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CHAPTER 1

Elysa

“W hat is this?” Dante looked through the papers in his hand and then at me.

“Divorce papers.”

“What?” He threw the offending documents on the antique coffee table in front of the couch where I sat.

“ Documenti del divorzio ,” I repeated, but this time in Italian. It was petty, but I was done trying to make it work with Dante. I had tried for a whole year, and I had nothing to show for it, not even his respect.

“I understand what they are, Elysa. I’m asking what this means?” He spoke slowly and with arrogance like I was the moron in this conversation. He’d used that tone with me throughout our marriage.

“You don’t speak Italian?”

“Not fluently. I was born in Italy but raised in New York.” It wasn’t my fault that my mother insisted we speak only in English and my father didn’t bother to have a relationship with me that required us to talk in any language .

He looked at me in disgust. “What the hell was my grandfather thinking asking me to marry you?”

“What it means is that I’m divorcing you,” I explained, forcing myself to relax despite my nerves as I sat in the living room of his penthouse flat in Centro Storico , the historic center of Rome. It was his flat. It never became ours. When I moved here from New York, from my beautiful, cozy apartment, giving it all up because my grandfather and his had made each other a promise, it was because I couldn’t say no to a man who was dying, a man who reminded me so much of my own Nonno. I’d thought I’d make a home with the young man Don Giordano said was one of the best he knew. He mustn’t have known very many young men because the Dante I’d gotten to know was nothing like his grandfather claimed. The man was aloof, arrogant, condescending, and ultimately my heartbreaker. But I couldn’t hurt Don Giordano, so I pretended that I was happy.

But now? Now, there was nothing left. No marriage to save. No Don Giordano to protect. Only a heart I had to heal.

“Why on earth would you do that?” He walked to the bar and poured himself a whiskey. I could see he wasn’t taking this seriously. He thought I was having a snit that he had to indulge.

“Because I know that you don’t think you and I can ever make it work as a couple,” I threw at him, preparing to tear my heart open and tell him that I’d heard him loud and clear when he was talking to his friend Dean last week.

He took a sip of his drink and then raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know that, cara ?”

Cara meant darling. I knew that even before I started to get better at speaking and understanding Italian since moving here. I was not this man’s darling.

“Because you said so, Dante.” I decided to look at him, see his beautiful face, those piercing blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the mouth that became absolutely stunning when he smiled, which he didn’t often do with me.

He frowned, looking confused.

“I heard you talk to your friend in Don Giordano’s library the night of the funeral,” I informed him.

His eyes flashed with anger. “Eavesdropping were you, little wife?”

“No, Dante, I was coming to the library to ask you if you’d like to say goodbye to your uncle and aunt because they were leaving.”

Instead, I’d heard every painful word he’d said.

“So, how’s life with Elika?” Dante asked his friend.

“Fantastic. I can’t believe how damn perfect it is,” his friend said with such longing that I felt jealous of this woman called Elika, who I didn’t know. “But it looks like your marriage is going well. Elysa seems like she’s devoted to you.”

What a word to use, I thought. Devoted. Not loving, not affectionate, but devoted, subservient. And I was, wasn’t I? I had walked into this marriage with the promise to myself that I’d do everything I could to make it work. Regardless of having to marry a man I didn’t know very well, to please a dying old man and honor the word of another dead one, my Nonno, I was going to be a good wife and partner. I was going to show Dante, who seemed ambivalent about marriage to me, that we’d be good together.

I may not have been raised in Italy as my mother took me to New York after she and my father divorced—but she’d been a devout Catholic and had raised me to believe when you married, it was for life.

Well, I had news for her. It wasn’t.

“She’s putting on a good act,” Dante said, and I knew that tone of his. It was a mixture of anger and disgust. He used it on me frequently, as if I’d somehow trapped him into marrying me. He could’ve said no to his grandfather.

“Act? Dante, you only have to take one look at her and see she loves you.”

I heard Dante’s harsh laugh. “ Dio mio , but she’s a good actress. Nonno gave her family their vineyard back for her to marry me. I may have married for the love of my grandfather. She did so for the love of money.”

I closed my eyes because the world swayed around me. That wasn’t it at all. Don Giordano was going to do that anyway, and he never used the marriage as a tool for my father to get back what our family had lost.

“Regardless, Dante, she loves you. Trust me on that,” his friend persisted, and I wished he’d stop.

