Just a quick warning: I've never been to Florence, so all of my descriptions are based on research, lots and lots of research. I don't think it's imperative that anyone reading should be greatly familiar with the city either, but it would help to know the basics, like what the Duomo is and looks like. The street view on Google maps is great, too, by the way.

Enjoy.

September 11, 2012

The day was clear and bright, and already warmer than Billy had expected for 9:00 a.m., but the steady breeze that ruffled the paper he gripped in his right hand made the increasing mugginess bearable. He stood outside the hotel he had chosen randomly late last night and casting his eyes down either end of the narrow, cobbled street, he took his first good look at Florence, or Firenze as the locals called it.

He wasn't a stranger to strange cities. He'd spent years dropping in and out of new places, places where nobody knew him, where he could be called Liam and shirk all the duty and responsibility that came with being an Abbott. But he wasn't that person anymore, and he didn't have the time or the desire to spend the day exploring this new city, taking in the sights and the culture, letting his senses and his charm guide him to the hidden fun spots. He was here for one purpose only, and thanks to a delay in New York and a missed connection in Paris, he was already half a day behind in his search.

As he shook off the aggravation of the last twenty-four hours, Billy turned his attention to the piece of paper in his hand, a street map of Florence that he had gotten from the young man at the front desk. Mario had been eager to help him plan a tour of the Duomo or one of the city's hundreds of museums, but Billy had politely declined and instead showed him the address he had gotten from Jack. It was a long shot, possibly even crazy to think that Victoria would be there in the same apartment where she had lived years ago, but his gut wouldn't let him move on to more rational plans until he had first eliminated the possibility.

Using both hands to steady the map in front of him, Billy studied the twisting, winding streets that radiated from the Arno River, his eyes ignoring the landmarks dotted throughout, focusing instead on the zigzag path Mario had highlighted for him. It would take no more than ten minutes to get from the hotel to 25 Piazza San Marco, Number 14, the young man had said. So with no more time to waste, Billy crossed to the shady side of the street and headed north, armed with a map, an address, and the Italian phrasebook he had picked up in Paris.

Victoria threw open the French doors that connected the living room of her apartment to the small balcony overlooking the Piazza di San Marco. It was already hot out, so she stayed in the open doorway where she could enjoy both the view of Florence and the comfort of air-conditioning.

Morning traffic was picking up, and in the plaza across the way, students from the nearby university and art schools loitered about as they waited for class. Turning her eyes down the busy street, she saw the great orange dome of the Duomo, the architectural symbol of Florence, peaking above the other rooftops, and a soft laugh escaped her lips as she mentally compared the cathedral's dome to the smaller one protruding from her midsection. At 27 weeks, it was visually obvious she was pregnant, but while she was farther along than she had been when Reed was born prematurely, her belly was actually smaller, just a compact roundness jutting straight out in front of her.

As a breeze sent the end of her red sundress fluttering against her ankles, Victoria leaned her back against the hardness of the doorframe and took in the exact same view she had fallen in love with years ago. It had been a risk taking this apartment again, considering the lengths she had gone to in order to keep from being found, but after mailing her phone to Sam, she had been pretty sure no one, including her father, would come looking for her. So when she had learned her old place was available for the summer, she had chosen familiarity over practicality, and over the last three months she had tried to immerse herself fully in her old life, volunteering at the same convent school, catching up with the few old friends still in the city, and even sitting in on an art class once in a while. And in the evenings, when it was cooler, she would take long walks among the ancient buildings that lined the same streets Michelangelo himself had walked down and marvel at how little Florence had changed.

But despite her best efforts to recreate her life in Italy, it wasn't the same. She wasn't the same. She was a mother now. And a wife. And everything she had left behind this time, everything she had risked by coming here, was far greater than anything Florence had to offer. And yet, as she placed both hands atop the spot where her second miracle remained safe and healthy, she wasn't quite able to call this trip a mistake. If only Billy would see it that way, she thought.

