A Mission In Florence

Eight years ago, Major Reid Mercer walked out of a burning storeroom in a war zone and left a priceless stolen saint behind. That same deployment, he left his marriage behind too, in a different room, with a different woman.

He has spent eight years being very good at keeping his face still.

Now the Army is sending him to Florence to recover the looted icon, which has surfaced, cleaned and disguised, in a quiet studio on the wrong side of the river.

The conservator restoring it is his ex-wife.

Nora rebuilt her whole life out of the wreckage he made of it, in her mother's city, at a bench, with the one thing he could never take from her: she knows how to clean. And she has been keeping a secret of her own about the saint on her table, one that could end her.

The mission that drags Reid back into the worst year of his life will force them into the same room, over the same broken holy thing, for six weeks. He will have to look at the man he betrayed her with, the friend who is now a trafficker, and finally choose, out loud, in front of her, whether to keep his face still one last time or burn everything down for the truth.

And Nora will have to decide the only question that matters, the one an old woman asks her about a wounded saint and she spends the whole book answering about herself:

Is this a thing that can be lived with? Or a thing that can only be looked at?

A slow-burn, closed-door military second chance told in two voices, about the man who broke it, the woman who rebuilt herself, and a stolen saint that needs them both to send it home.

If you want the truth, come to Florence!!