Yes, I loved Dante. He was my husband, after all. But no love could withstand what we’d gone through, though I still kept dreaming like a fool.

“I wonder if we have to continue being married,” Dante said softly, crushing me. “Nonno is dead, and there’s no need to act anymore.”

“You sure?”

“Maybe. I don’t know . ”

“So, you’re not sure?”

Dante didn’t say anything.

“Anything going on between you and that lawyer of yours?” his friend asked.

Tears welled in my eyes. What? Was Dante having an affair? Oh no! But it made sense, didn’t it?

“Lucia and I are…well, we’re friends, you know that.”

Lucia Cambareri! She worked with Dante. She was a lawyer. I’d seen them together yesterday at the funeral and several other times. Had he been sleeping with her the whole of the last year? Had he come to our bed after he’d been with her?

“But you used to be lovers?”

“A long while back. She wanted more. I wasn’t ready. Sometimes, I wonder if she’d have made me a better wife.”

Nausea roiled inside of me.

“She seems like…well…a lawyer. Tough as nails. Is that what you really want in a life partner?”

“She’s a brilliant lawyer. Smart. Italian. More Italian than Elysa.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean demanded.

“Elysa was raised in New York. She’s American.”

“So am I.”

Dante laughed. “It’s just…we don’t fit, Dean. She works at a bistro serving food.”

“Remember how I thought Elika wasn’t good enough for me because she was a hotel maid?” his friend said.

I was liking this Elika woman more and more.

“That’s different, and you know it. Elysa and I are in a marriage of convenience. We are friendly, and that’s about it.”

“Have you been cheating on her with Lucia?”

“Fuck no! You know me better than that.”

I let out a breath of relief.

“But you want to,” his friend surmised.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know a lot.”

“I’m halfway through a bottle of Scotch, and my grandfather just died. So, yeah, it’s best to say I’m confused.”

“You confused about how you feel about your wife?”

“I don’t know what to say, Dean. We don’t set the bed on fire or anything; it’s okay. She’s not particularly experienced, though after I learned she was from New York, I thought she’d be.”

“I thought she was from a village in Piedmont.”

“That’s what I thought. She is…well, she was born in Italy but raised in New York. She’s a child, ten years younger than me. I don’t think we can make it in the long run.”

“You sure about this?”

“I’m sure about nothing right now except that my grandfather, my only parent, my closest friend, has passed away, and everything fucking hurts.”

I’d taken my broken heart and run from there and wept. No one had asked why I was crying. Don Giordano had just died, so it made sense that I was grieving, which I was, but I was also mourning the end of my marriage.

Dante looked away from me. “That was not a conversation for you to hear.”

“But I did. You want to be with Lucia. You find our sex life lackluster and?—”

“I did not say that.” He threw the glass of whiskey he was drinking against a wall. It shattered. He turned to face me. “I did not say that, Elysa.”

“Your exact words were,” I paused to take a breath because it was humiliating to repeat his censure of me, “ We don’t set the bed on fire or anything; it’s okay . You also mentioned how I’m not particularly experienced and that I’m a child.”

I hadn’t come to Dante a virgin, though he once told me Don Giordano thought so.

Before Dante, I’d had a boyfriend—we were both nineteen, and sex had been messy, awkward, and more about curiosity than passion. After that, there had been a couple more partners, but only because life had been full of other priorities—hospitality school, part-time jobs, pushing myself toward a future I was determined to build.

The truth was, I hadn’t met many men I actually wanted to get naked with.

But one look at Dante, and I thought, Oh, my lucky stars.

He was so damn handsome, so effortlessly magnetic, that resisting him had never been an option. And when we finally did make love…it had been amazing. Every time was. Because in those moments, he was mine—completely focused, completely present, completely with me.

How could I have known that didn’t mean the same for him?

It was proof, I supposed, of my own inexperience.

“You were not supposed to hear that, Elysa,” he thundered.

At no point was he saying he had not spoken the truth, just that I shouldn’t have heard it.

“But I did,” I repeated. “Are you saying that you didn’t mean what you said?”

It was a challenge, and Dante narrowed his eyes. “What game are you playing?

