Byron smiles shyly, avoiding eye contact. “We make a decent team, huh?”

“Especially with Justine here to keep our feet to the fire.”

“True.” He turns back to his laptop.

Once they touch down in Genoa, Alana’s phone buzzes with several text messages, including two from Olin and another one from Claudio.

Byron checks his phone, too, as they leave the airport. “Four more dead in Genoa and several new cases,” he says with a shake of his head. “I have to go meet the health minister and my WHO team at City Hall. Do you want to join us?”

“Can’t,” she says. “I have to go the hospital.”

“To meet Nico?” he asks, almost too casually.

“No. Claudio.”

“We can debrief later tonight? Maybe even grab a bite, time permitting?”

“Yeah, maybe, time permitting,” she says, surprising herself with the answer.

Chapter

Forty-Seven

Today is the first day of March. So much has happened in the two days since I last took up my quill that I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I would best start with a confession.

The miscreants who call themselves flagellants did me an unintentional service with their act of barbarism. They spared me from a dilemma with no acceptable resolution. They also permitted me a coward’s escape from the final request of a dying friend. By the time I went back inside Jacob’s house, he was no more. Gabriella was weeping a few steps from his bedside. I later learned that she was respecting his last words, which were that even in death she should not approach him.

Ignoring the conventions of decency, I embraced her in my arms. She cried against my shoulder for so long that I lost track of time. Not a word was spoken between us, but her pain was as present as a scream. I thought of Camilla and how, in the hours after her death, it felt as though I had been gutted alive.

Gabriella began to wobble on her feet, so I guided her to the chairs by the table and sat her there. She took a few sips from the wineskin I offered. When she spoke, her voice was steady. Tell me what happened with the flagellants, she said.

It is over now, was all I said.

I heard the shrieks, she said. I smelled the smoke that carried the stench of burning flesh. Tell me, Rafael, please.

I told her of the two men who were put to flame and the ominous warning the leader of the flagellants uttered upon their departure.

Gabriella accepted the news with calm and poise. They sought David ben Solomon by name? she asked.

Yes, they did.

It cannot be a coincidence, then.

What cannot be?

You have told me the Archbishop also complained of his debt to ben Solomon, did he not?

He did.

So the Archbishop stood to benefit from his demise?

True, I said. But the Archbishop could not have been the only man to owe money to ben Solomon. After all, he must have been a successful lender, to have enough money to loan for the building of a structure as grand as the Archbishop’s palace. Other debtors would surely gain from ben Solomon’s death, too.