Venice did not welcome them; it swallowed them whole. The city rose from the lagoon like a beautiful, waterlogged corpse, her palazzi adorned in decaying grandeur, her canals shimmering with the phosphorescent glow of rot and romance. As their private launch cut through the black, silent water towards Giancarlo Russo’s palazzo, Isabella felt the weight of centuries and conspiracy pressing down on her.
The palazzo was a vision of monstrous elegance, a symphony of white stone and arched windows blazing with light, its reflection dancing on the canal’s dark surface like a mirage. The air was thick with the scent of salt, diesel, and the cloying sweetness of night-blooming jasmine. It was the perfect stage for a trap — beautiful, historic, and utterly inescapable by land.
Alessandro, a monol
