6 MONTHS LATER
ADRIAN'S POV
Tuscany in the late afternoon was a study in layered golds and bruised purples, a landscape that looked less like a place and more like an oil painting that hadn't quite dried. From the stone terrace of the Villa Blackwood, the rolling hills of the Val d'Orcia stretched out like a rumpled velvet carpet, dotted with the dark, jagged silhouettes of cypress trees.
It was a far cry from the obsidian walls of St. Jude's Key, and there was no hum of geothermal processors here, no scent of ozone or the metallic tang of high-grade encryption cooling units. There was only the smell of wild rosemary, ripening grapes, and the faint, woody aroma of the 1997 Brunello breathing in a decanter on the table behind me.
