Chapter 36: The Night Before the Board
The Milan skyline appeared through the plane window at 4 PM.
Élise had always found the city beautiful from the air — the particular geometry of it, the way it spread across the Lombardy plain without apology, the afternoon light catching the glass towers and the old stone with equal generosity. She had looked at it from above for the first time eighteen months ago with a worn leather portfolio in the overhead compartment and a heart full of something she had been too cautious to call hope.
She looked at it now with Henri's blueprints in her bag and a letter addressed to Isabella folded inside them and the particular knowledge of a woman who has been inside the city long enough to understand that its beauty and its danger are not separate things but the same thing viewed from different angles.
Adriano was looking at his phone.
