“Jail, Nico! I was not thinking right . . .” Marcello pats his chest frantically. “Look at me. I do not sleep. I used to be mayor. I love this city. The people are my people. Like family. I did not mean for any of this . . .”

Alana stares hard at the shaken man. “We need to know everything, Marcello. Do you understand?”

Zanetti swallows. “Sì.”

“This cover-up,” she says. “How deep does it go?”

“What do you mean?”

“We found an infected rat in Parco Serra Gropallo, on the other side of the city. We believe it came from your site. It couldn’t have gotten there on its own.”

Zanetti shakes his head frantically. “No! No! We did not move any rats. I swear! Sulla tomba di mia madre! On my mother’s grave!”

“So what did you do with the rats you trapped?”

“We were so very careful. We burned them right there at the site. Every one of them!”

“How many rats?” Alana demands.

“Not many. Ten or twelve. We hired an exterminator. I saw all the rats. They were dead in the traps.”

“Did you find other rats before?” Alana asks. “When you first excavated the site?”

Zanetti shakes his head. “No.”

“None?”

“I never saw any animals, not even droppings, until the day the Chinese lady came to the site with you.” Zanetti stops to rub his face. “Although . . .”

“What, Marcello?” she asks.

“After we tore down the old monastery, Vittoria showed me the crypt below the main floor. It went so much deeper and farther than expected. It had all these narrow . . . how would you say . . . scanalature.”

“Passages,” Nico says.

“Yes. Some of them, not even the smallest child could fit. And there were bones. Many, many of them. Vittoria, she thought the monks were breeding small animals of some kind.”

“As in rats?” Alana glances at Nico. “Why would anyone breed rats?”

Zanetti holds up his hand again in bewilderment.

Alana and Nico continue to interrogate the developer, but he has little more of use to add. As they are leaving, Zanetti stops them at the door. “You will tell the police?” he asks.

“Yes, of course,” Nico says flatly.

Zanetti grabs his shoulder. “Everything I told you today is true. All of it. I would never have done it if I thought others would get sick. You must believe me, Nico. Yes?”

Nico glances down at the hand on his arm. “You remind me of Isabella,” he says coolly. “Just like with your niece, it’s impossible to know where your lies even end.”

On the drive back to town, Nico offers to take Alana for “the best fish in all of Genoa.” Despite how little she has eaten in the past few days, she’s too tense to sit down for a meal, especially an intimate dinner with Nico. They end up instead at the same high-top table in the lobby bar where she sat with Byron the night before. This time, though, she nurses a chamomile tea while Nico drinks red wine.