Mine.
The word settles into my chest like it belongs there.
I finish my cigarette and check my watch.
Tomorrow, I’ll introduce myself. Some accidental encounter at the cathedral, perhaps, or the café where she spends her mornings. A benefactor taking interest in a Foundation project. Perfectly innocent. Perfectly reasonable.
She won’t suspect. Why would she? To her, I’ll just be another face in a foreign city.
And by the time she realizes what I am, what Iwant, it will be far, far too late.
I start the engine, the Maserati purring to life, and pull away from the curb. In the rearview mirror, her window glows amber against the Palermo night.
3
VIOLET
The east wall is trying to kill me.
Not literally, though the scaffolding does creak in ways that suggest it’s considering murder. Every measurement I take reveals another layer of damage I missed yesterday. Water infiltration from the roof. Salt crystallization eating through the plaster. A crack I swear wasn’t there last week, spreading like a slow-motion lightning strike toward the only intact fresco on this side of the nave.
Four hundred years this building has stood here. Four hundred years of earthquakes, wars, neglect, the occasional flood. And now it’s decided to fall apart onmywatch.
Story of my life.
I’m balanced on a platform about fifteen feet up, camera pressed to my face, documenting the latest crisis, a section of painted angel wing that’s starting to separate from the wall beneath it. The pigments are still vivid. Cobalt blue, the expensive kind made from ground lapis lazuli. Someone paid a fortune for that color in 1623. Now it’s hanging by a thread of degraded lime mortar, ready to flutter to the floor like a dead leaf.
“Don’t you dare,” I mutter at it. “I will stabilize the absolute shit out of you. Just... stay.”
The angel doesn’t answer. Neither does the wing. But it doesn’t fall either, so I’m counting that as a win.
I lower my camera and reach for my notebook, jotting down coordinates and damage codes in the shorthand I’ve developed over years of fieldwork. E-7, saltcyrs, detach 40%, pigment stable, priority 1. It looks like nonsense to anyone else, but to me, it’s a map of everything that needs saving.
And there’s so much that needs saving.
The morning light shifts as a cloud passes over the sun, dimming the interior from gold to gray. I check my watch. Nearly eleven. I’ve been up here for four hours, and my lower back is staging a protest that’s about to turn into a full rebellion.
Time for a break. Coffee. Maybe one of Rosa’s pastries if she’s feeling generous, though her generosity usually comes with commentary about my weight or my solitude or both.
I’m packing up my equipment when I sense it.
Someone watching.
The sensation is different from yesterday’s paranoia on the street. It’s sharper and more immediate. Like standing too close to a space heater. That awareness of somethingpresentthat wasn’t there before. I turn slowly, keeping my movements casual, and scan the cathedral floor below.
A man stands in the nave.
He’s positioned near the fourth column, half in shadow, but there’s enough light to make out the basics. Tall, dark hair, with a classic Italian handsome face. He’s wearing an expensive suit that looks out of place in this crumbling cathedral. He doesn’t look like a tourist. Tourists wear bright colors and sensible shoes and expressions of vague cultural guilt. This man wears his clothes like armor and stands like he owns the ground beneath his feet.
He’s looking directly at me, his piercing dark eyes boring into me.
Okay. Not creepy at all.
I consider ignoring him. This is a public building, technically, even if it’s been closed for restoration. People wander in sometimes. Usually lost tourists or old women who want to light candles for the dead. But something about the way he’s watching me, not moving, not pretending to examine the architecture, justwatching, makes the back of my neck prickle again.
Jesus, Murphy. Maybe he’s just interested in the work. It happens.
I finish securing my camera bag with deliberate calm, then make my way down the scaffolding. Each rung is automatic by now, my body moving through the descent while my brain registers details about the stranger below.
