The shift from the sweltering, gasoline-drenched chaos of Onitsha to the marble-cool, ancient silence of Rome was a psychological whiplash that Seraphina felt in her very bones. They had spent forty-eight hours in the bowels of a cargo plane, moving across the Mediterranean under a shroud of forged flight plans and high-level digital static. Now, standing on the cobblestones of the Via della Conciliazione, the air was a crisp 14°C, carrying the scent of incense, rain-slicked stone, and two thousand years of secrets.
"The Vatican isn't a university basement, Sera," Alessandro whispered, his breath hitching in the cold air. He looked like an Italian aristocrat in his tailored charcoal overcoat, his sharp features blending perfectly into the Roman twilight. But beneath the wool, the Wolf was
