Javier and Roxie thought Barcelona would be the last time. After the mafia, after Carmen, after burying a friend and nearly losing each other to a case that turned personal in ways neither of them saw coming, they wanted nothing more than a quiet honeymoon phase as newlyweds - not another investigation, not another body count, not another city where the past refuses to stay buried.
Rome had other plans.
Detective Paul Ruzo doesn't call in favors lightly, but the deaths piling up along the Tiber have broken every rule he knows. Tourists are dying near the Sant'Angelo Bridge - no wounds, no struggle, nothing but a strange gold-foiled coin left behind like a calling card. The press has already named it: A Killer in the Mist. And somewhere underneath the tourist-postcard version of Rome, someone is watching the investigation unfold in real time.
Roxie doesn't want to admit what's happening to her. The visions started small - flashes she could dismiss as nerves, jet lag, too much espresso. But they're getting sharper, more specific, more insistent, and when she reaches for Javier's hand mid-vision and he sees it too, there's no explaining it away anymore. Something about this case is reaching back.
The trail leads to a twenty-year-old murder nobody wanted reopened. Sara Wilson died near this same bridge two decades ago, and the man convicted of killing her has spent twenty years insisting he didn't do it. Javier and Roxie start pulling that thread expecting a closed case. What they find instead is a family fractured six ways - three children by three different men, one buried secret after another, and a records clerk with access to everything who turns out to be far more involved than her badge suggests.
Rome gives them allies they didn't expect. Ruzo's mother runs a restaurant that isn't just a restaurant, built by a husband who left behind more locks, cameras, and hidden rooms than anyone quite wants to explain. Peter, a soft-spoken morgue assistant with a sharper eye than his job title suggests, becomes indispensable before anyone realizes it. And somewhere in all of it, a young man named Bill - overlooked, underestimated, treated as an afterthought by the people who should have protected him - turns out to matter more than anyone guessed.
But every answer Javier and Roxie uncover only tightens the net around them. Someone below the city knows exactly who's asking questions. The tunnels beneath Rome have kept secrets for two thousand years, and whoever is using them now understands that better than anyone chasing them. As the case pulls tighter, the line between investigator and target starts to blur, and Roxie's visions stop feeling like clues and start feeling like warnings.
Beneath Sant'Angelo is the next chapter in Javier and Roxie's story - a married couple who never meant to become detectives, pulled back into danger by instinct, loyalty, and a bond neither of them fully understands yet. Fans of Blood Beneath Barcelona will recognize the chemistry, the humor between the danger, and the sense that the ground beneath Rome's oldest streets is a lot less solid than it looks. New readers will find a fast-moving mystery that stands entirely on its own - ancient tunnels, a cold case that was never really cold, and a killer who has been closer than anyone imagined the entire time.
Some cities bury their history. Rome just waits for someone to dig it back up.
