THE ASSEMBLY OF VULTURES
The dawn over the Tuscan hills brought a cold, stark light, like the kind that precedes an execution.
The forensic report that Dante Moretti had handed me now rested beneath the false bottom of my jewelry box, right under the colonial pearls that had belonged to my mother.
The words printed on that yellowish paper had been burned into my mind: Mechanical asphyxiation by simulated submersion.
Presence of sedatives in the bloodstream.
It hadn't been an aneurysm. My mother had been drowned in the bathtub of her own home while I slept two rooms away, and the fingerprints had been erased from the report that bore the seal and signature: D’Luca.
I looked at myself in the mirror as I fastened the black diamond earrings that matched the choker Aaron had forced m
