He looked away from her, yet his demeanor didn’t change. He was strong that way. “Where will you go?”

“Home. I’m taking Alessio and going back to America.”

Maurizio took a long drag from his cigarette, then looked up at her coolly. “No, you will not be taking my son to America.”

“Yes, I will.”

“No, I will not permit it. You are not in America, Eliana. You cannot take Alessio without my consent. And without my consent you would have to prove to a judge that you could give your son a better life in America. Unless you have some buried treasure I do not know about, I do not think that is possible. What will you do? Be a waitress? Maybe a secretary? You have no skills. You have no money. You have no insurance. How will you pay for Alessio’s health care? Be reasonable, Eliana. A judge in Italy will decide for Alessio, not you. A judge will never allow you to take him.”

Eliana just stared at him.

“You know I am right, Eliana. You know there are many foreign women living in Italy because they cannot take their children back to America. You have told me about them yourself. So you make your choice. You divorce me and live in Italy alone and try to find a job, while someone else watches your son, or you go back to America alone. Or you stay with me and have a nice home in the countryside and take care of our son. But these are the only choices you have, because I will not allow you to take him from Italy. It is not in his best interest.”

Eliana stood staring at him, as breathless as if she had just been slugged in the stomach. She could not answer him. He had her and they both knew it. Maurizio smiled at her sympathetically. “It’s not so bad, Eliana. I’m just doing what all men do. The problem is only with how you see things.” He ground his cigarette out in a glass dish near the bed. “You’ll get used to it, amore. Then you’ll be happy. Now be a good wife and come to bed.”

CHAPTER 4

“Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s’apprende.” Love is quickly caught in the gentle heart.

—Dante

Ross’s commute to work was less than fifteen minutes and could have been pulled from a travel book’s walking tour of Florence. He crossed the Arno at Ponte Vecchio, against the backdrop of the central landmark of Florence: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo, its roan dome rising above the city like a great matron. The Duomo was enigmatic to Ross, both majestic and peculiar in her green, rose and white marble, as unlikely as a gingerbread house built for God.

The Uffizi was just on the other side of the bridge.

The first tour Ross conducted concluded about two hours after it began. Francesca had followed along on his tour without interference, and afterward the two of them took coffee together to evaluate his presentation. She was pleased. She had only a few suggestions, minor ones, and pointed out his one mistake, attributing Fiorentino’s Musician Angel to Raffaello, which no one noticed but Francesca. “Don’t worry about it,” she said with a grin, adding in Italian, “These bus monkeys didn’t know their Donatello from their Bernini. You could have told them that Titian’s Venus of Urbino was a paint by numbers and they would have believed you.”