“No game, Dante. I’m all out of games,” I told him sadly. I was hurting. I was in pain, and he was arguing semantics. “Look, Dante, I am younger than you by a decade, and I understand why you think it can’t work between us.” He was thirty-four while I’d just turned twenty-five. I didn’t have the wherewithal to operate in the same league as Dante Giordano. I wasn’t like Lucia, confident, sophisticated, and sexy. I was just me, more comfortable in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt than in designer wear. I had to force myself to learn how to dress appropriately so I wouldn’t embarrass Dante when we went out as a couple.

He looked furious, and I couldn’t understand why. Was it because he wanted to be the one who asked for a divorce and was annoyed that I’d done it first?

“I didn’t intend for you to hear any of that,” he said softly, regret lacing his words. “I can see that it hurt your feelings, but that doesn’t mean you have to do something this rash.” He pointed to the divorce papers.

The condescending son of a bitch!

“Dante, I’ve already moved out of the flat.” I didn’t add while you’ve been in the office, probably with Lucia going through all that pesky after-death stuff one has to go through with a brilliant lawyer.

“ Che cazzo ! You’ve done what?”

I rose and brushed my sweaty hands on my jean-clad thighs. I’d been nervous about this conversation, but now all I felt was shattered relief. “I’m leaving. I ask you to go through the documents. I had Maura’s aunt prepare them.” Carmen DeLuca was a well-known divorce lawyer in Rome. “You’ll see I’m asking you for nothing .”

He sneered at me. “The prenup says that the marriage has to last for five years for you to get anything. Do you remember that?”

“And, since I’m asking for a divorce in a year, I get nothing. I know. I don’t want anything from you.” I bit my lower lip, wondering if I should say something about the vineyard, and then decided this was my last chance to get it all out. “Don Giordano was always giving the vineyard to Papa. He never talked to me about it or said that he expected me to sell myself into marriage for it. If he had, I’d have lost respect for him and….”

Dante stared at me, bewildered. If I weren’t in so much pain, I’d have enjoyed that confused look on his face. “How long were you standing there listening to a conversation not meant for you?”

I rolled my eyes, frustration burning through me. “For God’s sake, Dante. You said it yourself—now that Don Giordano is dead, there’s no reason for us to stay married. And here I am, handing it to you on a silver fucking platter, and somehow, I’m the one in the wrong? Worse, you’re acting like I’m some errant child throwing a tantrum."

I threw up my hands. “You want a divorce. You think our marriage is shit. You think our sex life is shit. So, what the hell is your problem? Would you rather be the one to ask for it? Is this some ego thing?”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Because that’s fine. If it makes you feel better, I can wait for you to do it. But I’ll be doing that while I’m not living here.”

He took a step back and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. I didn’t raise my voice, as that wasn’t who I was. I didn’t shout. I didn’t swear. But enough was enough. I’d been a good wife. I’d been a good daughter and granddaughter. I’d been good, and now I was done. Now, I was going to be selfish. Now, I was going to put myself first because the one thing I’d learned in my year of being with Dante was that no one else gave two shits about me to do that for me.

I picked up my backpack that was resting against the couch. I’d already moved my clothes and things to my friend and employer, Maura’s flat in Testaccio on Via Aldo Manuzio, close to the bistro that she owned and where I worked. Both Maura’s home and bistro, which she creatively (not) named Bistro Marmorata because it was on Via Marmorata, were a far cry from Dante’s fancy luxury flat in Centro Storico and reminded me of Brooklyn, where I used to live. As I healed from what this year had done to me, it would be nice to be with a friend in a part of Rome that felt a little like home.

“So, you’re just leaving,” Dante said as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, Dante, I’m just leaving. Look, I know you’re into Lucia, so…I mean, we’re not married, not really, so…feel free to date her or… whatever before the divorce comes through,” I offered lamely. How did a woman tell her husband to go ahead and fuck another woman while waiting for a divorce to be processed? Well, she did it poorly like I just had.

“Is it because you have someone and?—”

I raised my hand to silence him, and miraculously, he shut up. I must’ve surprised him more than I thought because, normally, Dante didn’t step away, didn’t listen, didn’t give in, he relentlessly pushed forward.

“Don’t try and find a reason for me leaving beyond the fact that our marriage isn’t working. I’m not happy. I’ve tried to make you happy, but I have finally realized that I can’t do that. Hearing you talk to your friend was a wake-up call, one that I desperately needed. Unlike you, I don’t have a future marriage partner candidate lurking around. There is no one else…no other man since I saw you.”

And now, I have to stop loving you and find my dignity and spine, which I let go of, hoping to make it work with you.