She hadn't called him yesterday like she had meant to, but not because she had changed her mind about going home. It was just that the thought of reuniting with him, all that that entailed, was beginning to seem harder than leaving him had been, so she had taken care of the easier things first. She had called Tony, and he arranged for the same pilot who had flown her across the Atlantic to return her to Genoa City the minute she was ready to go. Then, she had moved up her next doctor's appointment to tomorrow, when hopefully she and the baby would be given another clean bill of health and clearance to travel. All that was left was calling Billy, because as tempting as it was to just show up on their doorstep as Chelsea had done, she knew he deserved better, fair warning at least.

So, today was the day. Just as soon as it was morning in Genoa City, she was going to call him.

The walk Mario had claimed would take ten minutes took Billy nearly an hour. He had walked slowly so his eyes could scan each face that passed him, and he had stopped in front of every storefront window along the way, peering inside just in case she was there, shopping or having breakfast. Then there was the wrong turn and the backtracking, but finally he stood in the dim hallway outside the door that possibly separated him from Victoria, the same door Jack had stood outside when he lured her home last time. It was not lost on Billy that, in a way, he was carrying on an Abbott family tradition by being here.

His palms were sweaty, and he hesitated for a brief moment before curling his hand into a loose fist and delivering three strong knocks to the door. He let two full minutes pass with no response before repeating the action a little harder, a little longer, not quite willing to believe no one was home. Between knocks, he heard the door across the hall open behind him, and he turned to see an older woman peering curiously through the crack in the door.

"Scusi," Billy said, practicing the first of several phrases he had committed to memory during the flight from Paris. The woman remained where she was, and sensing her uneasiness, Billy flashed his signature grin and turned on the charm. "Do you speak English? Parli inglese?"

She shook her head no, but the charm had worked and she emerged from the dark interior of her apartment. With the language barrier established, Billy pulled the phrasebook from the back pocket of his jeans, flipped to one of the pages he had dog-eared, and in butchered Italian told her he was looking for someone and that he suspected she lived in the apartment behind him.

"Mia moglie, my wife," he explained and pointed to the tattooed ring on his left hand. The woman nodded her understanding, and Billy reached into another pocket for his phone so he could show the woman Victoria's picture. But his phone was back at the hotel, he suddenly remembered. The battery had died prior to his arrival in Florence, and he hadn't been able to charge it until this morning when Mario helped him out with a plug adaptor, something he'd forgotten he would need during his hasty packing.

With no photograph, he attempted to describe Victoria with the words he found in the phrasebook. He told the woman she had brown hair and blue eyes and that she was very beautiful. "She's…uh… su questo alto, about this tall," he said and held his hand up to indicate her height. "…and she's… poco, little. No. Skinny, magro," he corrected himself and made a small waist with his hands just as he remembered he had a picture of her in his wallet, the ones from Santa Monica. But as he pulled out the strip of photographs and handed it to the woman, she pushed his hand away without looking at them and shook her head sharply.

"No, no, no," she said, pointing to the door behind Billy. "No magro. No poco." She put her arms out in front of her, showing a roundness of the midsection and repeated a word Billy didn't recognize from his phrasebook, but assumed meant the opposite of skinny. It wasn't her. It wasn't Victoria, and he felt like an idiot for ever thinking that finding her would be as easy as knocking on one door. Things had never been that easy with the two of them.

"Thanks anyway," Billy told the woman and then quickly added, "Grazie."

The stranger nodded wordlessly and disappeared back inside her apartment as Billy returned the strip of photographs to his wallet. He was disappointed, but at least he had satisfied his gut. And now he could move on to phase two of his search, a meeting with a government official who hopefully could at least verify that she was in Florence.

It was 2:45. Five minutes since she last checked the time, still fifteen minutes until the hour she had assigned to making that dreaded phone call. This morning she had gone to spend what would hopefully be her last day volunteering at the convent school, and surprisingly, the hours had flown by. It was the last fifteen minutes that were going to be her undoing, Victoria thought as she paced the floor of her apartment.

"I should just do it already, shouldn't I?" she said to the empty room. "It's not like fifteen minutes will make it any easier."

Phone in hand, she marched to the ornate, tufted sofa and gathered the skirt of her dress in front of her before sinking into its softness. While her free hand caressed her belly through red cotton, Victoria carefully punched each digit of Billy's cell phone number into the untraceable phone Tony had given her before she left D.C., and as she waited for the call to go through, she calmed herself with the breathing techniques she had learned in prenatal yoga, silently praying that Billy hadn't given up on her.

