded me a lot of the female Marines I had known in the service. Unflinching.

“You’re very persistent,” she said as she locked her office door. “The secretary said you were waiting for the last hour and a half.” She turned and looked me over. “You look like your cousin when I knew him. Yes, I can see the resemblance.”

I tipped my hat. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

But Ruggeri wasn’t flirting. The opposite in fact: this woman was hard as nails.

As soon as I’d left the hotel, I’d called my cousin Marcello, a detective with the polizia di stato in Naples, about Giuseppe Bianchi’s death. If the girls were right and some kind of investigation happened, there should be a record of it. It had been a pure stroke of luck that the investigator assigned to the case still worked in Florence—and happened to be a friend of the family.

“Zola told me you wanted to know about the Bianchi case?” she asked, referring to my cousin much the same as people did me back home—by our shared last name.

I followed her into the main stairwell of the old building. Our footsteps echoed down the steps.

“I know it’s a long shot, but I’m only here a few more days. I spoke with his daughters today, and they had some interesting things to say. I wondered if you could corroborate.”

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