Chapter 1 - Arrival in the Eternal City

EVAN

The city greets me with heat and stone and a sense that everything here existed long before I did and will keep existing long after I’m gone.

Rome isn’t subtle about herself. She doesn’t build up slowly the way some places do. She hits all at once—bright sunlight reflecting off pale stone, horns blaring in impatient bursts, the smell of exhaust and espresso and something sweet I can’t name drifting from an unseen bakery. The air moves in pockets: one breath hot and dusty, the next carrying a cool draft from somewhere shaded and ancient.

I step out of the terminal, and for the first time in months, my chest loosens just enough for me to feel it. A breath that doesn’t hurt going in. It’s not relief exactly, but it’s less pressure, less constant ache. A slight softening at the edges.

Maybe that’s why I said yes to this job so quickly.

Maybe that’s why I packed my bags before Leah had finished asking if we could talk.

“Signore?” A taxi driver lifts a hand, his wrist lined with faded ink. “Taxi?”

He says it like he already knows where I’m going. Like everyone here expects me to belong somewhere.

I nod and slide into the back seat. The interior is warm, vinyl sticking faintly to my palms when I brace for the lurch of traffic. A strand of some old Italian ballad plays quietly from the radio, warbling beneath the sound of horns.

“Indirizzo?” he asks.

I tell him the address of my temporary apartment, then add, “I’m here to work on the Ponte delle Arti restoration.”

His eyes flick up to the mirror. “Ah.” He whistles softly. “Beautiful bridge. Old bridge. Too many stories. Dangerous to restore.”

He laughs, but there’s something knowing in it.

We pull away from the airport, and the roads narrow, the billboards giving way to buildings that look like they’ve watched a thousand lives come and go. Graffiti curls over old stone like new vines on old trees. Laundry flaps from balconies. A woman in black waters plants from the third floor, droplets glittering as they fall.

Rome feels loud, but it’s not just volume. It’s layers. Languages stacked on top of each other. Arguments that sound like love. Love that sounds like arguments.

I stare out the window and feel, absurdly, like I’ve stepped into a life that doesn’t belong to me. My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Leah.

I know it’s her before I even look. Something in my body recognizes the vibration. Six years of marriage will do that to you; your nervous system learns another person before your heart does.

I don’t check the message. Not yet.

Outside the window, we cross a smaller bridge, not mine, not yet. People lean against the railing, looking down at the Tiber. A couple kisses like the rest of Rome has gone blurry. A kid throws something into the water and watches it drift.

I press my tongue to the back of my teeth, fight the impulse to take a picture and send it to Leah with some caption like Wish you were here.

I don’t. It would be a lie.

We turn into a narrower street where the buildings lean toward each other like they’re sharing secrets over the cobblestones. The taxi slows to navigate around a group of tourists blocking half the road. The driver curses under his breath, then catches my eye in the mirror and grins, as if to say, This is Rome, what can you do?

My building is three stories high, sand-colored, with a faded green door and a balcony overflowing with potted plants someone clearly loves. The stone around the entrance is worn smooth at hip height where generations of people brushed past.

Inside, the stairwell smells like old wood and cleaning solution. My suitcase wheels clack against the steps as I drag it up to the second floor. The key turns with a stubborn twist.

The apartment is small, but sunlight spills across the floor, making it look generous. High ceilings, pale walls, terracotta tiles cool under my shoes. There’s a small kitchen with mismatched mugs and a narrow stove, a table with scars and water rings, a sofa that has seen better days, and a desk under an open window.

I cross to that window first.

A breeze pushes the curtain inward, warm and carrying the clatter of dishes from the café below, the distant whine of a scooter, someone laughing too loudly three streets away. From here, I can see rooftops and chimneys and a sliver of sky that’s too blue to feel real.

I rest my hands on the sill and let the air hit my face.

I’m here, I tell myself.

I did it. I left.

It doesn’t feel like victory. It feels like stepping out on a bridge you helped design and wondering if you miscalculated somewhere.

My phone buzzes again. I pull it from my pocket and look this time.

Leah:

Did you land okay? Please tell me you’re safe.

There’s a tiny ache in my chest. Not the crushing guilt I’ve grown used to. Something smaller, quieter. A reminder that she still worries about me even when I don’t know what to do with us.

I type back:

Landed. I’m okay. Apartment’s decent. I’ll call you later.

No I miss you.

No I wish you were here.

My thumb hesitates above the screen, but I hit send anyway.

I set the phone down on the table beside the old wooden chair and open my suitcase. Folding clothes into strange drawers is a ritual I’ve done in too many cities for too many projects, but this time it feels different.

This time, I’m not just leaving for work. I’m leaving because I didn’t know how to stay.

Our last conversation before my flight replays uninvited.

Leah, standing in the doorway of our bedroom, arms wrapped around herself. “Evan, we can fix this, can’t we? We always used to fix things.”

“Not everything is a broken pipe or a misaligned beam,” I’d said, then hated myself for it when her face fell.

I should have apologized. I didn’t. Instead, I checked my email, pretended I needed to confirm my itinerary.

The clock on the wall here says I’ve got an hour and a half before my project briefing at the municipal Restoration Office. Enough time to shower, change, rehearse the version of myself that looks competent and put together and not like a man whose marriage is fraying slowly at the edges.

When I leave, the late afternoon light has deepened, turning everything a shade warmer. People linger in doorways. A child cries, is soothed. Somewhere nearby, a radio plays something upbeat that doesn’t fit the way my chest feels.

The Restoration Office is in a building that smells like paper has been breeding in it for centuries. The lobby is tall and echoing. Upstairs, offices are full of files and rolled maps and people who’ve devoted their lives to making sure things don’t fall down or crumble.

I know their language. Beams and loads and tolerances. Things that make sense.

