- Florentine Part 2 -11.11.21- — Kenzie Anne

“That’s me,” she whispered.

“Matteo,” she said.

She was smiling. And she was terrified.

Fine del secondo movimento.

He smiled—that crooked, heartbroken smile—and opened the door to the rain.

She grabbed her coat.

He took her hand and placed the leather book in her palm. It was warm, as if it had been held close to a heart. Kenzie Anne - Florentine Part 2 -11.11.21-

Kenzie looked at the book in her hand. Then at the unfinished canvas. Then at the man who was either her partner in resurrection or her escort into oblivion.

The rain over Florence had not stopped for three days. It fell in soft, persistent sheets against the leaded glass of the restored palazzo , turning the Arno into a churning, muddy serpent below. Kenzie Anne stood at the window of her studio, a dry paintbrush held loosely in her fingers, watching the water trace paths down the glass like veins.

Outside, the bells of San Niccolò began to ring. St. Martin’s Day. The saint who cut his cloak in half for a beggar and later saw the beggar was Christ. “That’s me,” she whispered

“Before I show you,” he said, “you need to understand. This isn’t a love story, Kenzie. It’s a warning.”

Kenzie thought of the figure on her canvas—the woman whose face she couldn’t show, whose name she couldn’t name. She thought of the kiss behind the marble column, the whisper, the way Matteo looked at her like she was already disappearing.