At the sound of his recorded voice prompting her to leave a message, she nearly lost it. It had been months since she'd heard that sound, and it only reminded her how much she missed him, how much she wanted to go home, to him, to their life. Unwilling to leave what she had to say in a message, she ended the call before the beep and quickly dialed another number. It was just before 8:00 in Genoa City. He should still be there, getting ready for work or having breakfast. Unless, of course, he was at Jack's or in L.A. again for Restless Style. Or, worst-case scenario, he had taken her leaving hard and disappeared again, but he wouldn't do that, not after Delia's illness.

"Hello?" She heard after the third ring. It wasn't Billy's voice that answered their home phone, which stunned her into silence. It wasn't even male.

"Hello?" the voice said again, this time annoyed, and Victoria knew right away it was Chloe on the other end, probably there to pick Delia up or drop her off before school.

She debated whether she should say anything, ask for Billy or maybe even confide in the woman who had strangely enough become a good friend, but before she could decide how to handle this wrench in her plan, Chloe hung up the phone, thereby severing the only connection Victoria had made to Genoa City in three months.

Disappointed, she exhaled loudly and tossed the phone that wasn't hers onto the sofa. Maybe it was for the best. She could try again later, after she Skyped with Reed, when she'd had a little more time to come up with the right words to say to him. Not that there were any. And in the meantime, to make the hours pass faster, she could head back to the school and spend a little more time with the girls who had made her days in Florence brighter.

"You answered their phone?" Kevin asked as he walked through Billy and Victoria's front door just as Chloe placed the receiver back in its cradle.

"Uh, it was ringing. What was I supposed to do?"

He could tell by her tone and body language that she was pissed about something, possibly something as simple as the lack of caffeine this morning, or maybe it was something more serious. Either way, he wasn't looking for a fight, so he simply smiled and changed the subject.

"Found it," he said and held up Keely's leash he had retrieved from the garage. It was one of the reasons they'd stopped here this morning, the other reason being far more serious, and tantrum-inducing. "Delia find Pinkerton yet?"

Chloe nodded and then smiled in spite of her mood. "But then she decided she wanted to wear something from her closet at Daddy's. I told her she had ten minutes."

"Gee, I wonder where she gets that," Kevin laughed, but his remark didn't go over well with its intended target. Taking a vow of silence for the next ten minutes, he sat on the sofa and began examining each piece of the handful of mail he had gathered on his way in from the garage.

"Wait," he heard Chloe say and looked up. "I can't answer their phone, but you can go through their mail? And not to mention you've been carrying around Victoria's phone since yesterday."

There it was, he realized, the real reason behind her mood. She had been snippy since Saturday when he and Billy took up the search for Victoria again, and her snippiness had only increased with each hour he devoted to the mission.

"Look, Chloe," he began calmly, "I'm just trying to help find Victoria. I mean, she's Delia's stepmother. Don't you care what happens to her?"

"Hey, I care about Victoria. I gave her our wedding, didn't I? I just don't get why you're so involved, especially now that Billy thinks he knows where she is."

"Why am I involved?" he asked louder than he had intended, but no louder than Chloe had been. "I don't know. Maybe because I know what it's like to have my wife missing. Maybe because they're our friends. Or maybe because Victoria stayed by Delia's side and your side when she was sick, and all I did was help keep her husband away from her. And now she's missing, and there might be something wrong with her. But all we have to go on is Billy's gut and the name of some doctor she may have gone to. And by the way, the only thing on her phone is a bunch of pictures she should probably delete before they get into the wrong hands and a recording from the day before she left that sounds like a washing machine on acid."

He had run out of breath, that was the only reason he ended his tirade. But the pause gave them both a moment to reel in their anger and remember the little girl upstairs. They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, waiting for the other to end the stalemate.

"Let me hear it." Chloe's voice was softer now and apologetic. And when Kevin looked at her quizzically, she added, "The washing machine thing. I want to help, and you could use a female perspective."

Kevin slid over on the couch, making room for her to join him as he dug the orange phone from his pocket. He quickly found the mystery recording and handed the phone to Chloe so she could hit play. Soon, silence was replaced with that frustrating 'whoosh, whoosh, whoosh' sound that he hadn't been able to figure out, and Kevin watched as Chloe's brow furrowed in concentration and then rose in recognition.

