The captain’s voice crackled through the speakers, breaking me out of the thought.
“We’ll be landing in thirty minutes.”
I glanced out the window, and my breath caught. The clouds had thinned enough to catch glimpses of the land below — rolling hills, a patchwork of green and gold, a river winding like a silver ribbon through the earth. Italy.
Florence was our landing point, but that was just the beginning. We wouldn’t stay there — not with the crowds, the noise, the endless lines of tourists pressing in. No. She didn’t need to be jostled through a museum or stand under Michelangelo’s David with strangers breathing down her neck.
Kingsley had something else in mind.
We’d spend our first nights in a villa older than any of us — a historic building Bernini himself had designed, all carv
