“My stomach is not right.”

“Are you sick?”

“In a way, I suppose.”

His face crumples with concern.

Letizia smiles and then reaches for her handbag. She extracts the used home pregnancy test that reveals the pink plus sign, and flips it over to show him.

“Amore!” His eyes light with joy. “You really are?”

“Yes, I really am. Happy anniversary!” She throws her arms around his thick shoulders and hugs him tightly.

Letizia isn’t sure if it’s the hormones or just happiness, but a thick ball forms in her throat and tears spill down her cheeks. It takes her a few moments to realize that the constriction in her throat is not going away.

Choking, Letizia wriggles free of her husband’s grasp. She coughs hard, trying to clear the obstruction. She feels something give, but her hand doesn’t reach her mouth in time. The blood and phlegm spray across her husband’s plate, as if intending to turn his white sauce into a pink.

Chapter

Forty

Desperate for fresh air, Alana slips out of the hospital without telling Byron or Nico that she’s leaving.

The sun is high and a light breeze carries the scent of fresh blooms, but the perfect spring weather does little to quell her dark thoughts. As she walks along the relatively deserted sidewalk, Alana reminds herself that she has no connection to the assault on the Turkish teens. But that doesn’t prevent the guilt from gnawing. She forces the thought to the back of her mind and focuses instead on the recent developments in the outbreak: the accelerating death toll, the growing antibiotic resistance, and the discovery of healthy rat carriers. It feels as if events are conspiring to create the perfect epidemiological storm. She wonders if, hundreds of years before, similar bleak factors propelled the original Black Death to the point of critical mass.

She thinks again of Zanetti’s construction site, where Yasin died. She is more convinced than ever that the old monastery has to link the current outbreak to the medieval one. But if so, where could the plague have hidden all those years?

On a whim, she hails a cab. Ten minutes later, she is dropped off in front of Brother Silvio’s dreary apartment building. It takes the diminutive monk a minute or two to answer his door, but he does so with a big smile as he welcomes her inside his cramped apartment. The smell of old books seems even stronger today.

“I hope I’m not disturbing,” Alana says.

“Not at all. I am happy for the company. Many believe a monk’s life to be one of solitude. But for me, it was the opposite, living as I did among my brothers. I miss the humanity.”

She can’t help but return the cheerful monk’s grin. “Brother Silvio, I was hoping to learn a little more about the monastery.”

“Prego. What can I tell you?”

“Were there ever any unexplained illnesses among the brothers who lived there?”

“Unexplained?” He grimaces. “I lived at San Giovanni a long, long time. Over forty years. Long enough to see several of the brothers pass.”