First Class To Rome

She picked up the phone and called the bank.

The woman who answered asked for identification, then asked whether Victoria had an appointment.

“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “My husband is dead.”

There was a pause, softened by the faint hum of an office beyond the line.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Moretti. Do you have the key?”

“Yes.”

“Then come in tomorrow morning.”

Victoria looked toward the hallway, where Daniel’s coat still hung from its hook. “I’d like to come now.”

Another pause.

“Mrs. Moretti, the vault closes in twenty minutes.”

“Then I’ll be there in fifteen.”

She took Daniel’s car because it was nearest, though the driver’s seat still held the shape of his body. Rain ticked against the windshield. At the bank, a security guard led her through two locked doors into a gray room that smelled of metal and old paper.

The clerk examined the key without expression.

“Box 417,” he said. “Your husband was the only authorized user.”

“Was?”

“He’s deceased.”

Victoria placed her identification on the counter. “Then open it.”

The clerk’s eyes flicked to her black dress, her wedding band, her face. “There is a procedure.”

“Follow it quickly.”

He did not smile. He carried the key into the vault and returned with a narrow metal box. Victoria followed him into a small room with a table, two chairs, and a camera mounted in the corner.

The box felt heavier than it should have.

When she lifted the lid, the first thing she saw was money.

Bundles of cash filled the bottom, bound with paper bands. Victoria stared at them, unable to make the numbers settle into meaning. The clerk leaned closer, then stopped himself.

“Is that - ”

“Don’t,” she said.

She counted once. Then again.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Beneath the cash lay a blue Italian passport. Daniel’s photograph looked back at her from the page, younger by several decades, his dark hair thick and his mouth unsmiling. But the name printed beneath the photograph was not Daniel Moretti.

Victoria’s breath caught.

She touched the page. “This is my husband.”

The clerk looked at the passport and then at her. “It appears to be.”

“His name is Daniel Moretti.”

“That is not what it says.”

The third item was an envelope, yellowed at the edges and sealed with brittle red wax. Her name was written across the front in a woman’s elegant hand.

Victoria.

No surname. No address.

She broke the seal.

The letter inside was written in English, though the handwriting curved like something borrowed from another alphabet. The paper trembled between her fingers.

My darling,

Thirty years is too long to wait for a promise, but I have waited because I know the man beneath the name. I know what you left behind, and I know what you were meant to inherit.

Victoria read the lines twice.

At the bottom, beneath a signature she could not fully make out, the final sentence stood alone.

“When Victoria finally learns who you really are, come home to me.”

The room seemed to contract around her.

The clerk cleared his throat. “Mrs. Moretti?”

She folded the letter with care. “Who has access to this box?”

“Only the account holder.”

“My husband is dead.”

“Yes.”

“Then who put these things here?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

She looked at the passport again. The photograph was Daniel’s. The face she had kissed good night for forty years stared up at her beneath a name she had never seen.

“Was he ever here with anyone?”

“I can’t discuss other visits.”

“Was he ever here with a woman?”

The clerk’s mouth tightened. “I can’t discuss other visits.”

Victoria slid the letter into her handbag. “Then I suppose you’ve been very useful.”

Outside, the rain had stopped. She sat in Daniel’s car with the engine off, the key in her lap and the letter pressed against her ribs. Her wedding ring felt suddenly too tight.

She should have gone home. She should have called the police, her lawyer, or Daniel’s brother, who would have demanded to know why she was disturbing a dead man’s secrets.

Instead, she drove to the airport.

At the departures desk, the woman behind the counter glanced at Victoria’s passport and then at the first-class ticket Victoria had purchased with a single phone call from the bank’s parking lot.

“Rome,” the woman said. “Are you checking any bags?”

“One.”

“Purpose of travel?”

Victoria thought of the letter in her handbag. She thought of the false passport, the money, and Daniel’s photograph wearing another man’s name.

“Vacation,” she said.

The woman stamped her boarding pass. “Enjoy your trip.”

Victoria walked toward security, carrying the key in the pocket of her coat.

The first-class cabin was nearly empty when she boarded. Soft lamps glowed above wide leather seats. A flight attendant took Victoria’s coat and offered champagne, but Victoria asked for water.

“Of course, Mrs. Moretti.”

