THE PROMISE WE MADE

Some promises are made with the heart. Others come with a price.

Ten years ago, Matteo Ricci promised Sofia Marini that he would open his familys archive and prove what the Ricci had known about a painting. He was twenty-four and in love with her. He did not do it. He chose the family.

Sofias mother restored that panel. When the attribution collapsed after the unveiling, she was blamed for it, her career ended, and she died three years later.

Now the Ricci foundation is preparing its centenary exhibition, the panel has to be restored, and the commission has come to Sofia — the best conservator in Florence, and the last person in Italy who should accept it. She takes it anyway, because there is only one way into that archive and it is through the work.

Matteo is the man who keeps the archive now. Every day she spends under that painting brings up something that was meant to stay under it, and the closer the evidence comes to the surface, the clearer it is that the truth will cost somebody everything.

A second-chance romance set in Florence, about a broken promise, an inherited debt, and what it takes to forgive somebody who chose otherwise.