"I know what this is," she said eagerly, her mood instantly changing. "It's a heartbeat. Like from an ultrasound. Like when I was pregnant with Dee Dee."

She handed the phone back to him victoriously, but in the midst of her celebratory dance, she failed to see the look of concern on her husband's face or the frantic way he pulled out his own phone and unraveled another mystery.

"What?" she asked, when she finally looked at him

"A perinatologist…," he read from his phone, "is a doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies." He paused for a minute as he mentally made the connections. "Dr. Lange is a perinatologist, and Victoria went to that appointment on the 17th because-."

"She's pregnant," Chloe finished and sat in solemn silence until footsteps sounded on the stairs. They both plastered on fake smiles as Delia approached them and modeled her new outfit, but when Chloe stood to leave, Kevin stayed where he was on the sofa.

"Can you take Delia to school by yourself?" he asked.

"Why? What are you going to do?"

He didn't answer her in the presence of the little girl clutching the pink pony she had forgotten about for two whole days, but in his eyes Chloe read the message loud and clear. He was going to call Billy. He was going to reveal Victoria's secret.

Billy was hot, tired, and teetering on the edge of cranky, the heat and jet lag beginning to officially take their toll on him. His meeting with the government official had been about as productive as any meeting he'd had with any government official ever—far too much waiting for far too little information. Even after he'd discreetly slid the envelope of money across the desk, the short, stodgy man had proclaimed he'd get back to him in a day or two.

Frustrated, Billy had worked his way back through the maze of streets to the hotel where his newly-charged phone waited for him. He had just missed a call from Kevin, and there were a ton of others he didn't feel like going through much less returning. It wasn't like he had anything to tell yet anyway. So, he'd headed back down to the lobby where he forced himself to eat something while Mario, who was fast becoming his best friend, helped him map his next destination. Jack had mentioned a convent school, and while Billy had a hard time imagining the tough businesswoman he knew so well as a teacher, it was worth a shot to check it out. Besides, the one thing he had learned on this trip so far was that there was actually a lot he didn't know about his wife.

Without a name or address, Mario had narrowed the possibilities down to a couple of schools near the Piazza di San Marco, and following the same path he had taken this morning, Billy headed to the school closest to the apartment he had struck out at earlier. That was where he stood now, inside an unassuming building with an arched wooden door, feeling like he was up to bat with two strikes and an entire city of nearly 400,000 people rooting against him. All he needed was one person who could give him a glimmer of hope.

Two women approached him in the entryway of the school. The older one, probably in her fifties, was clearly a nun, wearing the traditional black and white habit and a harsh expression that made Billy glad he had never gone to Catholic school. The younger woman was no more than eighteen, barely even a woman, and when she looked at him with her big, round eyes, she smiled shyly. He wondered if she was a student or a volunteer herself since she was dressed casually, and when she opened her mouth and in near perfect English asked how they could help him, he understood why she had come to greet the American.

"I'm looking for someone," he said, grateful he could explain his situation in English. He shifted his eyes between the two as he spoke, unsure as to which one he should be addressing. The nun was clearly in charge, but the girl had the language advantage. "She…um, she used to volunteer here a few years ago, and I think she may be in Florence again. Her name is Victoria. Have you seen her?"

This time he had her picture ready on his phone, and when he offered it to the women, the younger one took it carefully and held the image where they both could see it as she translated Billy's request to the nun. He watched as they studied the picture, and right away he saw a look of affection and recognition in the girl's eyes. This was definitely the right school, but he couldn't be sure if she recognized Victoria from recently or from years ago.

No, he couldn't be sure until the girl looked up at him briefly and then turned to her companion excitedly. Her Italian was native and fast, and there was only one word he recognized out of the string of syllables that flew from her mouth. His name. The girl said his name, and he knew. Victoria was in Florence. She had been in this school, was possibly here now.

"You know her, don't you?" he interrupted excitedly. "Is she here? Because I really, I really need to see her."

The girl stopped her rambling, and with a stern look and few words of her own, the nun prevented her from saying anymore. Billy noticed the tension that rose between them, and as the excitement faded from the girl's face, she handed his phone back and turned her eyes to the ground.

