with the arena floor. Stepping onto a reconstructed wooden plank, we went right to the center of the arena where the gladiator battles took place. Being surrounded by these ancient stones while listening to the bloody, violent history gave me goose bumps.
“Oh, before I forget. Need to send my parents a selfie.” I held my phone so that the stands were visible and smiled brightly.
“The Wi-Fi isn’t working; I checked.”
“I’ve got one of those portable modems in my backpack, and I’m already connected. I can give you the password.”
“No, don’t tempt me. I’m staying offline, otherwise I’ll go down the rabbit hole checking emails, and I just want to focus on you.”
“You mean our tour.”
“No. You.” This man! I couldn’t believe he was flirting so openly... or that I liked it so much. He grinned and, probably realizing I was in a dilemma, dropped it. “Why the portable modem?”
“I’m sending pics in real time, otherwise I forget. And when it’s late in the evening here and I’m out and about in the city is also when my parents are awake, so we can easily communicate. They love my pictures. Actually, I think they’d love Rome. They can’t afford to travel, but as soon as I finish my residency, I’ll make enough money that I could easily pay for their vacations. I told them this once, but they won’t even hear of it. For now.”
“You’re a remarkable person.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
He grinned. “For now, huh? I like how you think.”
“I don’t really get it. If I can afford it, why won’t they let me do something nice for them?”
“I know a thing or two about parents’ pride. Between my siblings, my cousin, and me, we wanted to buy an apartment for my mom and her husband. This is my mom’s second marriage; long story to tell another time. Anyway, she raised hell. We eventually managed to convince her to let us chip in for the down payment. It was the toughest negotiation. We had thought the same thing—we all make decent money, so why not let us take care of her?”
My stomach was full of fuzzy feelings. Isabelle had told me a few things about the Winchesters. They’d moved from Boston to New York many years ago when their dad left the family and practically started over... kind of like me.
I also knew they were well off. The sisters, Tess and Skye, owned a lingerie store. Ryker was working somewhere on Wall Street, and Cole and their cousin Hunter were at the helm of Caldwell Real Estate. Isabelle had emphasized they were good people, but in this case, good didn’t even begin to cover it.
The guide then shushed us, and neither of us spoke again as we followed the group. When we walked through the “gate of death,” a stone archway through which the losers would be dragged to their demise, my skin crawled.
The underground level was next.
“Very few people are allowed down here. They give out a limited number of tickets,” I whispered to Cole, feeling ridiculously proud. He just chuckled, putting an arm around my shoulders as if realizing that while I admired all of this, the dark history immortalized in these walls weighed on me. A current of awareness jolted through me when he squeezed my shoulder lightly.
The underground, dubbed the dungeons, was where the gladiators and animals were held. As a doctor, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around how fast infectious diseases would spread.
Stone walls surrounded us, and we walked on a metal pathway deep under the arena.
The guide spoke, and the microphone clipped at her collar amplified her voice. “The Romans had very advanced technologies. For example, they could flood the arena above completely to stage battle ships. We still don’t fully understand how that was possible, but we have detailed descriptions from the writers of the time, as well as the remnants of a few of those mechanisms to prove that this was accurate.”
Cole knocked against the stones, leaning in to whisper, “Many things are still unknown about them. Like the materials they used for the mortar that holds these stones together. It’s legendary. Two thousand years and several earthquakes later, still standing.”
The guide shushed us again. I pressed my lips together, looking at Cole out of the corner of my eye. He looked like he was barely suppressing laughter too.
We went back up afterward, on to the upper levels. There were five levels above the arena, and holy hell, the guide hadn’t been