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The wine was simpler than the Brunello we’d tasted earlier, but it had a charm all its own. It was fresh and bright, with notes of red berries and wildflowers. It tasted like summer.
Later, as we walked back to the car, I watched her out of the corner of my eye. The sun was setting, casting the hills in shades of orange and gold, and she looked... at peace. But I knew her well enough to seethe cracks beneath the surface, the weight she still carried.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked quietly.
“About what?”
“Your father. What happened between you two?”
She shook her head, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Not right now. I just want to enjoy this.”
“Fair enough.”
As we drove back toward Siena, the faint scent of wine still on our breaths, I promised myself I’d do whatever it took to make her feel like she belonged—not just to me but to this world. Because I’d just realized that while I’d almost lost her, she’d been losing parts of herself long before we met. And I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
THIRTY-TWO
Elysa
The first time I saw the photos, I was standing in the middle of the bistro’s kitchen, my hands coated in flour from rolling out the dough for fresh focaccia, which I’d become pretty good at making. I was hoping to serve it to Dante and show off my skills.
Sofia came rushing in, her face pale. She held her phone out to me like a live grenade.
"Elysa," she said urgently. "You need to see this."
I wiped my hands on my apron and took the phone. I skimmed the headline, my pulse barely flickering at the words in Italian.
Dante Giordano’s Secret Affair with Lawyer Lucia Falcone: Scandal Rocking the Giordano Empire.
I exhaled sharply through my nose. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Then I saw thephotos.
There was one of Dante and Lucia at a bar—taken from an angle that made it look intimate, but I could tell from the way his shoulders were inclined that he’d probably been leaning away from her. Another of her laughing too brightly, touching his arm in that possessive way that women like her did when they wanted to be noticed.
And then there was the photo that had been taken on a train.
That one stopped me cold—not because it was scandalous, but because I recognized it immediately.
It was from the trip we had taken to Piedmont together.
In the picture, Lucia was sitting beside Dante, leaning forward just enough to make it look intimate. But I knew exactly when it had been taken. They were sitting with his whole team. It wasn’t just the two of them.
Now, cropped and manipulated, it looked like something entirely different. Something designed to hurt him.
I gripped the phone tighter, heat rising to my cheeks.
“This is bullshit,” I muttered sharply.
“Is he…is he?”
“No, of course not. You’ve met him. Does he look like the type who’d ever cheat on his wife?”
Sofia shrugged. “Men will be men,si?”
“Well, he’s not that type of man,” I said emphatically.
“Let me see.” Maura held out her hand. I handed her Sofia’s phone.