“Puts other royals to shame,” Celeste whispered back. “Even the Hapsburgs managed only what, six hundred years?”
Jessica paused to admire her mother’s olive skin bronzed from years doing geological fieldwork, her blond hair proudly streaked with gray—still a beauty even in her mid-fifties. No wonder their tour guide Nico kept staring at her.
Catching her own reflection in a window, Jessica had to admit that she’d gotten her good looks from her mom. Almost a mirror image of photographs she’d seen from when her mom and dad got married. Jess hoped she’d look so good in middle age, but a part of her doubted she’d even live that long. Just making it to twenty-six was an accomplishment.
“A fortification has stood on this mountaintop, at the western edge of the Chianti region, for time beyond history.” Nico smiled at an elderly couple, the only other people in their small tour group. “The original foundations are built atop ruins that date back thousands of years. The wine cellars are built in three-thousand-year-old Etruscan caves that burrow deep into the mountain below us.”
In front of Jessica, one particular dagger caught her attention—bejeweled with rubies and sapphires, its glitter hypnotic. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered under her breath.
Nico, the tour guide, heard her and smiled. “Ah, the Medici dagger. A gift to the Baroness Ruspoli by the Medici family in 1434 following the Ciompi revolts in Florence, for their support in defeating the Albizzi family.” He paused, allowing the group to have a closer look. “In the next room,” Nico continued in a loud voice, walking around the corner, “we move up through the centuries…”
Jessica stopped to look out the window. Rolling mountains stretched into the blue distance. Dense green forests covered the landscape, of course with groves of olive trees and iconic cypress standing at attention, but also oak, juniper, and thickets of fir trees amid the bursting lines of grape vines. Nothing like the dusty roads and baked orange hills most people imagined of Tuscany. More like the mountains of the Catskills in upstate New York where she grew up, where her family had their own cottage, or did have, far back in time. Jessica pushed a memory from her mind, of a face disappearing into a black hole ringed in white.
Celeste stood behind Jessica. “So when can I meet Ricardo?” she asked. “Is he coming out to meet us? Is this the big secret?”
Her mother had flown in from JFK and landed the previous morning at Fiumicino, Rome’s main airport. Jessica had said she had a special surprise.
Jessica took a deep breath. “No, you’re not going to meet Ricardo. That’s over.” She couldn’t tell her mother the real reason she dragged her out here. Not yet.
“Over?”
“Over. I broke up with him.”
“You’re a wandering nomad, you know that, Jess?” Her mother’s lips pressed tightly together. “When are you going to settle down?”
“Settle?” Jess clucked. “Mom, please…I’m happy. I like my life.”
Celeste winced, crinkling her nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
Jess exhaled, silently counting to five. Maybe this was a mistake. “It’s okay,” she muttered, turning from the window. She followed the tour guide into the next room, finding row upon row of muskets, revolvers, and a whole range of everything in between.
Celeste came up behind Jess and caught the look in her eye. “Your favorite,” her mother whispered, “guns.”
Jess contained herself this time, trying to ignore the passive aggressive tone. “I’m done with all that,” she whispered back, but they both knew it wasn’t true.
“The Ruspoli family were experts in weapons, building many of these themselves,” Nico explained, seeing all four of his tour group had made it into the room. “From the Dark Ages, through the Renaissance and up to the late 19th century, the Ruspolis operated their own gun smithy. Renowned the world over for their precision weapons, they were major suppliers of the Genoese crossbowmen that signaled the end of armed aristocratic knights in the Middle Ages.”
Celeste pursed her lips and changed topics. “So what did you want to talk to me about at brunch?”
Jess sighed. It had taken three glasses of prosecco at brunch for her to bring up her problem, but she was interrupted by the announcement of the start of the crypt tour. Jess gulped down the remainder of her fourth glass of wine and put it down on a shelf near the entrance. She was drunk, just as she'd hoped she would be. Pulling her mother away from the other people in the tour group, she said under her breath, “I’m in trouble.”
Celeste knitted her eyebrows together. “What kind of trouble?”
“The kind that involves me going to jail.”
3
ROME, ITALY