She settled beside the window. Below, the runway shone under the rain, strips of light stretching into darkness. She placed the letter on the table and unfolded it once more.

The final line waited for her.

When Victoria finally learns who you really are, come home to me.

A man paused beside the aisle.

He was elegant without appearing careful about it, perhaps in his late sixties, with silver hair and a charcoal suit. His eyes moved from Victoria’s face to the letter.

“Forgive me,” he said. “That is a very serious expression for a woman flying to Rome.”

Victoria covered the page with her hand. “Perhaps I’m not flying there for pleasure.”

“Few people are honest about pleasure.”

He spoke with a warm Italian accent. The flight attendant approached, but he lifted two fingers.

“Wine for both of us,” he said. “The red one.”

Victoria looked at him. “I didn’t ask for wine.”

“No,” he said. “But you looked as if you needed a decision made for you.”

“I’ve been married forty years. I dislike decisions made for me.”

Something changed in his expression. Interest, perhaps. Or recognition.

“My apologies,” he said. “I’m Marco.”

Victoria gave him only her first name. “Victoria.”

“Victoria,” he repeated, as though testing it. “Why Rome?”

She folded the letter and slipped it back into her handbag. “I have business there.”

“Business involving a letter?”

Her hand stopped on the clasp.

Marco smiled, but there was no apology in it this time. “You should be more careful.”

“About what?”

“About what you show strangers.”

The flight attendant poured the wine. Marco lifted his glass, waiting. Victoria did not touch hers.

“My husband died three weeks ago,” she said.

Marco’s gaze remained on her. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know what grief does to a person.”

“Then you know better than to ask questions.”

His smile faded. “That is probably wise.”

The aircraft began to move. Victoria watched the terminal slide past the window, its lights blurred by rain. Marco returned to his seat across the aisle, but she could feel his attention whenever she looked down.

She kept one hand on her handbag during takeoff.

Hours later, the cabin had darkened. The engines made a steady, enormous sound beneath the floor. Victoria woke with her cheek against the window and a stiff ache in her neck.

Marco’s seat was empty.

She sat upright.

His glass was gone. His coat was gone. The seatbelt lay neatly fastened across an empty cushion.

Victoria reached for her handbag.

The clasp was open.

The letter was missing.

For several seconds, she could not move. Then she pressed the call button.

A flight attendant appeared almost immediately. “Mrs. Moretti?”

“The man across the aisle. Where did he go?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Italian gentleman. Marco.”

The attendant glanced toward the empty seat. “He moved to another seat?”

“He had a coat. A charcoal suit. Silver hair.”

“I’ll check.”

“And my handbag was closed.”

The attendant looked at it, then at Victoria. “Perhaps it came loose.”

“Perhaps someone opened it.”

The woman’s expression became professionally still. “I’ll speak with the purser.”

Victoria stood, ignoring the pull in her knees. She searched the aisle, the lavatory, the galley. No Marco. No letter. When she returned to her seat, a small cream envelope rested on it.

She stared at the envelope.

Her name was written across the front in block letters.

Victoria.

She did not touch it until the flight attendant returned with the purser, a broad-shouldered man who asked what had been taken.

“A letter,” Victoria said.

“What kind of letter?”

“Personal.”

“Was anything else missing?”

“No.”

“Then we can make a report when we land.”

Victoria looked down at the envelope. “This wasn’t here before.”

The purser examined it without picking it up. “Would you like me to remove it?”

“No.”

She opened the envelope.

A photograph slid onto her palm.

Daniel stood outside a pale stone villa beneath a Tuscan sun. He looked younger, confident, almost handsome in a way Victoria had forgotten. Beside him stood a beautiful young woman with dark hair and one hand resting lightly on his arm.

Victoria turned the photograph over.

Across the back, written in black ink, were the words:

WELCOME TO ITALY, VICTORIA. WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.

The purser asked, “Mrs. Moretti, are you all right?”

Victoria looked again at Daniel’s borrowed face, at the woman beside him, at the message meant specifically for her.

The letter was gone. The secret was not.

She slid the photograph into her handbag and closed the clasp.

“Fine,” she said.

But grief had left the seat beside her. In its place sat a question with a passport, two hundred thousand dollars, and a road leading to Rome.

End of chapter one. 19 more chapters in the full book.