"We are sorry," she said mechanically. "She is not here. We cannot help you."

It was a lie, or at least not the full truth. They could help him, he knew it. They were just choosing not to. "But you know her. I saw it in your eyes," he pleaded to the girl. "Look, she's my wife, and I'm worried about her. Could you just tell me where she is? If she's okay?"

Again, the girl translated for him, her voice as pleading as his own, but the nun shook her head, and again the girl replied, "We are sorry. She is not here. We cannot help you."

"Please," Billy begged, this time to the nun, but she remained as stoic as the first moment he saw her. And with a simple, dismissive nod in his direction, she turned to go, shouting an order at the girl as she disappeared behind a door.

He stood there, distraught, deflated, and confused by what had just happened. He threw an angry punch into the air and cursed under his breath. He would stand outside this building all day if he had to. Everyday, until she showed up. He didn't need their help, he thought as he grabbed the handle of the door and let the warm air from outside in.

"Is this your first time in Florence?"

He had forgotten the girl was still there until he heard her voice. She was fidgety, and her eyes remained cast down. He wasn't sure why he did it, something about her demeanor maybe, but he managed to say 'yes' as his hand clung to the open door.

She looked up at him and then gave a cautious glance to the door the nun had disappeared behind. "You should visit the Cathedral, the Duomo," she said, but there was another message in her big eyes, one that made Billy's pulse quicken. "It's particularly lovely this time of day. Some of our students are there right now, sketching. Not alone, of course. One of our volunteers went with them, an American."

"Victoria's there?" he squeaked out.

"You should hurry," she said without confirming the information. "Before the light is gone."

Billy's feet barely touched the ground, and his legs felt as though they belonged to someone else as he sprinted in the direction the girl had pointed. He shouted 'scusi' as a warning to the pedestrians in his way, but he bumped into some of them nevertheless. A few yelled back angrily, probably cursing him, but he just kept racing toward the sun.

Something buzzed in his hand, his phone he didn't even realize he still carried. A quick glance told him it was Kevin, but he ignored the call and shoved the phone in his pocket. There was nothing anyone could tell him right now that was more important than what was waiting for him at the Duomo

Before he knew it, the street opened up, and the massive cathedral rose in front of him, beautiful and imposing. The plaza around it was a sea of tourists, and as he stopped to catch his breath, to let his heart stop pounding, his eyes searched the crowd for brown hair, blue eyes and the face that had haunted his dreams for three months.

The north side was bathed in shadows. So, following his gut and the hint from the girl at the school, he rounded the building to the part illuminated by the afternoon sun. The place was too big and too noisy. There were too many people, and he was scared she would be gone before he found her. He stood among a group of Japanese tourists busy snapping pictures of the marble walls. Their tour guide spoke to them in English, the language common to them both, and as he yelled over the crowd about how Florence was the 'cradle of the renaissance,' Billy wormed his way through the group.

The breeze had picked up since this morning, drying each bead of sweat on Billy's forehead almost as soon as it formed. A strong gust came through and blew something out of the hand of the man in front of him, and when the stranger bent down to pick it up, his movement opened up a new line of sight for Billy.

That's when he saw her.

Across the plaza, standing in the warm afternoon sun, surrounded by a group of girls struggling to control the pages of their sketchbooks. She was laughing, they all were, as the wind whipped her unruly hair into her face and inflated the skirt of her red dress, blowing it out in front of her like a bell mid-ring.

His heart stopped, literally stopped, and he clasped his hands on top of his head, fighting back the emotion as the reality hit him. He had found her. After three months, thousands of miles, and tons of unanswered questions, Victoria was standing no more than fifty feet away from him. And she was okay.

His eyes stayed glued to the red dress as he roughly pushed his way through the last swarm of people standing between them, and as he neared her, the sea parted, clearing his path to her. As if she sensed him, Victoria turned to face the wind, to face him. Out of hundreds of pairs of eyes, theirs locked immediately, and any doubts he had about her feelings for him were erased in that moment because all he saw was love.

Then, his eyes were drawn lower, to the place where the changing wind had blown her dress back against her like a second skin, revealing the secret she had protected for months.