A project coordinator named Marco meets me with a handshake that nearly dislocates my shoulder and a binder thick enough to qualify as a weapon.

“So, Signor Hart,” he says in accented English, clapping my arm. “America sends us their finest, eh?”

“Or at least someone who can still climb scaffolding,” I say.

He laughs. “You joke now. Wait until you see the foundation.”

We talk through the basics—existing condition reports, proposed phases, safety concerns. He keeps gesturing to the bridge through the window; I keep finding my gaze drawn out there on instinct.

When the briefing finally wraps, he taps the binder.

“For the history, for the original design,” he says, “you will need help from downstairs. Architectural archive.” He winks. “We all fear the archive.”

“Why?”

He leans in conspiratorially. “It remembers everything.”

He scribbles a name on a Post-it and slides it over.

Livia Moretti.

“She is… how you say…” He searches for the word. “Intense. She loves the bridge. She loves all the bridges. She will tell you more than you want to know.”

I tuck the note into my pocket, my mind already moving ahead. “I’ll go down now.”

The corridor to the lower level is lined with framed photos of the city—bridges, aqueducts, arches that survived wars and weather that should have killed them. The further I go, the cooler the air becomes, the more the noise of the city fades.

The archive door is heavier than it looks. It opens with a slow groan.

Inside, the light is softer, filtered through frosted glass and shaded lamps. Metal shelves run floor to ceiling, stacked with boxes and binders and rolled maps. The smell hits me first: dust, paper, a faint trace of coffee.

“Hello?” I call.

No answer.

I take a few steps in. The quiet in here is a different kind of loud, every footfall sounding like an intrusion. A central desk sits under a cone of light, empty, papers spread carelessly, a coffee mug half-full and abandoned. A pair of glasses lies near the edge, one arm slightly bent.

I’m reaching out to straighten them when a voice cuts through the stillness.

“Don’t touch anything.”

I freeze.

The voice comes from between two rows of shelves. Low. Calm. With an edge that feels more like a warning than a request.

A moment later, she appears.

If Rome is sunlight and noise, she’s the opposite: a quiet pocket of shadow carved out of the brightness. Dark hair pulled back loosely with strands escaping to curl at her neck, a black blouse tucked into charcoal trousers that make her look like she belongs to the grayscale world of the documents around her.

But it’s her eyes that catch me. Gray, not like stone but like clouds that might break into a storm at any second. They move over me quickly at first—shoes, binder in my hand, the creases in my shirt—then linger on my face.

Heavier than a stranger’s gaze should.

“I wasn’t touching anything,” I say.

“Most people do,” she replies, stepping closer. “They think history belongs to them because they can reach it.”

Her accent is Italian, but there’s something else in it too. A faint smoothing at the edges, like she’s spent time with other languages.

“I’m—” I shift the binder in my arms. “I’m Evan Hart.”

“I know,” she says.

It throws me. “You… do?”

She nods toward the binder. “Marco said you were coming. He called ahead to warn me.”

“Warn you?”

“He said you like details. Engineers usually do. He said you’d want to see the original schematics.”

“I would, yeah.”

“He also said you ask too many questions.” A hint of a smile touches her mouth. “On that, we’ll see.”

I can’t tell if that’s a challenge or a joke.

“Then you must be Livia Moretti,” I say.

She doesn’t confirm or deny it with words. Just tilts her head slightly.

“You’re younger than I expected,” she says.

I huff out a laugh. “You’re the second person today who’s said that.”

“Marco calls anyone under fifty a child,” she says. “I meant younger in a different way.”

“In what way?”

She doesn’t answer. “Come.”

She moves past me toward the back of the room. I follow her between rows of cabinets, the hum of fluorescent lights above us the only sound. She unlocks a lower drawer with a key she keeps on a thin chain around her neck.

“These,” she says, drawing out a roll of parchment held with a faded red ribbon, “are the earliest plans for the Ponte delle Arti.”

She handles them like they might crumble under a breath. When she unties the ribbon and unrolls the paper onto a nearby table, the lines are faint but legible, hand-drawn curves and measurements in ink that has browned with age.

“Handle them like they matter,” she says.

“I know they matter,” I reply.

She looks at me then with that storm-cloud gaze. “People say that about a lot of things,” she says calmly. “Until they don’t.”

Her fingers brush mine as she passes the edge of the map to me. The contact is brief, accidental in theory, but my body notices anyway.

I shouldn’t notice.

I’m married. I’m exhausted. I’m here to fix a bridge, not my life. Still, something in me shifts a fraction, like a beam taking on a new load.

She watches me study the drawing for a moment.

“You don’t smile much,” she observes.

It takes me off guard. “Excuse me?”

“You have the look of someone who used to,” she says. “But doesn’t anymore.”

“You got that from ten seconds of eye contact?”

“Less,” she says, without arrogance. Just stating a fact.

“Do you analyze everyone who walks through that door?” I ask.

“Only the ones who matter.”

I swallow.

“Come back tomorrow,” she says, rolling the plans carefully. “I’ll show you what you actually need.”

“Isn’t that what this is?”

“This is the past. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the parts of it that want to collapse.”

She turns away before I can answer, already disappearing back into the maze of shelves. The lamplight cuts her into pieces for a second—shoulder, hand, hair—before reclaiming her whole.

I stand there longer than I should, feeling a strange tightness in my chest. Rome feels alive in a way that’s almost dangerous. And Livia Moretti feels like a fault line running through the middle of it.

I think of Leah’s messages waiting on my phone. Of promises I’ve made. Of all the things I came here to avoid.

As I step back out into the hallway, the weight of the ancient plans in my hands, I can’t shake the sense that I’ve just crossed a line I can’t see yet.

One I’ll only recognize when it’s already behind me.